H S N THE B R R Yf THE FUTURE OF INDO-BRITISH COMTviONWFALT l4 WEDGV/OOD 1A*5 THE FUTURE OP THE INDO-BRrriHH COMMONWEALTH BY JOSIAH C. WEDGWOOD, D.S.O., M.R WITH A PREFACE BY VISCOUNT HALDANB, F.R.S., K.T., ().M. 1921 THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE g 8. Martin's St. ADYAR And at Krotona London MADRAS Los Angeles W.C. 2 INDIA D.S.A. The old pre-war British Empire is gone — in the sense of colonies or subordinate nations clustering around (me\ master-nation. The British Empire itself is developing into a real League of Nations, a group of partner-peoples. The old nationalism was regimentation. The New World will be a world of individualism controlled by Britain and America. GENERAL J. C. SMUTS, Prime Minister of South Africa. PREFACE T HAD the opportunity of* reading the manuscript of this little book. I was so impressed with its outlook that I have asked leave to write a few lines on the subject. To the w^hole of the diagnosis of the present state of affairs throughout the British Empire, I do not profess to commit myself. I do not know enough, and I do not think anyone can know enough, to be certain of all the ground. Wiiat interests me is the breadth of outlook, and a certain quality in the estimate of results, amounting to brilliance. The author sees, as others of us do, that the great war has precipitated what was already in solution. There is now a definite residuum which was not distinctly observable earlier. This is likely, not only to increase, but to be of increasing importance. For the rest, that Vlll from which the precipitation has come is growing clearer. For alarm, I doubt whether there is any real cause at all. The process in operation to-day is one which has been as unavoidable as it has been natural. It is only if we are narrow- minded and try to interfere artij&cially with what we cannot safely endeavour to arrest, that danger is likely to arise. The age is one of a tendency which has become both obvious and universal. But it is taking effect within the limits of human nature — human nature, which is everywhere in the main the same, and which history has shown to be in the end dominating for good when not interfered with. What we have to do is to cultivate in our- selves and in our neighbours the larger outlook upon our national lines. We all need more knowledge, intellectual and spiritual. Both fall within the forms of knowledge, and withf^iit both the world will remain incomplete. IX The change which is coming is not greater than that which Christianity introduced nearly two thousand years ago. Then many were alarmed, for reasons which were to prove so misplaced that we have now forgotten them. To-day the world is moving nearly as rapidly. One has only to live in London at the present time in order to become aware of the fact. What is extreme in some phases of new movements is steadily losing its sharp edges as democracy grows. We are learning that democracy is in the main conservative in tendency. That is because it appears as cautious, in this country certainly, wherever it does not know and is therefore not convinced. Only when it is thwarted in what it is striving towards, does it become alert and aggressive. Now it does not seem as if to-day democracy, here at least, were striving after anything very dangerous or even definite. What it asks for is more knowledge, for itself and for its rulers, and more knowledge has not in the past resulted in violent action. It is narrowness of view, arising from the lack of the larger outlook, that the history of the past shows to have caused danger of violent action. The moral seems to be that we have to edu- cate democracy and ourselves at the same time, and for the rest to have faith in human nature. Reforms embodying the fruits of reflection will necessarily follow an increase of understanding. That is as it should be, and it is a way of avert- ing danger. Moreover it is the only way. Rule by the sword is progressively becoming im- possible. The military failure of Germany in the world -war is the last and most convincing demonstration of this. Understanding and power are now seen to be closely allied. The lesson has not yet been adequately assimilated. But it is being learned rapidly. The author of this book seems to me to be preaching just this gospel. That is why the book attracts me much, irrespective of questions XI of detail. The large outlook is apparent throughout its pages. It is for this reason a valuable book. I believe that in another twenty years the lesson inculcated in the author's pages will have been assimilated, and have become accepted almost as commonplace, like the rejection to-day of slavery. But pioneer work is essential. Colonel Wedgwood has travelled much and has seen much. If he does not always mind what language he chooses when engaged in controversy, that is a very slight drawback. For he is expressing a deep-seated faith, and what we wish to know is what that faith consists in. He has now set it out, and his principle is a moderate one and a reasonable one. It is vividly expressed, and some of the expressions he uses are genuinely arresting. That is to the good from the point of view of literature as well as of politics. Haldane INTRODUCTION The ideas of men are difficult to change. After the war we still look out on the world from our own particular window with pre-war eyes. We are slow to pick out the great changes that the war has made, because our old \'iews are stereotyped and patented. That an Army has become a branch of mechanics is obvious, but we still talk in battalions, and even in regiments of cavalry. That over the continent of Europe all who saved money and lent it have lost their money is obvious. We still talk as though those who borrowed money were also ruined, when they are really finding it easy to pay^ Yet finan- ciers howl at the idea of a general capital levy. XIV TIIE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH War Offices hardly yet realise that Armies are now maintained, not against foreigners, but against the working class. They still think out schemes for sacking Rome when they should be pigeon-holing schemes for sacking