Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  VI

  At the close of March the Mintos left Calcutta for a tour in the North-West, visiting Delhi on the way, where the Viceroy unveiled a statue of John Nicholson. It was his first breathing-space, and he exulted in the keen air of the frontier hills, and the revisiting of places where he had campaigned twenty-seven years before. At Mardan they saw the memorial to Cavagnari, and Lady Minto remembered with a shudder how narrowly her husband had escaped Cavagnari’s fate.

  “I saw the headmen at Dargai,” Minto wrote to Mr. Morley on 18th April, “who presented me with an address in verse in Pushtu, the main point of which was a desire for improved railway communication. On the other side of the pass I again met all the leading men — a strong, manly, cheerful people, eminently respectable-looking in their long white dresses, who were fighting hard against us in 1895-97 and 1898. I am afraid my Border blood conduced to a certain amount of sympathy between us. I talked to all the leaders among them, and somehow could not help feeling that we liked each other, and they presented me with two of their standards, which, I believe, is an honour never paid to any one before, as no standard has ever been parted with unless it was lost in war. It is a peculiar society, perpetual bloodfeuds and little wars among themselves. Younghusband, commanding the Guides, Sir Francis’s brother, told me the other day that only a few months ago he was coming back from playing polo in the Swat valley close to a village through which I passed, when to his astonishment he realized that a heavy musketry fire was going on, and he rode up to a line of warriors who were firing away merrily, and asked what on earth they were doing. They said they were only fighting about a piece of land, and that, though there ‘were yet but five corpses, by God’s grace there would soon be more.’ Our frontier officers, like Roos-Keppel in the Khyber, and Deane, love these people. There is a curious feeling of fun and devilry in it all which is fascinating.”

  The last week of April found the Vice-regal household settled in Simla, the place which Minto had found odious on his first visit, but which he was soon to appreciate. It was a change of residence, but no change of life, for the inexorable files flowed in ceaselessly, and the Viceroy was fortunate if he snatched an hour’s ride in the day. In June they had an alarming earthquake, and in July the community was saddened by the tragic news of Lady Curzon’s death. Lady Minto was hard at work at her organization of the Indian Nursing Association, and preparing for the huge Fancy Fete in Calcutta which was to provide it with endowments. In this scheme she had Mr. Morley’s warm support. “Do you know,” he wrote, “that I have often wondered whether I would not rather be in Lord Shaftesbury’s place on the Day of Judgment than in the place of all the glittering statesmen. I mean that I would rather have done something pretty certain-nothing is quite certain — to mitigate miseries such as your Nursing Scheme aims at, than have done all the grand things about which high speeches are made and great articles written in the newspapers.” There were expeditions in which the hard-worked Viceroy sometimes managed to join, and the marvellous ritual of the household never ceased to inspire awe. After a very wet ride they arrive at Fagu in the hills, and Lady Minto’s journal notes: “The scarlet servants with immovable faces stood round the table as usual, looking as if they had never left Government House. Francis Grenfell told me he expected a picnic luncheon, but I informed him that the Viceroy must have his silver plate, his Star of India china, and every variety of wine, even if he happens to be on the highest pinnacle of the Himalaya mountains, and somehow they always appear as if by magic!”

  Simla was scarcely less elaborate than Calcutta. “We counted the other day, when Rolly and I were absolutely alone, nineteen servants waiting about in the passages, and thirty-two men who compose the band playing in the hall below — fifty-one in all.” It was a gay and intimate world, full of polo and tennis, gymkhanas, amateur theatricals, and endless dances, in which the three daughters, soon to be respectfully known throughout India as the “Destroying Angels,” played a notable part. But it was a world in which perforce the Viceroy could have little share. The Secretary of State was courteous and kindly, but he was exacting, and cables demanding information arrived at all hours. Mr. Morley praised the “cool, equitable, and penetrating reflection” which Minto was giving to his problems, and wrote to Lady Minto:

  “We have had widely different training and experience, but I do believe that, in the way we approach public business, Lord Minto and I are just the same. It is inevitable that in detail and carrying things out we should sometimes vary, and controversies cannot be avoided in all these complex and difficult affairs. But, at any rate, after our six months’ experience, I am confident that neither on his side nor mine will a difficulty ever be made worse by any element of huffy personality.” It was a fortunate state of things, for the problems themselves were of a magnitude to demand the undivided attention of both.

