by John Buchan
But there was one proviso which he would have made, and in which Lord Morley would have solemnly joined. He realized that the real demand in India was not for irrelevant slices of the British constitution. The Indian moderate asked not for democracy, but for Indianization, the extremist for “national” independence, and though the first could in large measure be granted, the second was on the facts impossible. In a land so remote from true integration the only national government must be British government. The status of an autonomous dominion for all India was, in India’s interest, inconceivable. If one may judge from his letters, he would have gone far in the direction of provincial autonomy where there was a homogeneous race to be dealt with, but he would never have surrendered the right to interfere and the duty to oversee. “Blow hot or blow cold as you please,” the Nizam once said to Sir Harcourt Butler, “but never forget your strength.” “I am bent,” the Secretary of State told the Viceroy, “on doing nothing to loosen the bolts.” We have seen that when Lord Morley had said in a moment of fatigue that, if reform could not save India, nothing would, Minto had replied trenchantly that India would not be lost, reform or no, for in the last resort Britain would fight for her and win. This was the fundamental principle of both men — that the immense bulk of the Indian people cared not a straw for politics, but depended for their very lives on the continuance of British authority, and that any talk of giving up India was a mischievous treason to national honour, to civilization, and to the world’s peace. Always, or at all events for any period within the forecast of the human mind, Britain must be responsible for that Indian Empire which she had created out of conflicting creeds and races, and retain in the last resort the power of enforcing her commands. This robust faith was held by Minto and Lord Morley alike; without it Indian reforms would have seemed to them no more than a drifting towards the cataract.
As a summary of Minto’s viceroyalty a memorandum may be quoted which Sir Harcourt Butler, the most devoted of his lieutenants, wrote towards the close of 1919: —
“To a captivating grace of manner and unerring tact he added a peculiar gift of putting one at ease. He was interested in and courteous and considerate to all. He drew the best out of men because he looked for the good in them. There was nothing forced in this. It seemed natural to him. Nothing mean or petty could live near him for any length of time.
“He will long be remembered as the joint author of a scheme of reforms for internal India, and as the originator of a new policy and spirit in the relations between the Government of India and native states. Nothing new is popular in an intensely conservative country like India. Both reforms were criticized at the time for going too far, and later for not going far enough. Both were inspired by deep and sincere appreciation of the changes at work in India. No one now questions the wisdom of Lord Minto’s policy towards native states. It has been adopted and developed by his successors. As regards the joint reforms, I said publicly at Meerut on July 15,1918, and repeat here: —
“‘You have been told that the Minto-Morley reforms were doomed to failure and have failed. With all respect to those who hold this view, I must say that this is not my experience as vice-president of the Imperial Legislative Council, as Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, and as Lieutenant-Governor of the United Provinces. In my experience, and this was the expressed opinion of Lord Hardinge, the Minto-Morley reforms have been successful. They have been a valuable training to Indian politicians and have prepared them for another forward move. The executive government has been far more influenced by the discussions in Council than is popularly imagined, and the debates have been maintained at a really high level. Occasionally time has been wasted. Occasionally feeling has run high. Of what assembly cannot this be said? I was led to believe that in our Legislative Council I should find a spirit of opposition and hostility to Government. I have found, on the contrary, a responsive and reasonable spirit. Indeed, I go so far as to say that it is the very success of the Minto-Morley reforms that makes me most hopeful in regard to the future course of reform.’
“This also I may say. As a reformer Lord Minto showed not once but on many occasions high courage, patience, and clearness of vision. He was as absolutely straight in his public as in his private life. He took large-minded and generous views of things. He met formidable difficulties with a rare sense of duty. ‘If I resign, following the action of my predecessor,’ he once said to me, ‘the office of Viceroy will be lowered for ever.’ He never hesitated to do what he thought the right thing. . . .
“Working under him I was struck by his sagacity and sense of justice. He reminded me of an elephant, which will not tread on rotten ground. Once he had harvested the facts of the case in his mind his judgment was seldom wrong. There was no limit to the trouble that he would take to master facts when any question of justice was concerned. Again, more than any one under whom I have served, he had the gift of seeing ‘the other fellow’s point of view.’ ‘Think how that letter will read at the other end,’ he often used to say in correcting the abruptness of official communications. He was a great sportsman, and up to the last he admired a spirit of adventure. He used to quote some lines on the spirit of adventure written by my uncle (Arthur Butler) at a time when people wrote to the press about the dangers of mountaineering. He always supported frontier officers or officers in distant places who took reasonable risks.
“Looking back on Lord Minto as statesman, administrator, gentleman, sportsman, man of the world, and constant kind friend, I can truly say of him: —
“‘He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.’”