Grlasgow. Perhaps the most firmly rooted of the old ideas is that there are a number of Great Powers whose various rivalries must still be harmonised into a concert of Europe. The Great Powers were persons, and diplomatists their servants — the Czar, the Kaiser, the Emperor of Austria, King Edward, King Ferdinand, etc. Now at the end of the war all these persons have disappeared as Powers. Europe is a mass of democracies ; and, because of our command of the sea, if for no other reason, there is only one Great Power in Europe — England . The League of Nations, before it turned soUr, was the outcome of this old view of Great iNTEODUCTION XV Powers — posthumous child of self -murdered nationalism. England and America alone count now, and America will not support the League. Peace, if it is to be ensured, depends on the two survivors, who have the cash and the power. The object of this book is to show how England can ensure peace by fitting the Empire to become the nucleus of World-Union, by be- coming herself the centre of a Commonwealth of free peoples enjoying equal rights. The goodwill, possibly even the direct co-operation, of America is needed. That can onlv be obtained by fundamentally reforming the Empire, and by freely extending to America those equal rights within the new Common- wealth that British citizens will enjoy. One other old idea should be uprooted to fit the facts, and the facts fit into the conception of a free British Commonwealth. The old idea was that the East would always sleep and XVI THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH could be kept subjecfc. Throughout the East the war has created national consciousness, just as the Napoleonic wars did in Europe a hundred years ago. A united people, if thej really want freedom, cannot be kept subject. India, Ceylon, Burma, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine, will either join a liberalised Indo- British Commonwealth, or they will split off in spite of all our power ; and then there will be re-started from Asia, all the narrow nationalist rivalries that disfigured the nineteenth century in Europe and ended in the Great War. Most imperialism, all imperialism in the past, has been inspired by selfishness — forcibly to seize, jealously to hold, and ruthlessly to exploit. Lust of power alone can explain such imperialism. It creates enemies and must in the end culminate in disaster. On the other hand every step towards the creation of a free Indo-British Commonwealth is unselfish. We give freedom. We give equal rights. We get tNTRODUCTION XVll nothing that the world does not also get— justice, security and peace. The door is open for all to come in ; the tie only one of such sentiment and self-interest as now keeps Australia within the Empire. I would bury nationalism in the grave it digged for itself in the Great War, and set in its place World Union built up by the fostering care of reformed English-speaking peoples. World Union must precede the brotherhood of man. JosiAu C. Wkdgwood CONTENTS Chapte I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XL XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVi. British Credit After the War American Credit and Place . League of Nations Obstacles to Commonwealth Equal Rights for British Citizens Responsible Dominions Ireland .... India the Danger India Freed .... Burma .... Ceylon, Kenya and Malaya . Dominions and Dominionhood Palestine .... The Muslim World Results of Voluntary Union Brotherhood Tables .... PAGE 1 20 39 51 69 95 110 122 137 170 184 199 208 218 231 243 250 BRITISH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR " England ! WiU she march ? " That was the one question asked everywhere in France in those fateful days of August, 1914. She marched, and immediately a sigh of relief went up from all France ; for, as they said, England never puts her foot on a rotten bridge. The habit of success is more than Armies and iSTavies and brains, and by the end of the war we [had added another to our collection of undeserved successes. First Spain, then France, then Napoleon, then the German Empire. The collection is not extensive, but it is impressive; for those who tried their hands were the lords of the world. 2 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Now, except America, all peoples and rulers would be afraid to go to war with us, they would only do so to defend their liberty, never again in our time to secure a share of the spoil. There are too many skeletons lying on or under the sands of the arena. So far as war and our national danger are concerned, we may be insolent with impunity, we may grab at leisure. After Waterloo there were great powers in Europe ; now there is only one. We pre- tend an equality to France out of civility, a civility getting a little shrill. It is sometimes pleasanter to have a junior partner to share responsibility— so long as he knows his place. There has been a certain dignity, a certain altruism, about Britain after the war, that not even the scrambling politicians at Versailles could quite obliterate. When the victors sent out their Missions— Military, Naval and Diplo- matic—to the capitals of the conquered BRITISH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR 3 countries, opportunities of every sort offered .themselves to the raissioners. The Missions were large and omnipotent. They served them- selves, and their country as they thought, in acting as agents for home firms, in acquiring * rights ' and industrial or financial control in the land of their mission. Frenchmen, Italians, even Americans, used their positions. The British Missions alone were too uncommercial, perhaps too stupid or perhaps too honest, to join in the pig-trough. The conquered nations, looking on at the pilfering of their country and the haggling over concessions to exploit them, do not forget that Sir Thomas Cunningham, for instance, at Vienna, tried to help them and not himself, that numbers of Captains and Colonels of no degree played the role of gentlemen in a crowd not generally conspicuous for that quality. Nor should we forget the prestige over the east of Europe that has come from the 