d;
sometimes they seem to grow into drunken, lustful devils without
compassion for childhood, not to mention any feeling of magnanimity
towards a feebler race. And when a girl who has been rough-handled, or
who has been given drink until she is unable to resist the multiple
outrage practised upon her, is told to pick out the malefactors from a
company of soldiers, all clean-shaven, all dressed alike, all around the
same age, she generally fails to identify altogether. So the offence
goes unwhipped, and the officer is likely as not to address a reprimand
to the complaining missionary for "preferring charges you are unable to
substantiate." Yet an officer who had himself written such a letter told
me once that all Indians looked alike to him. Even should the girl
identify one or more men, they have usually half a dozen comrades ready
to swear an alibi.

Add to the trouble given by the soldiers the constant operation of the
slinking bootleggers of the town, a score or more of whom are known to
make money by this liquor peddling, and some of whom do nothing else for
a living, yet whom it is next to impossible to convict, owing to the
cumbrous machinery of the law and the attitude of juries, and it will be
seen that the hands of those who are fighting for the native race are
tied.

What has been said about the military does not by any means apply to
all, either officers or men. Some of the officers have been decent,
God-fearing men, conscious of the evil and zealous to suppress it; some
of the men, indeed in all probability most of the men, quite free from
such offence; some commanding officers have kept such a well-disciplined
post that offences of all kinds have been greatly reduced. But the
commanding officer is changed every year, and the whole force is changed
every two years, so that there is no continuity of policy at the post,
and an administration that has grown familiar with conditions and that
stands so far as it can for clean living and sobriety and decency and
the protection of the native people, may be followed by one that is
loftily ignorant of the situation, careless about offences against
morality, and impatient of any complaint.

Off by himself, separate from the demoralising influence of the low-down
white, there is every hope and encouragement in the effort to elevate
and educate the Indian; set down cheek by jowl with the riffraff of
towns and barracks, his fate seems sealed.

[Sidenote: DEATH-RATE