by John Buchan
Following close upon it, came Mr. Morley’s first suggestion of the new policy of the Foreign Office towards Russia, whose position in the world had been materially altered by her defeat at the hands of Japan. “Supposing,” Mr. Morley wrote to the Viceroy, “you were coming to some sort of understanding with Russia — a hypothesis which may be many hundred miles off realization — and suppose even that we held the upper hand in the negotiation, what would be the terms that you would exact from Russia as essential to a bargain? I mean what, from military, strategic, and political points of view, are the things that she is to undertake to do or not to do?” Minto took time to consider the question in consultation with Lord Kitchener, and the view of the two was set forth in a letter of 2nd May. Kitchener’s conditions were that Russia should publicly recognize that Afghanistan was outside her sphere of influence and that its external relations must be conducted through Britain; that she should make no strategic extension of her present railway system towards the Indian frontier; that she should recognize the preponderating interests of Britain in Seistan and southern Persia, and that she should scrupulously respect the integrity of China in Kashgar and elsewhere, and refrain from all interference in Tibet. On 25th May Mr. Morley sent to India a draft of Sir Edward Grey’s instructions to Sir Arthur Nicolson in Petrograd on the treaty so far as it related to Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet, and Minto replied on 12th June, criticizing strongly the provisions as to Afghanistan. He was prepared for the most generous concessions to Russia in Persia, but he was nervous about the Indian North-West frontier. He doubted the wisdom of permitting communications between Russian and Afghan officials even on purely local matters; he questioned the advisability of a Russo-Afghan frontier commission, and he took the gravest exception to the proposed agreement of Britain not to extend her railways in the direction of the Afghan border during a period of ten years. He believed that railways were the true frontier defence of India, a necessary consequence of the frontier military policy.
“We must be masters in our own house. We surely cannot agree to sacrifice the security and internal improvement of a portion of our dominions for the sake of our relations with a foreign Power. . . We should have to stand still for ten years, to give up hopes of closer relations with our tribes, and, for the sake of our own safety, to go on fighting them as we have done for generations. . . . I cannot but feel strongly opposed to any agreement with Russia in respect to railways. I should be inclined to let her do what she wants. She has practically in respect to her propinquity to the Afghan frontier got all she wants now, or can get it at very short notice. I earnestly hope it may be realized how such an agreement would tie our hands. . . . I cannot but think that primarily the Amir is a more dangerous neighbour to us than Russia, and therefore in respect to India a more necessary friend. . . . To me it seems infinitely more important to keep on friendly and controlling terms with him than to enter into any bargain with Russia which might lessen our influence with him, or alienate him from us. I believe him to be sensitive, suspicious, and over-confident in his own strength, but in my opinion it is vitally important to keep on good terms with him. . . . If we are to enter upon an entente with Russia, let us bargain with her elsewhere than in Central Asia. . . . I have only given you my own views in answer to your letter, but I certainly think that, for reasons affecting the internal administration of India independently of imperial foreign policy, the Government of India should be fully consulted before any agreement is entered into with Russia.”
This letter embodies Minto’s main articles of frontier defence — that, having accepted the dubious plan of holding the marches with tribal levies, a road and railway policy was necessary to bring these tribes more closely under our influence, and to provide the strategical means for rapid military concentration; and that the Amir’s friendship was the foundation of frontier peace. In a matter so vitally affecting the internal interests of India it seems a modest request that the Government of India should be consulted. In replying on 6th July to a letter of which he praised the “great clearness, ability, and force,” Mr. Morley delivered a lecture on the principles and practice of statesmanship, a vigorous homily which is worth quoting as an example of the aptitude of the Secretary of State for discovering suddenly in the most prosaic connection that fundamentals were endangered: —
“You argue . . . as if the policy of entente with Russia were an open question. That is just what it is not. His Majesty’s Government, with almost universal support in public opinion, have decided to make such attempt as Russian circumstances may permit to arrange an entente. The grounds for this I have often referred to when writing to you. Be they good or bad, be we right or wrong, that is our policy. . . .