4 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH unselfish and devoted work of the Society of Friends and of the Action Lodge of the Theo- sophical Society. Other nations have helped the dying peoples spasmodically. There have been few finer efforts than that of the Dutch Trades Unions, who worked at Christmas and sent all their earnings that day to the starving Trades Unionists of Hungary. Other funds have, however, come and gone ; the Friends and Theosophists are always on hand when starvation threatens or typhus destroys its victims. Wherever Dago butchers are tortur- ing Jews or hunting Bolshevists, the one thing the butchers fear, is the contemptuous look on the face of some isolated Englishwoman who is upholding in the shambles the honour of man- kind, and incidentally the dignity of England. Even in the higher realms of international politics there has been some show of altruism. It was the British Prime Minister who tried to persuade his colleagues to make peace with BRITISH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR 5 Russia, As the ' Curzon line ' showed, he would have saved Eastern Galicia and Yilna, if he could, from the horrors of the Polish Terror ; and we have really nothing material to gain in Eastern Galicia. His conscience at least keeps pricking him. The others have long since got full control over a conscience never assertive. For some, or all these reasons, all the little nations of East Europe have an almost pathetic faith in England. There is hardly a capital- ette of submerged Europe which did not beg for just one British regiment. The only supply train safe from bandits and officials is the one on the top of which sits, unperturbed and contemptuous, solitary British Tommy ! There is no doubt of Britain's increase of prestige, looked at from the Foreign Office point of view. Rivals have vanished — on this side of the Atlantic, and the other side is not playing the game of grab at present. 6 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH From the point of view of Lombard Street, the position when rightly understood, is equally impressive. True, we have an income- tax of 6s. in the £ for life, and a super-tax which makes Anglo-Indian millionaires hesitate to retire home. True, we have invented a Corporation tax which will drive many of our Limited Companies to an Indian or Celonial domicile. It is true that our National debt is ten times what it was and our annual State expenditure has multiplied by six. True that we have hanging over us an awful <^900,000,000 still due to America. Yet in spite of this— in fact because of our financial courage which has consented to shoulder this taxation, in finance too, we have improved relatively to others — America excepted. The other combatants have never increased taxation to meet the interest on the increasing debt. Their solvency is nominal. They have not met their liabilities : they have depreciated BRITISH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR 7 them. The Budgets of France and Germany- show efforts — proved more futile every month as the coinage depreciates and wages rise — to raise in taxation one-third of their expenditure. Other countries from Italy to Poland or Turkey- have given up the attempt to balance. Russia is no longer alone in repudiating liabilities. None of these countries can now raise loans, internal or external. None of them can fund their floating debt or limit their currency paper. Every- month, as they have to make both ends meet, they mast print off more currency notes and each note so printed depresses still further the purchasing value of all such notes. By heroic efforts, by Excess Profits Duty, by sales of War Stores, we just manage to make a book-keeping balance, and conse- quently our paper £ still keeps up its head, while francs and marks and crowns and roubles become daily more numerous and worth- less. Thoughtless persons talk as though the 8 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH balance of trade regulated the relative position of pound and franc. The variations brought about by a temporary excess of imports are but the ripple on the tideway. It is Mr. Hartley Withers who has said that the British Empire was built up on compound interest. He meant that the confirmed habit of the middle-class husband of putting by every year one-third of his income and re- investing it, has created and maintained our financial supremacy. The habit still endures in all its force. Just at present the Five- Hundred-pounder, i.e., the man who puts £500 into Lever's preference shares, is not happy ; but he is doggedly cutting down his household expenses in order to continue the process undeterred by capital losses. We are a nation of creditors determined, by saving and politics, to keep the £ good. European Governments now live on the printing press. Over large areas there is no BRITISH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR 9 other . source of revenue. A printing press, and a few organised bayonets to induce the peasants to take your paper, are the necessary stock in trade of the adventurous Modern Governments that rob and do not govern. This sort of Bolshevism exists outside Russia. Jn 1919, when I was in Hungary under the Bolsheviki, a tale was told of an offer by M. Cle- menceau and ' the big four ' at Versailles to make peace with Soviet Hungary, provided Hungary would pay an indemnity of many millions. Now the Soviet Government in Hungary had had great difficulty in getting their new paper money to look like the old blue notes of the Austro- Hungarian Bank. They would come out too green or too rosy from the press. Hence Bela Kun, so the story goes, immediately wirelessed back to M. Olemenceau, " Delighted accept ; kindly send paper and state what colour preferred." 