. Our troubles in Poona and the Deccan by Arthur Crawford. With numerous illus. by Horace Van Ruith . he extent that they knewthat certain persons were banded together to commitsome bloodthirsty outrage that should make the denizensof Government House quake in their shoes. There are,unquestionably, men in the Force who could at any momenthave revealed the plot and pointed out the criminals, butit has been made much better worth their while to holdtheir tongues, especially as the Government, with fatuous im-becility, followed up its offer of an excessive rewardby a second proclamation particula
. Our troubles in Poona and the Deccan by Arthur Crawford. With numerous illus. by Horace Van Ruith . he extent that they knewthat certain persons were banded together to commitsome bloodthirsty outrage that should make the denizensof Government House quake in their shoes. There are,unquestionably, men in the Force who could at any momenthave revealed the plot and pointed out the criminals, butit has been made much better worth their while to holdtheir tongues, especially as the Government, with fatuous im-becility, followed up its offer of an excessive rewardby a second proclamation particularly stipulating thatthe Police shall not share in it 1 In the 26th Chapter of my Reminiscences of an IndianPolice Official (1894), I described the Police of the WesternPresidency as follows. SHAMBLING SCARECROWS. 243 Of all sorts, sizes, and heights, the men present theappearance of a collection of shambling scarecrows. Theyare willing (as I have shown) and fairly honest, but fiftyper cent of them, or more, are illiterate. Their antecedentsare not usually bad (it is true), and many of them strike. POONA POLICE. out to the front, and earn their small pensions oh ! they are so miserably paid! Horse-keeper—gardener- cow-men—the very cooly, or labourer, who works by theday—turns up his nose at the pittance the blue-coatPoliceman receives. He is respected, because he is a manclothed (literally) in authority, but it is certain that he uses 244 OUR TROUBLES IN POONA AND THE DECCAN. this authority in many petty ways to eke out his slendermeans. On page 276 I pointed out that the deficiencies of thePoHce cannot be supphed, and that their general moralecan never be improved till they are sufficiently , at page 278, I observed The inevitable questionwill be asked—Why should these things be? Arethere not District Magistrates and Commissioners to pointout the need of reform, and to suggest a remedy ? Theanswer is, that these officers, for many years past,
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