“You say, ‘If we are to enter on an entente with Russia, let us bargain with her elsewhere than in Central Asia.’ But then this was not the question laid before you. The question was, in view of the policy resolved upon deliberately by us, what you thought of the line on which in respect of Afghanistan we intended to pursue our policy. An entente with Russia that should leave out Central Asia would be a sorry trophy of our diplomacy indeed. Anyhow, H.M.’s Government has determined on this course, and it is for their agents and officers all over the world to accept it. If there is one among them to whom it would be more idle to repeat the a b c of the constitution than to another you are that man.
“I am, however, a little frightened when you say at the end of your letter that ‘the Government of India should be fully consulted before the agreement suggested is entered into with Russia.’ If you mean the Government of India in a technical sense — as the G.-G. in C. — I must with all respect demur. For one thing the G.-G. is his own foreign minister, and the Foreign department is under his own immediate superintendence. Second, with sincere regard for the capacity of your Council, I fail to see what particular contribution they could make to questions of public policy. . . . Third, have you considered how in practice this ‘full consultation’ could be worked? Diplomacy, as you will agree, is necessarily delicate, flexible, elastic. Is Nicolson in his talks with Isvolsky to pull himself up by thinking how this or that proposal would be taken not only at Whitehall, but also at Simla? You know better than anybody how the pretensions of Canada (I don’t use pretensions in any bad sense) fetter and shackle negotiations with the United States. The plain truth is — and you won’t mind my saying it frankly because you will agree — that this country cannot have two foreign policies. The Government of India in Curzon’s day, and in days before Curzon, tried to have its own foreign policy. I seem to see the same spectre lurking behind the phrase about’full consultation.’”
In these sentences there is obviously much dubious doctrine, and what is sound is a little beside the point. Minto contented himself with replying that no one could be more opposed than himself to any attempt of the Government of India to have a policy apart from the policy of Britain. “But opinions are a different thing, and it is quite possible and often probable that the opinions of a subsidiary Government may be different from those of His Majesty’s Government. In that case it seems to me all-important that the Secretary of State should have the opportunity of hearing these opinions and deciding upon their value.”
In one detail of his frontier policy he had the Secretary of State’s full concurrence — the fostering of friendly relations with the Amir of Afghanistan. Lord Curzon had tried to persuade Habibullah to visit India to attend the Coronation Durbar at Delhi; but the invitation had been perhaps too much in the nature of a command, and Habibullah took umbrage. Since then Sir Louis Dane’s mission had smoothed away the irritation, and early in 1906 Minto heard that the Amir was anxious to make a pleasure trip to the chief Indian cities. He sent him a cordial invitation to be his guest, and a ready acceptance followed. “I was determined,” Habibullah told his durbar, “never to go to India in the manner desired by Lord Curzon. The attitude adopted by Lord Minto, however, is so friendly and free from motives that I cannot possibly hesitate to accept the invi
tation of His Excellency, which is couched in such terms of kindness expressing a desire for an interview between friends.” It was the first time since the days of Lord Dufferin that the ruler of Afghanistan had consented to visit India.
The chief internal problem of the first half of 1906 was the agitation against the partition of Bengal, that vexed inheritance to which Minto had fallen heir. We shall presently see this volcano in irruption. But in the early months of the year Minto had begun to turn his attention to the matter which the Prince of Wales had made the keynote of his speech on his return, and which he and Mr. Morley had canvassed from the beginning of their colleagueship-the possibility of establishing a truer sympathy between rulers and ruled by admitting Indians to some share in the government of their country. It would be an idle task to determine whether the first suggestion came from the side of the Viceroy or of the Secretary of State, for both men were from the start at one on the desirability of the reform, if it were practically feasible. In Minto’s mind the ruling motive was a sense of honour, the wish to fulfil the promise held out as long ago as the Act of 1833 and the Royal proclamation of 1858. Lord Curzon, labouring singleheartedly in what he believed to be the cause of the Indian people, had shown himself somewhat intolerant of the claims of the new educated public which Britain had created. On the ground of efficiency he had declared, with perhaps needless sharpness, that the higher ranks of civil employment must be reserved for Englishmen, “for the reason that they possess, partly by heredity, partly by upbringing, and partly by education, the knowledge of the principles of government, the habits of mind, and the vigour of character which are essential for the task.” He had declared, too, that the West had a higher standard of truthfulness than the East, “where craftiness and diplomatic wile have always been held in much repute.” These dicta, whatever their justification, were deeply wounding to Indian self-esteem, and they seemed to postpone the realization of Britain’s solemn pledge till the Greek Kalends. Minto, with his lively sense of public honour, could not be comfortable in this blank refusal.