10 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH From all this chaos is emerging one clear fact. In Europe, England alone is still solvent. We all borrowed money. England borrowed £'s and is trying to pay back, in interest and capital, £'s of the same sort. The other countries borrowed in one coin and are paying interest in a coin which is called the same but has no other resemblance to the article borrowed. This is one, and a simple way of paying your national debt. It is so simple. You do nothing but print and it just hap- pens. British Chancellors of the Exchequer have dreamt of it — a beautiful dream in which that nightmare debt dwindles away like snow in April. Mr. Philip Snowden sees and would deliberately flirt with the idea as a threat — orderly bolshevism. A capital levy, is it ? No, it is only a levy on some capital, on all money lent, to either Grovernments or private persons. It is a levy on all fixed interest securities — on debts and preference shares. BRITISH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR 11 Obviously the European way of paying off debt involves not only State insolvency but a general break in credit. Every creditor is ruined ; not only the State but every debtor shuffles off the coil. I know an estate in Hungary that was bought during the war on borrowed money. It seemed a gigantic sum then. Now a £100 note would more than buy that debt, and it has been paid off with a shrug of the shoulders. The very hearth-stones of every peasant in Hungary and of most in Austria and Germany, were mortgaged before the war. Now they pay their mortgages off with postage stamps ; the Austrian crown has sunk to 1/1 00th of its previous value ; the German mark to 1/1 3th. The land itself, the only stable thing, rises in nominal value as the coinage shrinks. On the Continent of Europe, therefore, all creditors who have lent money have lost their money; all debtors who have borrowed, to 12 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH finance and equip land or industry, have been honourably acquitted of their debt by State action. This is a violently disturbing thing to Lombard Street, for Lombard Street is the creditor. Had not the same man been often both creditor and debtor this strange revolution would have been visible to all before. Even now it is little understood, except by Lombard Street. Britain never sets her foot on a rotten bridge. Britain always pays her debts. From the point of view of Lombard Street as well as from the Foreign Office point of view, the end of the war has been the end of our rivals. There are still some rich people in Britain who cannot sleep at night for fear of a bloody bolshevik revolution. Mr. Lloyd George only pretends to be one of these people. But far out- side England, overseas, our press advertises the danger and the inherent wickedness of British Labour. Are we then at an end because Sylvia Pankhurst distributes bolshevik literature, or BRITISH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR 13 because the building trades unions emulate the rubber planters in curtailing output to keep up prices? Is the wicked worker Britain's Achilles' heel ? Are dark deeds being prepared in Tonypandy ? Is there dirty work in progress at Glasgow cross-roads to-night ? One loses patience. " If you know of a ' better 'ole ' you go to it and stop there," is the only appropriate reply to such ignorant whimpering. Unfortunately, as those who know the workers know, the British working man or woman is, on the whole, a hide-bound, cast-iron, rock-bottom conservative. His political visions come to him through chapel spectacles. His bit of property (and who has not a bit of property somewhere ?) is more sacred to him than are millions to millionaires. He resents cleverness or eccentricity as St. Dunstan did the devil. The spouting of froth leaves him absolutely coM, save when he knows that he should cheer on recognising some trite moral maxim. 14 THE INDO -BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Foreigners, bolshevik or other, might be merely interesting specimens of the genus monkey for all their influence upon him. Few British working men take foreigners to be rational human beings. The forward movements, Independent Labour Party and Labour Party, may have done something to change this bovine attitude— particularly in South Wales, Yorkshire, Staffordshire and Glasgow— but no labour politician denies that conservatism predominates in England. Or is it that the Labour leaders themselves are so corrupting and so dangerous? Mr. Clynes as an ogre sucking human blood, would be humourous even as a cartoon in "John Bull". Governments exist to keep things as they are, with the least possible trouble to themselves. No doubt Trades Union leaders are more honest than Governments, but their human nature is the same. It is not from above that change comes. Pressure is always BfilTISH CKEDIT AFTER THE WAR 15 from below, and those who are breaking their hands against the bars of the cage are so few. When the British working man loses his temper with this world, he snarls at his wife, and grouses to the Branch Secretary ; but the Frenchman or Italian or Dago whips out a knife and goes for society. The German work- ing man is so well educated that he has heard of Spartacus, so class-conscious that he will not let himself be jealous of his fellow- worker, and so machined that he can drill as a Sparta- cist. No British worker of this generation would meet as the Chartists met and drill at night. Hardly one has ever known what it is to be helplessly hungry ; all the other working men have known it. Hunger creates the resolution needed for revolution, and class- consciousness upsets the discipline of the Army. We may get both ; but, at present, the other 'hales' are certainly not ' better' for maiden aunts and capitalists. 