Disturbances in Ceylon

A STATEMENT regarding the riots which took place in Ceylon in the early part of last summer, and the severe measures taken by the Government in consequence, has been laid before the Society by Mr. E. W. Perera, a Sinhalese barrister who is in this country in order to approach the Secretary of State for the Colonies on behalf of his countrymen. Martial law was proclaimed, many prominent citizens were arrested and imprisoned, and a large number of executions took place.

A letter was addressed in September on behalf. of the Society to the Colonial Office asking that an inquiry should be instituted and that no further executions should be permitted without authority from the Home Government. In reply, the Colonial Office stated that Mr. Perera's memorandum could not be accepted as a basis for inquiry, but that it should be sent to the Governor of Ceylon for his report. Martial law had been withdrawn on August 30, and despatches from the Governor giving an account of the riots would be laid before Parliament in due course. The Society then asked that they might be permitted to see a copy of the Governor's report when received.

Meanwhile the Hon. P. Ramanathan, K.C., C.M.G., Ceylonese member of the Legislative Council and formerly Attorney-General, has arrived in England, and it is proposed to convene an informal meeting to hear a statement from him with a view to taking such further action in the matter as may seem desirable.

The following extracts from a letter published in the Ceylon Times from the Hon. H. Creasy, a well-known member of the Legislative Council, give a clear statement of his position in this matter :—

"I take no more interest in the Sinhalese than I do in any other of the numerous races which dwell in this small island. I know there is a strong feeling of animosity prompted by religious sentiment and commercial rivalry between a very large number of Moors and Sinhalese. To single out the Sinhalese, innocent and guilty, as the persons to bear the whole weight of the tax will be to create a feeling of injustice among the Sinhalese and to enhance and increase the existing animosity between the Sinhalese and the Moors. To divide the damages among the whole community would have no such effect. . . . I do not minimize the wrongs done to the Moors. I know them well, probably better than you do, and have not the smallest sympathy with any one person or any class of persons who committed those wrongs or who sympathized with or in any way protected the wrongdoers. It is all utterly bad and no punishment can be too severe to vindicate the rights of the whole community. . . . I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that a very large number of perfectly innocent people have been imprisoned and are still in prison, and many even sentenced to death, in the course of the measures adopted to bring the guilty to justice and to restore order in the riot areas. I shall certainly do my best to remedy any injustice done to innocent persons."

Slave Dealings in Constantinople.

Nor long ago a report appeared in the English newspapers quoted from the Gazette de Lausanne of the sale by the Police, in the open market, of Armenian children at Constantinople. We communicated with the International Bureau at Geneva who have obtained confirmation of this brief report and further particulars of which we quote a translation below. This account of the unblushing trade in slaves carried on by the Turks is only too much in harmony with the reports of the unspeakable cruelties inflicted on the Armenian race generally. We greatly regret to hear that the International Bureau does not feel able, as we had hoped from the fact of its being in a neutral country, to take any action by way of protest, although the Armenian Committee at Geneva has been communicated with. It is impossible of course for an enemy country to take any steps, though the report has been forwarded by us to the British Armenia Committee.

The Turks having in June resolved upon the systematic massacre of the Armenian race in Anatolia and Armenian Persia. a number of young girls were brought to Constantinople in order that they might be reduced to slavery by the wealthy Turks (Pashas, Beys, etc.). For this purpose they were put up for sale either at Bit-Bazar or at Le Han des Persans at Stamboul. It is true that a remnant of modesty (if I may use the word in speaking of the Turks) prevented their being subjected publicly to shameful examinations, or to excessive embarrassments. All the same, the orphan children (and they all came under this category) of from 8-12 years were sold for 2 medjidiehs (or 8 francs of our money). The older girls fetched a higher price, of course; in one case a big pasha of great wealth bought one in order to make her a present to a friend. This was told me by a Belgian who was an eye-witness of the transaction. The sale of slaves at Constantinople, however, was not carried on on the same scale as at Adana, for instance. There I am assured that thousands of orphan girls were sold for a piece of bread. Did the police know of these things? Did the drink-sodden, lascivious Germans who rule as masters in Constantinople know of these things? The answer is undoubtedly, Yes; the Germans are the organizers, if not the partners with the Turks in these sinister jobs; we know they have shut their eyes, except, perhaps, Wangenheim, the ambassador who has just died. As for Von der Golz Pasha and Liman Sanders Pasha they have never protested either formally or actually. I conclude by assuring you that I have only too good authority for what I write."