Moreover, as a practical man, he did not see the common sense of the attitude. He had to the full Lord Curzon’s admiration for the qualities of his own countrymen, but his very pride in these qualities made him incline to the belief that they could maintain good government even when the problem was complicated by admitting Indians to a share in it. It was the boast of the British in India that they had been willing to face the facts of a new world and alter their administration accordingly; one of the greatest of them, Warren Hastings, had foreseen that the true task of his race was not in conquest but in what came after, when he said, “To obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed.” To Minto it seemed that to govern with the assent of the governed was less a moral than a physical necessity; the opposite was not so much wrong as impossible. As he looked around him he saw two currents of unrest — one the inevitable desire of men whom we had educated on Western lines to share in the government, the other the dark stream of anarchy and revolution, which had its springs as much in Europe as in India. If both were suffered to overflow there might be cataclysmic disaster; but the two were different in kind, and if the second was to be restrained, there was the more need for canalizing and regulating the first; otherwise the currents might join in a tragic inundation. He was incapable of taking a melodramatic view, and reading anarchy into what was natural and reasonable. There was a type of unrest which might fairly be called “loyal.” In his own words, he saw that “beneath a seemingly calm surface there existed a mass of smothered political discontent, much of which was thoroughly justifiable and due to causes which we were bound to examine.” He desired to check the revolutionary by preventing his alliance with the moderate reformer. The words which Mr. Gokhale used in the Budget debate in March 1906 seemed to him the bare truth. “The question of the conciliation of the educated classes . . . raises issues which will tax all the resources of British statesmanship. There is but one way in which this conciliation can be secured, and that is by associating these classes more and more with the government of their own country. This is the policy to which England stands committed by solemn pledges given in the past. . . . What the country needs at the moment above everything else is a government national in spirit, even though it may be foreign in personnel.”
The first step was taken by the Viceroy. In March 1906, before leaving Calcutta, he raised boldly in private with certain members of his Executive Council the question of the desirability of appointing an Indian to its membership, since to him the path of executive partnership between the races seemed the simplest and most hopeful. He found the majority of his advisers strongly against the proposal, and he did not report the discussion to the Secretary of State, since he intended to open the whole question later. On 16th May, in connection with the position of Mr. Gokhale, he wrote to Mr. Morley deprecating the importation of British institutions into India en bloc, and Mr. Morley replied, agreeing, but arguing that British institutions were one thing and the spirit of British institutions another—”a thing we cannot escape, even if we wished, which I hope we don’t. . . . I have no sort of ambition for us to take a part in any grand revolution during my time of responsibility, whether it be long or short. Just the very opposite. You need have no apprehension whatever of a private telegram reaching you from me some fine morning requesting you at once to summon an Indian Duma. On the other hand, I don’t want to walk blindfold in the ways of bureaucracy.” A week or two earlier Mr. Morley had quoted a frequent saying of Lord Cromer, which he had heard from Mr. Brodrick, to the effect that it had always been his habit in Egypt to employ a native whenever it was at all possible, even though a European might be more efficient. “That,” said Lord Cromer, “is where the Government of India go wrong, and have always gone wrong; they find the native less competent, or not competent at all, and then they employ an Englishman instead. You lose more by the effect on popular content than you gain by having your work better done.”