16 X THE INDO-BRTTISH COMMONWEALTH In England wages are not really higher than they were before the war. Skilled workers are more numerous. Women pro- duce wealth. The former loafer, man or woman, on £300 a year, will now thank you for a job and work. Though trades disputes bulk large, there is not here a con- stant depreciation in the currency, a constant rise in prices to create perpetual wage trouble in every trade. Manufacturers can send in tenders, knowing what to quote, seated in serenity compared with the foreign merchant faced with falling francs, no credit and rising wages. Judged by Labour troubles and fear of revolution, England after the war surpasses in stability all rivals— even America, where the under-dog becomes more and more a foreigner, of whom they are afraid. Look at the position from another angle. We used to say, before the war : " What is the good of the Colonies, the free Dominions ? We can BRITISH CEKDIT AFTER THE WAR 17 influence Australia or Canada less than if they . were completely independent. They raise tariffs against our goods, and immigrant laws against our people. We could do more for our Indian co-nationals in the Transvaal when the Transvaal was a Boer republic than we can now that it is part of the Empire. We paint the map red, and that is all there is to it." There it was, but it is so no longer. A million men came from these free Domi- nions to fight, because they would not let their race be beaten. They were not generally con- scripted, and they knew what they came for and what to expect. Such men they were too ! The Canadians, who saved Ypres ! How often have I heard, in the old foolish days, military * lights ' scoffing at Australian indiscipline ; and, at the last, the Australian was accepted as the spear- head of the Grand Army that destroyed Germany. In August, 1918, the Common- wealth came of age, almost elder brother. 18 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH The bond is, that there is no bond. Volun- tary co-operation is the keystone of the British Commonwealth. We like to play schoolmaster, to lecture and to scold the foreigner. We dared not and did not do it to the Colonies. It was not a weakness but a strength. If only Ireland were free we should have no enemies in Australia. The constant marvel is that we should have so few in South Africa after a * sort of a war '. India sent almost as many to die for England all over the world as the Dominions and Colonies put together. That was not voluntary co-opera- tion—and the result has been non-co-operation. Military bosses saw to it that those who would have come, voluntarily and knowing the issue, were not allowed to bear arms. Most of those who came were pressed, and the less said about it the better. They knew how to die ; but they did not die for India or for a free Com- monwealth. With them it was Fate, and they BElflSH CREDIT AFTER THE WAR 19 met Fate with serene eyes, as Indians have for five thousand years. What could not India have done as a race of freemen ! We pulled through without the real India. The voluntary co-operation of the Dominions paid in war. The relations between White and White in the British Empire are rosy because they form the Commonwealth. But it was an Empire only of White Co-operation. An Empire of Rule over subject races could not produce the same co-operation, for the relations of White and Brown in the present Empire of British rule are not rosy. The lesson is that the safest bond is freedom ; that our own special invention — the self-govern- ing dominion — is strongest of all in war, and most harmonious in peace. No one conceives of war between the Dominions. No one will ever again dare to make war against the Dominions. Then is it to be America ? II AMERICAN CREDIT AND PLACE One need not recapitulate ; in the political and financial world England is to-day without a rival, save America. Japan is useful for the scare-line writer and the armament firms ; those who know Japan best, think her least likely to show cards on the blufE. Japan resents, and rightly resents, the treatment meted out to her race in Australia and on the Pacific Coast. But, she does not care for Indian wrongs, except as a minor diplomatic convenience. She will never be the standard bearer of an indignant Asia. She can now expand, none protesting, over the infinite AMERICAN CRRDIT AND PLACE 21 flat underlands of Eastern Siberia. None con- test those spoils. All over Asia the Asian may look to the Moslem faith, or he may look to Gandhi. Outside Japan the Asian never dreams of drinking to glorious Nippon, or of visualising his glory in the well advertised land of the Rising Sun. There is only America, and England. If one were to believe John Bull to be serious, or the Morning Pod to be Britain, then of course a 'day' is to come for a dog-fight. These warriors of the quill may be very power- ful, but even they cannot make this war. They can make ill-feeling ; and it is on good feehng between us, that the future welfare of the world depends. If they wrote of Austra- lians as they write of Americans, the Empire would break up. Public opinion would lynch them. It tolerates their abuse of America because there is a difference of flag. The flag is the only difference. Australia is as 22 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH independent of England as is America. No mor& than Australia could America tolerate Britain's downfall. It would reflect upon the family — upon our caste. If it were conceivable that Japan should wage successful war upon America, every pacifist in England and the Dominions would march, and no Government could stop them. Even now, though we snap in the family, we do not allow that privilege to outsiders. I cannot imagine Mr. Horatio Bottomley or Mr. Gwynne allowing a Frenchman to say about the Americans what is said by Mr. Gwynne or Mr. Bottomley — unless of course the Frenchman were a client. The same holds good in America. Even the Irish American, spitting hatred of tyrants, will not complain to a Dago, or allow a Dago to talk of Englishwomen. Ireland can settle her own account, without resort to the " extraneous races ". No Englishman worthy of the name AMERICAN CREDIT AND PLACE 23 will hear a foreigner describe Irishmen as " dirty scoundrels " without wanting to tell him that " they are gentlemen, sir ! " ; though he may a moment before have been speaking his mind even more freely to another English- man or American. This is the caste — the result of intermarriage and mutual pride and parentage. A common family, a common language, a common literature, these bonds really united England and America in the past. Now a comradeship in arms has been added to wipe out Bunker's Hill and 1814 and the Alabama. When we were young there was a sort of amused contempt for Americans. They were the new