It was in Butte, Montana, that Hauser
next brought up the subject.

“Did you ever have any trouble with
the Frenchman before, Ben?”

“Oh, a little. Nothing much.”

“Maybe you took some liquor to his
woman and that made him sore at you,”
Hauser ventured.

“He drank it too,’ Blakely defended.

“Well, if you took liquor to her you
must have been friendly with her.”

“Maybe I was,” Blakely replied.

“That's what makes it bad,” Hauser
pointed out. “This fellow had a right to
be sore at you.”

“She liked me,” Blakely defended again.
“She hated him. I was good to her.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell the police
what had happened.”

“You don't know those Canadian
judges,” Blakely said. “They ll hang a man
on the flimsiest evidence. No, I made the
hardest trip that was ever made to get out
of there. There are not many men who
could have made that same trip over that
country; I couldn’t have done it if I hadn't
been so desperate to get out of there.”

It was some time later before Blakely re-
vealed the name of the man he had killed.
Hauser, a conscientious man, thought the
matter over. In piecing together bits of
small talk dropped by Blakely he now had
a fairly accurate picture of what had taken
place in the remote fastnesses of Gun
Creek.

Blakely had visited the cabin. He knew
that Thiverge and his woman liked liquor
He brought it in to them. Blakely and
Agnes were lovers. By some means or

another Thiverge learned of this and the
trouble started. Rather than accuse Blakely
he had beaten his squaw. She had told
Blakely later and there was now deadly

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Page One Hundred and Eight

enmity between the two men. This, Hauser
decided, was distinctly different from the
scene Blakely had painted. He had com-
mitted murder, not in self defense, as he
claimed, but over a woman.

CASE RE-OPENED

Chief Constable A. C. Minty at Fernie
was astonished to learn that a man wished
to speak to him about a murder committed
at Gun Creek a few years ago. In a few
minutes he was listening to Albert Hauser’s
story. On checking back, Minty discovered
that Hauser was telling the truth. He im-
mediately took him before Justice of the
Peace F. J. Burns of Fernie where he made
a full statement.

United States Marshal McKay of Butte,
Montana, arrested Blakely at the request
of the British Columbia Government. The
wanted man was confined in a Butte goal.

The news of Blakely’s arrest spread
through the Bridge River district. Agnes
promptly started a campaign which bore
out the assumptions of Supt. Hussey so
many years ago. She said that Thiverge
had started the fight and that Blakely had
been on his back on the ground when he
fired to save his own life. Hundreds of
people believed her.

Blakely was willing to return to Canada
and face trial. But his relatives announced
that they were going to fight his extradition.
They engaged attorneys and demanded a
prompt hearing. The Attorney General of
British Columbia retained a rising young
attorney from Libby, Montana, to represent
the Crown’s interests—Mr. Burton Kendall

Wheeler, the prominent “isolationist” Sen-

ator from the State of Montana.

Chief Const. Joseph Burr went to Butte
and had a talk with the prisoner, and
learned that the fugitive would return with-
out trouble were it not for his relatives.
They ignored his wishes and the extradition
was opposed. But it was a losing fight, and
after U. S. Commissioner Vanettan had
heard the evidence offered, he ordered that
Blakely be turned over to the Canadian
authorities to stand trial for murder.

Verpict: Nor GulItty

Back in British Columbia, Blakely ap-
peared for preliminary hearing at Ashcroft
before Stipendiary Magistrate Francis
Webb, and was committed for trial at the
next Assize. At the Clinton Assize, in
May, 1914, Blakely’s case occupied little
time. Agnes Jack, the main witness (in
fact the only one) stated that Thiverge had
started the fight and was going to kill
Blakely. She withstood a vigorous cross-
examination and by the time she left the
stand it was evident that the Court had
been impressed with her story. The jury
spent little time in considering their deci-
sion and quickly returned with a verdict of
“Not guilty.”

Back to his cabin on Bear Creek went
Ben Blakely, living testimonial to the moral
that even legal absolvence from guilt does
not salve a man’s conscience.

AGGRESSION

EVEN SINCE she modernized herself in
the late nineteenth century Japan has been
aggressive and predatory. Here is the record
of her rake’s progress.

In 1894 she attacked China, seized For-
mosa and obtained a protectorate over
Korea. In 1904-5 she repulsed the Russian
attempt to advance to the Yellow Sea where
she considered her manifest destiny to lie.
In 1910 she annexed Korea. During the
world war she took Tsingtao from Germany
as Britain’s ally and then, while all the
European powers’ backs were turned, pre-
sented the famous twenty-one demands to
China in 1915. China was to be Japan’s
Czechoslovakia.

This is the beginning of the China inci-
dent. After the war Britain and America
compelled a Japanese retreat at the Wash-
ington Conference in 1921, and this is the
beginning of Japan’s hostility to Britain.
The great depression of 1929 gave Japan
another opportunity. In 1931 she seized
Manchuria and turned it into the puppet
state of Manchukuo. This is the beginning
of the present war. In 1937 she wantonly
fell upon a reunited China and commenced
the war which still rages.; and now Pearl
Harbour in 1941.—Burma Police Journal.

JAPAN
TOKYO, YOKOHAMA, Osaka and Nag-

oya—Japan’s vast industrial centres. The
thought of what a stick of bombs would do
to these combustible, wood-and-paper cities
(Tokyo alone has 6,500,000 inhabitants)
haunts the Japanese people like a night-
mare.—Ernest O. Hauser.

A good policeman is one who thinks more
of other people’s feelings than his own rights
and more of other people’s rights than his
own feelings.

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