  In July the difficulties in Eastern Bengal came to a head. The inevitable troubles connected with partition were not soothed by the personality of the first lieutenant-governor of the new province. Sir Bampfylde Fuller was a man of ability and energy, and single-hearted in his devotion to duty. But he had not the qualities of tact and judgment necessary for the delicate situation in which he was placed; he was impetuous and hot-headed, apt to use the strong hand, and not inclined to be too deferent to the views of his official superiors, who had to envisage the problems of all India. Already in the first six months of his tenure of office he had made many blunders, and greatly increased the Viceroy’s burden. Mr. Morley was eager that he should be removed; Minto shrank, not unnaturally, from a step which would be certainly misconstrued by the critics of the Government; but he was convinced that Sir Bampfylde’s administration was a serious danger, since he lacked the qualities of patience and discretion which could alone in time abate the partition ferment. Perpetual pin-pricks, on the contrary, kept the irritation alive. “What ails Fuller Sahib,” Sir Pertab Singh once asked, “that he wants to blow flies from cannon?” Then in July an incident happened which was not quite unwelcome to either Viceroy or Secretary of State. Before the partition came into force the Government of Bengal had prohibited the participation of students in the boycott movement, and warned the heads of schools and colleges that, if this prohibition were disregarded, state aid-would be withdrawn, and Calcutta University would be asked to disaffiliate such institutions. In February 1906 the Government of Eastern Bengal asked that Calcutta University should withdraw recognition from two schools which had ignored the prohibition. Now, at that moment such action would have been dangerous, for Lord Curzon’s University Act was not yet in full working order, Calcutta University was in process of reorganization, and if the disaffiliation request had been pressed forthwith it might have been refused, with the most awkward consequences. Accordingly, the Home department of the Government of India suggested semi-officially to the Lieutenant-Governor the advisability of withdrawing the request on the ground that “the political objections to pressing the application to the Syndicate outweigh whatever educational advantages might be supposed to attach to a withdrawal of recognition from the schools.” To this Sir Bampfylde replied with an autograph letter to the Viceroy, in which he announced that he was unable to acquiesce in this view, and that if it were persisted in he must tender his resignation.

  To his amazement Minto, after consulting the Secretary of State, accepted the resignation.* “I feel,” he wrote, “that, as you had expressed your willingness to resign, it would not be right to ask you to undertake proceedings of which you did not approve.” The incident produced a profound sensation, and there was much foolish talk of “throwing officers to the wolves.” But there can be no doubt that Minto was right. Sir Bampfylde Fuller had not proved a success, and that he should have been unable to perceive the cogent reasons of the Government of India for refusing his request was sufficient proof that he had not the qualifications needed for a most difficult post. In substance his policy was sound, and a year later, when the Senate of Calcutta University had
been reconstituted, it was put into effect by the Viceroy. But in the summer of 1906 it was premature, for it is a truism of statesmanship that what is wise at one moment may be foolish at another. As for the charge of disloyalty to a subordinate, it was more correct to say that the subordinate had been disloyal to his superior. To reply with a threat of resignation to a letter pointing out difficulties and suggesting a reconsideration of a demand was to fail in the first duty of a public servant. No Government could survive for long if, when an official differed from it and offered to resign, it felt bound to capitulate to the pistol held at its head.

  * Footnote: Mr. Morley wrote to the Viceroy, November 2, 1906: “ . . . The Fuller papers will be laid before Parliament in a day or two. One matter in connection with them lies rather heavy on my conscience, and it is this. There is not a word to show that the acceptance of Fuller’s resignation had my entire concurrence; and I have a feeling that you may think it rather shabby in me, who clamoured every week for his removal, to remain in the innocence of a lamb before Parliament. The Office were obdurate against the production of my telegram on the ground that the Governor-General is technically and constitutionally the sole authority over Lieutenant-Governors, and on the further ground that both Governor-General and Secretary of State should communicate with one another in absolute freedom, and this freedom would be much impaired if either felt that his letter or telegram might be planted in a blue book. I will try to get it known in Parliament that I warmly concurred in your acceptance of the resignation. I only hope that you will believe I am not thinking of saving my own skin, which, after all this time, has become dreadfully indurated.”

  The sensation was short-lived. Sir Bampfylde Fuller behaved at first with discretion, but when in June 1908 he published in the Times his letter headed “J’accuse” he convinced reasonable men that, whatever his talents, he was unfitted for the more delicate tasks of administration. Mr. Morley’s account of his interview with him in the following October is the best comment on a painful but unavoidable affair: —

