Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 274, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1920 — BOLD THIEVES IN “MESPOT" [ARTICLE]

BOLD THIEVES IN “MESPOT"

Householder of Basra Relates Experience Which He Declares la by .No Means Uncommon. The securing of public safety is only one of many improvements tbe British have made tn Mesopotamia but it Seems to be the one that has chiefly Impressed the public mind. The first person who spoke to me of it was an Oriental a teacher of Arabic, Maude Radford Warren writes in the Saturday Evening Post We sat in a bouse in Basra on a cloudy evening, looking ant of the window, watching the shadowy forms of passersby, i “You will notice that the Arab houses have blank walls facing the street” he told me. “If the walls are broken by windows these are barred. If there aje doors these are small or else secured. Do not think this Is done for the sake of keeping the women sheltered or the sun off. z It is to keep thieves out.

“One night I was sitting in this house with my friends when a knock came at the door. First I looked out of the window. I saw a number of people on two sides of the house. I Went to the door and' I said i ‘Who is there?’ The answer was: T am a thief.’

“I suppose in America if anyone was so lunatic as to say that, you would telephone for the police. But here under the 'Turks It was wise to let the thieves In. Why not? There were too many of them, and they would have been angry and would have killed some of us in revenge some day. So we let in the man who knocked, and some of his friends came with him. _ - - “They did not make polite greetings, but they took all the people into separate rooms, the women In one, the children in another, and the men in a third. This was because If they had been left together they might have secretly encouraged one another not to tell’Where money or jewels were bidden?

“All the people In the house were very much afraid, and they told where their hiding places were, but said that they had been robbed only a few weeks previous and they had nothing left “The thieves were very angry. ‘We must have something,’ they said. So they aent for a cart, and they took what furniture and bedding and cooking dishes they wanted, and then went away. They left us our lives, and that was about all. “You see how quiet these streets are evemiow, about nine o’clock? That la not entirely because Arabs-prefer to go to bed early, though they do not keep late hours. But they have the old habit of not taking risks at night”