chums of this world, raw and pushing. Now, in England, there is a sort of veneration, typified by the statue of Lincoln in Parliament Square. We take a pride in the brand. They reflect credit on us. We can even laugh at them and they at us without laugh or criticism being 24 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH construed into an insult to the precious flag, that religious fetish of the nineteenth century. No man or nation minds being laughed at, if he sees that he is meant to laugh too. If it were not for Ireland, not even our national bad manners could leave British and American relationship in doubt. Nor is the comradeship in arms all that is new in our post-war feelings. British liberals did not generally know before of the existence in America of the same brand as themselves. What British liberals thought and felt about Prussianism and regimentation and laudation of the State-iiber-alles was too violent to be expressed intelligibly. It was put into words by their American colleagues, by Woodrow Wilson, by Winston Churchill the American, by the Neiv Republic, and a hundred others. We had known as American politicians, only the Senator and Congressman, with most of whom we had vainly sought any common AMERICAN CREDIT AND PLACE 25 ground on any subject. They were parochial. Then, in the middle of this war, there turned up round President Wilson a crowd of the Americans of our imagination, descendants of Penn and Franklin and Lincoln, radicals of the faith. We discovered Colonel House and Rowland Morris, Norman Hapgood and Bullit, Judge Brandeis and Lincoln Steffens, and a host of men who had drunk the same mother's milk. All over the world the agents and ambassadors of America were our men seeing things with our eyes. This is the family. It may be that such men exist outside ; but, if they exist in Europe still, they are too near the bread-line to spend ideals on the world. There will not be the same perfect understanding. For that, for extension of the family, we must go at present outside Europe, even to India. A common family gives us a common langu- age, a common language gives us a common 26 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH literature, and a common literature gives old and young common ideals. Once, during the war, I was bewailing to Mr. H. G. Wells the fact that Germany turned out from her Uni- versities seven times as many graduates as came from British seats of learning. How could we compete with Germany and German culture while that continued? He answered jestingly but truly : " The youth of England is not educated in our colleges, but by me, and Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton." From the age of fourteen to twenty the young of Britain and America soak themselves in novels. Unconsciously they imbibe the attitude of Dickens or of O. Henry ; unconsciously they mould their ideals on the heroes and the heromes of William Locke or Owen Wister or Winston Churchill. The young of France and Germany, of either sex, do not read novels freely. They have not the same type of novel, and a stricter censorship AMERICAN CREDIT AND PLACE 27 converts pleasure into study or drives pleasure into surreptitious and unpleasant channels. There is no tie between Britain and America so powerful as their common novelist. It is not merely that a Mark Twain or a Macaulay gives us a common idea of what is ^^o^^j gives Britain and America a common religion, a common loathing of cruelty for instance. They also give to children of all sorts common quotations, common familiarities for all the rest of their lives. The Bab Ballads, Uncle Remus, Alice in Wonderland, Huck Finn, and the Lays of Ancient Rome, furnish both sides of the Atlantic with masonic passwords, quotations that can always be recognised by the elect, and please the elect by taking them all back to a common childhood. Common nonsense is a surer tie than com- monsense. The fool's cap unites better than a crown. 28 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH Wise men would not teach Indian schoolboys history (completely unsound) of John and Magna Gharta, but Chestertonian humour, to be a comrade and a password through life. If this is the effect of the children's books that are read more or less by the richer classes the cinema is having an even greater influence upon the common folk in Britain. Literally hundreds of thousands are absorbing every night, on this side of the Atlantic, the ' grand transatlantic superdrama ' and the ' genuine American sob-stuff '. They look at American films till America is as familiar as Bradford. The English know, as they know Piccadilly, the ' Great White Way ' which unites all nations. From 0. Henry and * the Movies ' they now have a surer appreciation of real American slang than has any real American. British film companies will never succeed till they can graduate in those snappy explanations AMERICAN CEEDIT AND PLACE 29 that open to common folk in the King 's Eoad and High Street the attractive visions of the New World. I only wish that the Middle West was being nightly dosed with British films to reciprocate the service. All this goes to show that America's place, after the war, more than ever before, is not that of rival. She cannot even quarrel with us over the spoils. She wants no spoils. We have pressed them on her — emphatically. " Will you not take Armenia ? " " No ! " " Georgia ? " " ^ o ! " " Persia ? " " No ! '* "Mesopotamia, Siberia, Turkey?" Always " No ! " — not even adding : " They are not yours to offer." They have not jet got the taste for what some call grab and others, the white man's burden. When (if ever) they do, we can and shall shovel on to them mandates and protectorates with untiring arms. We shall do it "just because they talk the same talk and are not foreigners. 