  “I had a talk with him yesterday which lasted two solid hours and a half. I did not grudge the time, though it was a pretty stiff dose. . . . His extraordinary vivacity attracted me; so did his evident candour and good faith; he soon became free and colloquial in his speech, playing with cards on the table, in which tactics I followed him, both of us being perfectly frank and entirely good-natured. He is certainly a shrewdish, eager, impulsive, overflowing sort of man, quite well fitted for government work of ordinary scope, but I fear no more fitted to manage the state of things in E. Bengal than am I to drive an engine. . . . ‘Well,’ said I, ‘you have a right to present your case in your own way, My reply will be a very simple one, and it will be that; “You resigned not because you had been ill-supported by the G. of I., but because you could not have your own way in a particular matter where you took one view and the G. of I. took another. That is the only question that arises on this set of facts. My firm principle is that if any official resigns because he cannot have his way, I (if it be my business) will promptly and definitely accept his resignation, and I cannot see that Lord Minto had any other alternative. Your policy was not recommended by success. You talk of the injury to prestige caused by the acceptance of your resignation. You should have thought of that before you resigned. The responsibility is yours. I don’t believe it is for the good of prestige to back up every official whatever he does, right or wrong.”’ The effect of this eloquent burst upon the mobile man was to procure a vehement expression of agreement . . . The whole thing was intensely instructive and interesting, but it was also to me, as it certainly would have been to you, very painful. Yet every minute of the interview convinced me more and more that his retention must have brought wider mischief.”

  In August Minto, after months of careful investigation and much anxious thought, took the first practical step in his reforms policy. He appointed a committee, consisting of Sir A. T. Arundel, Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Mr. Baker, and Mr. Erie Richards, with Mr. H. Risley as secretary, to consider the question, and himself wrote a minute for their guidance. He referred to paragraph 7 in the report of Sir Charles Aitchison’s committee as detailing the interests which must be protected in any increase of representation; the interests, namely, of the hereditary nobility and landed classes, of the trading, professional, and agricultural classes, of the planting and commercial European community, and of stable and effective administration. The subjects he proposed for the committee’s consideration were: (a) a Council of Princes, and, should this be impossible, whether they might be represented in the Viceroy’s Legislative Council; (b) an Indian member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council; (c) increased representation on the Legislative Council of the Viceroy and of local governments; and (d) prolongation of the Budget debate, and increased power of moving amendments.

  The following is an extract from Minto’s note to his Council when appointing the committee: —

  “I feel sure my colleagues will agree with me that Indian affairs and the methods of Indian administration have never attracted more public attention in India and at home than at the present moment. The reasons for their doing so are not far to seek. The growth of education, which British rule has done so much to encourage, is bearing fruit. Important classes of the population are learning to realize their own position, to estimate for themselves their own intellectual capacities, and to compare their claims for an equality of citizenship with those of a ruling race, whilst the directing influences of political life at home are simultaneously in full accord with the advance of political thought in India.

  “To what extent the people of India as a whole are as yet capable of serving in all branches of administration, to what extent they are individually entitled to a share hi the political representation of their country, to what extent it may be possible to weld together the traditional sympathies of many different races and different creeds, and to what extent the great hereditary rulers of native states should assist to direct imperial policy, are problems which the experience of future years can alone gradually solve.

  “But we, the Government of India, cannot shut our eyes to present conditions. The political atmosphere is full of change, questions are before us which we cannot afford to ignore, and which we must attempt to answer: and to me it would appear all-important that the initiative should emanate from us; that the Government of India should not be put in the position of appearing to have its hands forced by agitation in this country, or by pressure from home; that we should be the first to recognize surrounding conditions, and to place before His Majesty’s Government the opinions which personal experience and a close touch with the every-day life of India entitle us to hold.”

  The committee sat through an entire month, and during its session Minto’s letters to Mr. Morley showed that his views were hardening fast about the native member of the Viceroy’s Council. He had come to think it a step not only desirable but essential. The committee’s report, when completed, was circulated to the other members of Council, with a note from the Viceroy dealing especially with the question of a native member, of which two out of the four signatories to the report were in favour. Minto recognized that he must proceed slowly, and the opposition which he expected to be most formidable was that of Kitchener. For the time the Secretary of State was too actively engaged in the parliamentary struggles of his Government, in connection mainly with education and the powers of the House of Lords, to give his undivided attention to India. His private letters were discursive and wholly delightful — speculations on the dullness of a Viceroy’s life according to Dufferin and Lytton: a description of a tea-party at Wimbledon for the Gaekwar of Baroda, and of a visit to Lord Roberts: an explanation, accompanied by a gift of his Life of Gladstone (“When you are done with it, pray add my book to the kinematographs, brocades, Martinis, and other appropriate presents to Kabul”), of the “frightful school” of financial churlishness in which he had been reared: and a recommendation that, should the House of L
ords be abolished, Minto should succeed him on his return from India as member for the Montrose Burghs. The Secretary of State was in excellent spirits: —