II
As the time of leave-taking approached there were hourly proofs of the regret of every class in the community. The rotation of Viceroys has always been a puzzle to the Indian native, who looks for permanence in his rulers. Said one tiny heir to a native state: “Why is the Lat Sahib going to leave us? Is it because he wants the Gods to let him live on a great stone horse in the Maidan like the other Lat Sahibs? The great Queen asked the Gods to let her come to India too, and she sits and watches over them from a chair.” One Indian tradesman journeyed from Hyderabad to say farewell, announcing that the “Viceroy has sprinkled water on the people after the fire which he found.” The Maharaja of Darbhunga, the greatest of the Bengal zemindars, Lady Minto’s diary records, “As he was leaving the room, flung himself on his knees, removed his cap, and begged Rolly to bless him.”
In October Simla saw a succession of farewell dinners — a Scots dinner on the 11th, and on the 14th a banquet at the United Service Club, where Minto took occasion to review the years of his Viceroyalty. It was almost the best of his speeches, because it contained not only a just summary of his work, but his whole political creed and philosophy of life. One passage may well become a part of the unwritten manual of British administrative wisdom, worthy to rank with Dalhousie’s famous saying that “to fear God and to fear nothing else is the first principle even of worldly success.”
“The public, especially the public at home, not fully acquainted with Indian difficulties, has, perhaps not unnaturally, been unable to distinguish between the utterly different problems and risks that have confronted us. The necessity for dealing with reasonable hopes has been lost sight of, while every outrage that has occurred has been taken as indicative of the general state of India. And throughout its time of trouble every action of the Government has been subjected to microscopic examination, to a running fire of newspaper criticism, to questions in Parliament, to the advice of travellers who have returned home to write books on India after a few weeks’ sojourn in the country — while sensational headlines have helped to fire the imagination of the man in the street, who in his turn has cried out for ‘strong measures,’ regardless of the meaning of his words, and for a ‘strong man’ to enforce them. Gentlemen, I have heard a good deal of ‘strong men’ in my time, and I can only say that my experience in all our anxious days in India has taught me that the strongest man is he who
is not afraid of being called weak.”
It was the last occasion when he would meet the representatives of the public services, and he could not leave his old colleagues without emotion.
“I have told you my story — I have told it to you who have been my fellow-workers and comrades in troublous times, who have helped me to steer the ship through many dangerous straits — the men of the great services which have built up the British Raj. We may perhaps at times have thought differently as to the course to be steered — it could not be otherwise — but you have stood behind me loyally, and I thank you. I leave India knowing full well that you will perpetuate the great traditions of British rule — perhaps with few opportunities of much public applause, but with the inestimable satisfaction that you are doing your duty.”
On 16th November Minto held his last review in Calcutta, and told General Mahon that “it had revived the memories of service in the field in the years gone by and the wish that it would all come over again.” That night there was a banquet at the Turf Club, when Minto recalled his early racing career in a speech which has already been quoted,* and two days later a great dinner at the Calcutta Club, when Mr. Sinha proposed his health and he replied by pleading for the abolition of a foolish race barrier in ordinary social relations: “National and racial differences of thought and ways of life there must be, but a good fellow is a good fellow all the world over.”
* See Chapter 2: “. . . . your welcome and your farewell to a fellow-sportsman. . . .” On the 21st the guns announced the arrival of the new Viceroy, and two days later, a little after noon, the Mintos left Calcutta. I take the description of the scene from Lady Minto’s journal: —
“I tried to feel as stony as possible, but tearful eyes, the pressure of the hand, and a ‘God bless you’ are enough to upset one. A great many Indian friends came to bid us farewell — the Maharajas of Gwalior, Kashmir, Bikanir, Benares, Jodpur, Kurupam, Gidhour, Burdwar, Darbhunga, Vizianagram, the Prince of Arcot, and crowds more whose names I can’t cope with. By 12:15 the halls were packed, and Rolly and I took twenty minutes, literally fighting our way through the people. I can never describe the enthusiasm. . . . At last we reached the top of the marble steps, and walked for the last time over the red carpet between the two lines of the splendid Bodyguard. The Hardinges stood at the foot of the steps, and we both bade them a most cordial farewell . . . and I made them each a curtsey and wished them good luck. He seemed quite overcome, and it really was a moving sight, the enormous escort and a guard of honour, and the steps thronged by this wonderful concourse of people. . . . Scindia and Bikanir pressed our hands in both their own, but they couldn’t speak. We passed through the gates where the band was stationed playing ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ . . . As we drove through the streets packed with spectators, cheer after cheer rang out, and occasionally I caught sight of a face I knew at some window or on a balcony. Howrah Bridge was beautifully decorated with palms, as was also the railway station; a few officials met us there, and I found my carriage a bower of flowers. Amid cheers we steamed slowly out of the station, and sat down with a sigh of relief, but with very mixed feelings of sorrow and gladness. A wonderful chapter in our lives is ended. The guns boomed out our departure, and announced the installation of the new Viceroy.”