30 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH They are rivals, no doubt, in real trade and industry. That is good for us. Trade rivalry in the newspaper sense usually means some spectacular financial success in exploiting the " lower races ". We know how patriotic German bosoms burst with anguish or joy when Mannesmann did or did not get those conces- sions in Morocco. We know how all Italy felt to the depths of her soul for the future of the Banco di Roma in Tripoli ; how the flotation of a loan to China consumed half Europe with patriotic jealousies. These are the national rivalries of newspaper commerce. If the White Star hoist the Stars and Stripes instead of the Jack, it is a national disaster ! If Wernher or Beit settle in Park Lane instead of Berlin it is a national triumph ! But now the average decent Englishman does not care a rap whether Inchcape or Morgans own anything. He knows just as much about (and cares just as little about) AMERICAN CREDIT AND PLACE 31 Lever as Ford. Even the Times cannot arouse enthusiasm in the match — Cowdray vs. Rockefeller re Mesopotamian Oil. We just do not mind any more whether our million- aires are English with American wives, or American with English wives. Jones is quite as well pleased with Mr. Ford as he is with Lord Leverhulme, and devoutly hopes that both of them are equally economically sound, for they have both got his cash in keeping. Even if Ford called himself Otto Khan, we should not mind, for the great British Commonwealth has accepted the mandate for Palestine, and Mr. Arthur Balfour is a Zionist. No press will ever be able to work up the tempe- rature of the man-in-the-street in London or New York over exploitation rivalries. Carnegie was a Scotsman and Lady Astor is Lady Astor. What could even Mr. Bottomley expect to gain by denouncing their American wealth ? 32 THE INDO-BEITISH C0M510N WEALTH The fact is we are getting rid of the old national deification, defined by General Smuts as " a watertight nation in a watertight com- partment ". This change suits America, the America of many races and no dynasties. A clever American, Mr. William Hard, exactly illustrates the new point of view that appeals : " The friendship between England and America should have a greater purpose and aim than mere friendship between the two countries. The word Anglo-Saxon has a little snobbery about it. The English have made considerable progress towards getting rid of the narrower form of nationalism. Every one has observed their readiness to accept persons who are not in the narrower sense English, as Prime Ministers and other functionaries. The English do not care who works for them." The war has jolted us out of nationalism,, and other nations have less either to complain or to boast of. AMERICAN CREDIT AND PLACE 33 There are however one or two subjects we still have to avoid in the mixed conversation of the American parlour car. They say in America that they are not ruled by a President — but by the three great corporations — the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Standard Oil Trust, and the Catholic Church. Of these three the last is the first. The Catholic Church is Ireland, but it is more than Ireland. I sometimes wonder whether, even if Ireland were free, that last great corporation would be appeased or would cease from its hostility. Anglo-America stands for democracy ; democracy and the authority of a Catholic Church never can thoroughly agree. (With the Irish Question itself I deal later.) And again, while it embarrasses an American liberal nowadays to. talk of Ireland to a stranger Englishman, the English liberal will also avoid alluding to the shootings of strikers and the 34 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH imprisonment of Debs and the C. O.s. We are both slightly ashamed of the other because they ought to have our views, being of the same civilisation. It is not a pleasing thing to find either reprisals or intolerance in the family. Yet this very shame and reticence shows that America is no rival of ours as Spain or France or Germany was. Were it not for the old egotistical flag-wagging and our present treatment of Ireland, America would be in no suspicious sense a rival, but always an ally, even as Australia is wholly ally. The condition is, that we must be allies for some- thing wider than British or American national glorification. Such being relations to one another of Eng- land and America after the war, such being the credit of England— what is now the credit of America ? If the credit of England has never been so high as since the war, the same must be AMEfilOAN CREDIT AND PLACE 35 said of America. Sir William Harcourt, daunted by Russia's persistent machine-like advance through Turkestan on India, once said that, do what we would, the twentieth century lay with Russia. Russia has, however, wilted away and receded into Asia, and the United States to-day form the largest homogeneous country in th& world. It is the most populous. New York with Jersey City is the largest world city of all time. Raw materials, productive capacity, wealth and science have marched to the west. The Empire State by itself is a fit match for any country in Europe. Illinois and Massachusetts ar&_ more important than France, and the Lone^ Star State is larger than Germany. All this was known statistically before the war, but the specialists pointed to the absence of standing army and navy. ' Fat and Un< defended' was their verdict. They did not understand, and who shall blame them, that a State is best defended by the free spirit of its 36 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH citizens ; that war is won in the workshops and on the railways and in the counting houses of the bankers, by people who rely upon them- selves and are never afraid. Conscription is gone, standing armies are depreciated, capital ships are now so expensive that only America and Britain can build. The gun machine is no longer the well drilled regiment but an inanimate creation, and of the units in the regiment some- thing more is now demanded than the machine- like action and obedience. Generals we know are born and not made. They are at least as likely to be born in Peoria as in Potsdam. In a word, when put to the test, the Americans were found with the spirit and the means for victory. Berlin was wrong. It is not the first blow, but the last pound that wins. America had several pounds to spare. The Americans are a pacific people, slow to war, but