CHAPTER XX
As a Gendarme Supervising Officer
_W
EEK after week I travelled on horseback up
and down the country from the placid blue
Marmora to the troublesome Black Sea. I,
like the other gendarmerie control officers in their own
areas, was following the instinct of our ancestors. We
were given certain limited powers to supervise the
gendarmes and to prevent malpractices. Very rapidly
we made for ourselves administrative powers. We
guided the collection of taxes. We saw to the admin-
istration of justice and the work of the forest guardians
and the headmen of the villages. We built the roads
and helped the people. It was a leap back to the instinct
of the great administrators in India and all across the
East, who had built new structures from ancient ruins,
who had brought justice and peace to where there had
been only injustice and brutality, and who had persuaded
once fertile lands, which had become deserts, to produce
again corn and food. This they had done by super-
imposing over the local administrations European ideas,
European ideals and European control.
In our small areas we succeeded.  As we destroyed
the brigandage, the villagers gained confidence and
176