They arrived at Bombay on the afternoon of the 25th, and after a final reception by the native community at Convocation Hall, where Mr. Gokhale proposed their healths, they drove to the Apollo Bundur. There stood Sir Pertab Singh, with tears rolling down his cheeks, and speechless with emotion. At sunset they embarked in the R.I.M. steamer Dufferin, and moved away from the shores of India.
“The evening was a gorgeous one. The sky was a deep orange, and the glow was reflected on the sea. The dark spires and buildings of Bombay stood out in sharp relief. Then came the twilight, and along the coast the lights blazed out in a myriad twinkling eyes, turning the darkened mass into a city of fire. A great calm pervaded the atmosphere, and we sat on in the ever-increasing gloom till the beacons of flame from the revolving lighthouses faded away like stars in the heavens. Nature seemed to understand our mood, and I could not have wished to bid a more perfect farewell to the shores of India. The East has cast her magic spell around us, and nothing can ever fascinate me quite in the same way again.”
In every such leave-taking there must be both solemnity and sadness. Of the latter the smallest part was the laying down of great office and becoming again one of the crowd, for, as Walter Savage Landor has written, “external power can affect those only who have none intrinsically.” But there was the parting with old friends, the unlacing of armour, the sense that a great epoch in one’s life was over. There was the bidding farewell to a staff of which any Viceroy might have been proud, a staff perfect in its official capacity, and working harmoniously, unselfishly, and devotedly for the success of the regime. Yet mingled with regrets was that knowledge of a thing well completed which is the highest of mortal pleasures. Lady Minto had been the organizer of great enterprises of charity and social welfare; she had, in the words of the Aga Khan, “humanized the homes of which she had been for five years the chatelaine;” she had made warm friends in every class and province; and she had been to her husband a constant source of wisdom and sympathy.* Minto himself left India with his work honoured by all competent to judge, and, though he had had his troubles with the Government at home, he could not complain of neglect and frustration — unlike Dalhousie who, crippled, heart-broken, and dying, limped on board a wretched cockle-boat of six hundred tons, which was all that England could spare for one of the greatest of her servants. He left with the priceless boon of a quiet mind. Patient and deliberate in arriving at a conclusion, he had no regrets for a single decision. He told his wife, as the Bombay lights sank astern, that, had he those five years to live again, he would do nothing differently, that he wished no single act undone, no single word unspoken.
(* A verse or two may be quoted of a poem addressed to Lady Minto which appeared in the Empire in February 1910: —
Lady, yon at your husband’s side for years An Empire’s burden like a queen have borne, You have found smiles for them that joy, and tears For them that mourn.
You, when the assassin’s deadly aim had failed, No sign of terror to our eyes displayed; And in your task at danger never quailed, Regal and unafraid. . . .
We have no stars nor jewels to bestow, Nor honours that shall make your name to live; But what of love and gratitude we owe, That we can give.
A people whom your care has helped shall be For ever mindful of a noble name, And in their hearts enthroned by memory Shall live your fame!)
When the Mintos reached Port Said, they found there, to their delight, Lord Kitchener, who had travelled in haste from Smyrna to meet them. At Dover they were met by Dunlop Smith, and at Victoria by Sir Arthur Bigge, Lord Morley, Lord Crewe, Lord Roberts, and a great concourse of family and friends. Minto was greeted on his arrival by a letter from the Lord Mayor of London offering him the freedom of the City. Four days later they both lunched at Buckingham Palace, and Minto was invested with the Order of the Garter.
He was eager to get back to his Border home, which in all his Indian years had been rarely absent from his thoughts. There was no heather in mid-December to bury his head in, but he had a wish to complete the circuit of his journey where his great-grandfather had failed.* Among the papers of the first Lord Minto there is a pathetic bundle, containing the plans for his home-coming; over this his widow had written the words “Poor fools!” The fates were kinder to his descendant. At Hawick there was a guard of honour from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and the Lothians and Border Horse, and the provost and town council were on the platform. Denholm, the little village at the park gates, was ablaze with lights and decorations, and in a procession, accompanied by flaring torches and pipers, the party moved up the long avenue to Minto House, where the oldest tenant presented an address and he heard again the well-loved Border speech. Above the doorway were the words
“Safe in,” a phrase from his own kindly pastoral world. The far-wandering Ulysses had come back to Ithaca.
* See Introductory: “. . . . he died on the first stage of that happy northward journey of which for seven years he had dreamed. . . . “