New Member of Committee.

SIR CHARLES J. TARRING has accepted an invitation to join the Committee of the Society, and has been unanimously elected a member.

Sir C. Tarring has been Chief Justice of Grenada, British Consul at Constantinople and Judge of the Supreme Consular Court for the Levant. He possesses, therefore, a somewhat wide experience, and his journeys in Africa, where he has travelled in the interests of the London Missionary Society, have given him a knowledge of and interest in questions affecting native races which specially fit him to render service to our work.

Death of Count de St. George.

We regret to receive news from Geneva of the death on November 18 of Count de St. George, of that city, who has for many years been a corresponding member of our Society and taken a genuine interest in its work.

Count de St. George visited this country in 1913 and took part in the Society's annual meeting in April, to which he brought a message of goodwill from the Swiss League for the protection of Aborigines, and advocated the establishment of an International Bureau, which should collect information from different countries on native race questions, bring the existing societies together, and foster the creation of new ones.

Death of Dr. Booker Washington.

THE death of this well-known leader and educator of the coloured people in America, at the comparatively early age of fifty-six, took place at Tuskegee in the middle of November last, and the Committee of the Society has passed a resolution expressing their regret, and condolence with his family and colleagues. It will be remembered that when Dr. Washington was in England in 1910 he was entertained by the Society at a luncheon at the Whitehall Rooms, when a number of representative people attended to do him honour and considerable interest was aroused, letters being received from the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Balfour and other leaders, expressing appreciation of Booker Washington's work for his race.

Washington's career was a remarkable one, and his story is traced in a fascinating way in his autobiography Up from Slavery. He was born in slavery in Virginia about 1858 (the exact date is not known), his mother being a young girl slave and his father an unknown white man. The child thus

grew up as a slave, though he tells us that the first knowledge he got of the fact of being a slave, and that the freedom of the slaves was being discussed, was when he was aroused by his mother early one morning to pray that Lincoln's Army might be successful and that she and her children might be free. When emancipation came, his mother being very poor, the child was sent to work first in a salt mine and later as a coal-miner. From his earliest

years, however, he longed for education. As he says of himself in striking words, he could not recall that he ever became discouraged over anything he set out to accomplish, and he began everything with the idea of succeeding. It was so with his education. He contrived to pick up some schooling at a night school and later qualified himself for admission at the Hampton Industrial Institute in Alabama. Here in due course he graduated, and

after an interval was appointed by General Armstrong a teacher of the Indians in the Institute, where he showed such ability that in 1881 he was selected as head of the new negro Institute which was established at Tuskegee. The Tuskegee Institute, now so closely associated with Booker Washington's name, was begun under primitive conditions with only thirty negro scholars, its buildings being of the poorest sort. Thirty years later the school numbered 1,700 pupils and consisted of ninety-six buildings occupying some 3,000 acres of land. The school was built almost entirely by the scholars, a point to which Dr. Washington attached great importance, and cost 1,000,000 dollars. The outstanding feature of his idea of the education of negroes was that it must be industrial. In the reconstruction period there was an enthusiastic demand on the part of the negroes of all ages for education, but their impression was that education would fit them to live without manual labour, and that book learning was the only education worth the name. 'The bigger the book and the longer the name of the subject the prouder the students felt of their accomplishment." In contrast to this, Booker Washington set himself to initiate a new idea of education of which cleanliness and practical usefulness formed the first essentials.

In 1895 Washington was invited to speak at the opening of the Atlanta Exhibition, when his address, by its eloquence and practical common-sense, made an immediate sensation and brought him at once to the front as an orator and a man of mark. Other distinctions soon followed, and in later years he obtained an honorary degree from the University of Harvard.

It is well known that his refusal to take up a militant position against lynching and negro disabilities aroused strong criticism in many quarters, but his answer was that political rights would come in due time when the negro had made himself indispensable to the community.

Booker Washington has done a great work and his name will long stand as one who, by his genius for leadership, opened a new era to the coloured race in the United States.

Parliamentary.

HOUSE OF COMMONS,

October 14.

CENTRAL AFRICA (NEUTRAL ZONE).

MR. SNOWDEN asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Spanish Government offered to lend its good offices in order that the territories in Central Africa should be placed during the War under the rule