This was very much Minto’s own way of looking at things, and in his letter of 28th May he emphasized this view and liberated his soul on the foolish exclusiveness of British society in India, instancing the case of Sir Pertab Singh: —
“I will tell you a story of Sir Pertab. Not long ago a young British officer of whom he was very fond died of cholera in his house. He was to be buried the same afternoon, and had just been put in his coffin in a room in which were Sir Pertab and an English officer, who, seeing that there would be some difficulty in carrying the coffin down to the gun-carriage at the door, asked Sir Pertab to send for a ‘sweeper.’ ‘Sweeper!’ said Sir Pertab, ‘what do you want a sweeper for? I shall carry the boy down myself.’ The English officer, knowing that this meant that he would lose his caste, implored him not to do so, but he insisted, carried the coffin on his shoulder to the door, walked by the gun-carriage, and again carried the coffin from it to the grave. Next morning a deputation of Brahmins came to Sir Pertab’s house and told him that a terrible thing had happened the day before. ‘Yes!’ he answered, ‘a young officer died here.’ ‘More terrible than that,’ they said. ‘You, a Rahtor Rajput, have lost your caste.’ He flared up like a shot. ‘Look here, you pigs! There is one caste higher than all other castes throughout the world, and that is the caste of a soldier! That is my caste!’ Turning to one of his staff he angrily asked for his hunting whip, the Brahmins fled, and he remains as great as ever. And that is the man that we can’t allow inside an English club at Calcutta!”
On 15th June, in a letter of Mr. Morley’s occurred a passage of the first importance: —
“I wonder whether we could not now make a good start in the way of reform in the popular direction. If we don’t, is it not certain that the demands will widen and extend into ‘national’ reasons, which I at least look upon with a very doubtful and suspicious eye. Why should you not now consider as practical and immediate things — the extension of the native element in your Legislative Council; ditto in local
councils; full time for discussing Budget in your L.C., instead of four or five skimpy hours; right of moving amendments? (Of course, officials would remain a majority.) If I read your letters correctly you have no disposition whatsoever to look on such changes in a hostile spirit; quite the contrary. Why not, then, be getting ready to announce reforms of this sort? Either you write me a dispatch, or I write you one — by way of opening the ball. It need be no long or high-flown affair. I suppose the notion of a native in your Executive Council would not do at all. Is that certain? I daresay it is — and it would frighten that nervous personage (naturally nervous), the Anglo-Indian.”
These suggestions were the “common form” of Indian liberalism, and Mr. Morley had adopted them partly from Minto’s letters, partly from talks with Mr. Gokhale, and partly from Indian sympathizers at home. Minto replied on 5th July, agreeing heartily with the Secretary of State, and mentioning that the possibility of a native on his Executive Council had been simmering for months in his mind. On 11th July he wrote at greater length: —
“I need not tell you how heartily I am in accord with all you say as to the necessity of dealing with our Indian political future. Moreover, it appears to me that our opportunity has come. . . . I would for the present put aside the-question of the Council of Princes and the possibility of a native Member of Council. . . . What I think we have distinctly before us is the prolongation of the Budget debate, the encouragement of greater discussion at that debate not only on questions of finance, but on other matters of public moment, and also a larger representation on the Legislative Council of the Viceroy. . . . I believe, as a matter of sound improvement, we should do very right in commencing our reforms from the bottom of the tree. The Congress leaders would begin at the top. They want ready-made power for themselves. We must remember that our own people at home have been educated for centuries in the idea of constitutional government, and have only advanced by slow steps to the popular representation of to-day. Here everything is different. From time immemorial it has been a rule of dictators, and we must be very careful not to thrust modern political machinery upon a people who are generally totally unprepared for it. . . . What I should venture to propose to you is that you should let me know what you think of my crude suggestions, that we should put our ideas as far as possible into shape by private correspondence, and that I should then place the position before my Council for discussion, with the intention of our sending you our proposals in the shape of an official dispatch. I attach great importance to the official initiative being taken by the Government of India. It is better in every respect, both for the present and for the future, that the Government of India should appear to recognize all that is in the air here, and the necessity of meeting new conditions, and that they should not run the risk of being assumed to have at last taken tardy action out of respect to instructions from home.”
