Macadamization

“ He had been solemnly pronounced, both by the Commission of Precognition and by the Estates of the Realm in full Parliament, to be the original author of the massacre. That it was not advisable to make examples of his tools was the strongest reason for making an example of him. Every argument which can be urged against punishing the soldier who executes the unjust and inhuman orders of his superior is an argument for punishing with the utmost rigour of the law the superior who gives unjust and inhuman orders. ”

“ Killing was something to grow used to, and a disagreement over cards was liable to result in having one’s head snipped off by a machete; but to be robbed of one’s machete, or of one’s jug of rum, or of one’s only trousers, was a sad affliction, and soldiers and police were as active as Spanish functionaries could persuade themselves to be, in running down—or walking down—these outlaws. ”

“ This set of circumstances could not, so far as I could see, have any relation with the other circumstances of the Terror. How could I connect all this with the bombs and machine-guns of the Midlands, with the armed men who kept watch about the munition shops by day and night. Then there was the long list of people here who had fallen over the cliffs or into the quarry; there were the cases of the men stifled in the slime of the marshes; there was the affair of the family murdered in front of their cottage on the Highway ”

“ The horses were the murderers, the horses that afterward stampeded the camp below. By some means which is still obscure to me they lured that family into the road and beat their brains out; their shod hoofs were the instruments of execution. The munition-works? Their enemy was rats. I believe that it has been calculated that in 'greater London' the number of rats is about equal to the number of human beings; that is, there are about seven millions of them. The proportion would be about the same in all the great centers of population ”

“ He thought he heard a thousand men treading softly through the wood and chattering to one another in some horrible tongue; what he did hear was the marshaling of an army of rats, their array before the battle.
"And conceive the terror of such an attack. Even one rat in a fury is said to be an ugly customer to meet; conceive, then, the irruption of these terrible, swarming myriads, rushing upon the helpless, unprepared, astonished workers in the munition-shops."
There can be no doubt, I think, that Dr. Lewis was entirely justified in these extraordinary conclusions. ”

“ You see this method almost observed by the Swiss, who have the condemned publicly put to death by the other soldiers. Which is well considered and done for the best, for if it is desired that one be not a defender of a criminal, the better remedy that is found, is to make him the punisher of him (the criminal) ; for in some respects he favors him while from other desires he longs for his punishment, if he himself is the executioner, than if the execution is carried out by another. ”

“ An empty ammunition limber was standing behind it, and the naked bodies of two dead men lay close by, mixed up with some dead mules. I stepped across them, and came upon a lot of regulars sitting at each side of the road, quite a couple of hundred of them, with their hands tied behind their backs. Poor wretches, they looked as if they expected death at any moment.
Hundreds of natives were swarming round some wagons, hauling boxes out, forcing them open with their machetes and scattering the contents on the ground ”

“ They could far more easily bear the preeminence of a distinguished stranger, yet even to such a stranger they would allow only a very limited and a very precarious authority. To bring a chief before a court martial, to shoot him, to cashier him, to degrade him, to reprimand him publicly, was impossible. Macdonald of Keppoch or Maclean of Duart would have struck dead any officer who had demanded his sword, and told him to consider himself as under arrest; and hundreds of claymores would instantly have been drawn to protect the murderer. ”

“ I have written of the terror as it fell on Meirion simply because I have had opportunities of getting close there to what really happened.
Well, I have said that the people of that far Western county realized not only that death was abroad in their quiet lanes and on their peaceful hills, but that for some reason it was to be kept secret. And so they concluded that this veil of secrecy must somehow be connected with the war; and from this position it was not a long way to a further inference that the murderers of innocent men and women and children were either Germans or agents of Germany. ”

“ Dominant was the resolve that they should not take him alive. He whetted the edge of the machete on a rough stone, and tested the balance of it and the grip of the hilt. He would give a good account of himself on the wall of Cartagena.
CHAPTER IX THE GOOD HERMIT OF LA POPA The cloth bound round his tousled head, the torn shirt that bared his chest, the pongee trousers soiled with sweat and dust, the strips of canvas wrapped about his feet, made this wounded fugitive the image of a buccaneer as he sat waiting in the round watch-tower with the machete across his knees. ”

“ From time to time every effort has been made to give to the gentler sex the most perfect immunity, but it would seem as though we can no longer consider as safe these poor innocent and helpless non-combatants. The children of some of the most respected and most loyal townspeople have been killed in this manner, just as they were romping within the trenches which encircle their retreat. For two hours this morning the Creusot and quick-firing guns of the enemy fired into the laager, creating scenes of panic and consternation which it is not fitting to describe. ”

“ The workers were armed with special weapons, guards were mounted, machine-guns were placed in position, bombs and liquid flame were ready against the obscene hordes of the enemy, and the "burning clouds" found a fire fiercer than their own. Many deaths occurred among the airmen; but they, too, were given special guns that scattered shot broadcast, and so drove away the dark flights that threatened the airplanes.
And then, in the winter of 1915-16, the Terror ended suddenly as it had begun. Once more a sheep was a frightened beast that ran instinctively from a little child ”

“ While I was speaking thus the frowns on his face had increased, and when I concluded he interrupted:
“That will not do, my Japanese friend. If you take such a measure you will certainly be taken to prison, where you will die of hunger and cold, and if you don’t die of such causes you will be killed. Of course the Government will not sentence a foreigner to death, but then they can procure the same effect by using poison in secret. You have no need to hasten your destruction. What is the use of killing yourself?” ”

“ I say no; punish we must, though we punish with love; and for this are we to be branded as enemies of our country? And yet the vile slander is repeated at each instance of our tender love of these our erring children; and one of us who was not afraid to lift his voice in horror and reprobation of the vile massacre that followed the death by sunstroke of an English officer is held up to execration, forsooth, as a traitor to his country!
Yes; calumny seems a monster which revives from the ashes of its funeral pyre, like the fabled Phœnix of Arabia ”

“ It was now that the mania for poisoning began to take hold of the popular mind. From this time until the year 1682, the prisons of France teemed with persons accused of this crime; and it is very singular that other offences decreased in a similar proportion. We have already seen the extent to which it was carried in Italy. It was, if possible, surpassed in France. The diabolical ease with which these murders could be effected, by means of these scentless and tasteless poisons, enticed the evil-minded. Jealousy, revenge, avarice, even petty spite, alike resorted to them. ”

“ Finding the delinquents too numerous to be all punished, it selects some of them at hazard, to hear the whole penalty of an offence in which they are not more deeply implicated than those who escape. Whether decimation be a convenient mode of military execution, we know not; but we solemnly protest against the introduction of such a principle into the philosophy of history. ”

“ The man's neck is fastened to a bundle of bamboos, but he realises very little of what is taking place, for the executioners, with a merciful consideration worthy of much imitation in other walks of life, have thrown their victim into a state of stupor by means of a powerful drug. Into his ears they have rammed plugs of soft clay or mud, so that in case the drug should fail, the wretched creature shall not hear their steps when they come behind him to deliver the fatal blow. ”

“ It is a saying of Machiavel no wise man ever contradicted, which has been literally verified in this province, that “while the mass of the people is not corrupted, tumults do no hurt.” By which he means, that they leave no lasting ill effects behind.
But let us consider the outrages committed by the tories; half a dozen men shot dead in an instant in King Street; frequent resistance and affronts to civil officers and magistrates; officers, watchmen, citizens, cut and mangled in a most inhuman manner ”

“ Those who would have been deterred, by fear of detection, from using the pistol or the dagger, or even strong doses of poison, which kill at once, employed slow poisons without dread. The corrupt government of the day, although it could wink at the atrocities of a wealthy and influential courtier like Penautier, was scandalised to see the crime spreading among the people. ”

“ And the flint knife?'
'That is very simple. The man found the thing in Italy, or possibly stole it from some museum. Follow the line of least resistance, my dear fellow, and you will see there is no need to bring up primitive man from his secular grave beneath the hills.'
'There is some justice in what you say,' said Dyson. 'As I understand you, then, you think that your Italian, having murdered Vivian, kindly chalked up that hand as a guide to Scotland Yard?'
'Why not? Remember a murderer is always a madman. ”

“ Such disobedience on the part of any other class of citizens would have been instantly punished by wholesale massacre; but the Committee of Public Safety was aware that the discipline which had tamed the unwarlike population of the fields and cities might not answer in camps. To fling people by scores out of a boat, and, when they catch hold of it, to chop off their fingers with a hatchet, is undoubtedly a very agreeable pastime for a thoroughbred Jacobin, when the sufferers are, as at Nantes, old confessors, young girls, or women with child. ”

“ People were being killed in an inscrutable manner by some inscrutable means, day after day, and one asked “why” and “how”; and there seemed no answer. In the Midlands, where every kind of munitionment was manufactured, the explanation of German agency was plausible; and even if the subterranean notion was to be rejected as savoring altogether too much of the fairytale, or rather of the sensational romance, yet it was possible that the backbone of the theory was true; the Germans might have planted their agents in some way or another in the midst of our factories. ”

“ A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors. Assassination was an event of daily occurrence. ”

“ It is plain that the whole efficacy of punishment depends on the care with which the guilty are distinguished. Punishment which strikes the guilty and the innocent promiscuously operates merely like a pestilence or a great convulsion of nature, and has no more tendency to prevent offences than the cholera, or an earthquake like that of Lisbon, would have. The energy for which the Jacobin administration 479is praised was merely the energy of the Malay who maddens himself with opium, draws his knife, and runs a-muck through the streets, slashing right and left at friends and foes. ”

“ But the wielding of huge armies, the throwing down of fortified cities, the haling of women and children into captivity, and the beheading of traitors — this is also work which is done by officials. The objects of the rack [2] and of military weapons are essentially the same. There is no intrinsic difference between the punishment of flogging and cutting off heads in war. For the lesser infractions of law, which are easily dealt with, only a small amount of force need be employed: hence the institution of torture and flogging. ”

“ Another aspect of this policy of terror and extermination appears when one studies the war crimes committed by Germany on the persons of prisoners of war. These crimes, as I shall prove to you, had two motives, among others: To debase the captives as much as possible in order to sap their energy; to demoralize them; to cause them to lose faith in themselves and in the cause for which they fought, and to despair of the future of their country. ”