terrible and irresistible when they once get to it. AMERICAN CREDIT AND PLACE 37 In finance America has also moved up. Debt and taxation have not dammed the stream of trade and dividends, as with the other combatants. They have bought up cheap, in depreciated marks and crowns, the goods and chattels and land of the ruined countries. The European, even if he does not pay that nightmare debt, is in danger of becoming the American's helot. If anything they are too rich in comparison with others. Of their pre- eminence there is no doubt. The twentieth century is not with Russia but with America. How far are the Americans altruistic ? Can they be induced to use such power to bring peace and union to the world ? Will they come in to the League of Nations? or will they, as General Smuts thinks, draw nearer to those free dominions that spell the British Common- wealth? They will do the latter only if the British Commonwealth is all free Dominions. " All men are created equal ; they are endowed 38 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH by their creator with certain inalienable Rights; to secure these Rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." ' ^ American Declaration of Independence. Ill LEAGUE OF NATIONS We have seen in the two preceding chapters that the war has left England and America alone and without rivals. We have seen that these two are one from nursery times. By habit rather than by intention one has led in the accumulation of spoils, and the other in the accumulation of cash. Each without the other could control the world; together, world-peace would seem assured. Harmonious working would not perhaps be easy even were Ireland out of the way, but it would be easier than between any other two worshippers of rival flags. If world-peace is desired, what 40 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH other way is there? How far could the other peoples tolerate an Anglo-Saxon world- peace ? The League of Nations was to produce world-peace. It was to embrace all nations, and to crystaUise into permanency a just pea^je based on a war ending without territorial profit and on the self-determination of small peoples. Unfortunately for this scheme it could only be firmly founded on a war ending not in victory but' in a draw. Throughout the war the Germans had always pictured their dog-fight as the first Carthaginian war, in which they, the military power, were the Roman, and naval Britain played the role of Carthage. The simile was too striking and gratifying to be dropped till it was too late. The war ended in a German collapse sa complete that a Carthaginian peace was indeed possible. But they were the Carthaginians, and it was the second Carthaginian war. LEAGUE OF NATIONS 41 They got indeed such terms as Carthage received after Zama. After such a peace, a League of Nations must inevitably play chorus to the victors. Even after the League was allowed to exist it could only remit matters to the Supreme Council, and the Supreme Council has a capacious waste paper basket. Nor would many of the votaries of a just League of Nations devote themselves and their powers to the crystallising of a Carthaginian peace. Probably no member of the League, save France and Belgium, could be got to fight to preserve French occupation of Mainz and the left bank of the Rhine, because it does not seem just; yet that is what apparently is to crystallise out of the peace. The League will be more than doubtful about going to war to preserve a Polish hold over Galicia or Vilna. If Germans rise in the Tyrol or Hungarians in 42 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Transylvania, the League cannot help to suppress a people rightly struggling to be free. The peace will not crystallise. At least America will have nothing to do with the making permanent of injustice. Nor could Germany ever consent to come in and help to make permanent her own collapse. The League of Victors can neither command the confidence nor the respect of mankind. Let us rather have the Supreme Council and no camouflage. It would be well that we should intimate to America that her relations to the League will guide Britain also in her relations with that body. It is wiser for us, and better for the world, that there should be union between Britain and America. In the League we can do nothing to straighten out the world. With America we can, provided the shaping-tools are democracy and equal rights. LEAGUE OF NATIONS 43 In common with many of the Members of Parliament, I always used to imagine the League of Nations, with " our Mr. Wilson " in the chair, as an Anglo-Saxon Union to be called by a more modest name. It was to be a super-national body, relying upon American power and the President's virtue, to prevent children squabbling and any further game of grab, by grabbing the lot. I saw them — it — administering tropical Africa for the good of Africa — Persia for the Persians — Turkey, even Russia. From time to time appeals would come from the high chair calling upon the nations to give up exclusive privileges and dominations, impJimented by the example of the two great Anglo-Saxon houses. American or British Marines, the weapon of the League, were to take over straits and key-spots, like Gibraltar or Panama or Suez or Constantinople, and touchy places, like Danzig or Fiume or Teschen. Each nation would give up some of 44 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH its territory, some of its regalities, to the Super-nation. If we had judged Mr. Wilson aright it could have been done. It is an attractive picture. But Mr. Wilson was not what we imagined. At Versailles every nation except America grabbed and gobbled, instead of imitating the French nobility of the 10 Aout 1789, and surrendering into the common pot. And America kept on washing hands like Pilate. The Wilson of November, 1918, was a figment of imagination— a beautiful dream. There was no such man available for head of a dominant League of Nations. There was no intention among the grabbers and gobblers of being converted to altruism by any American preacher. They just fitted together again the old jig-saw puzzle, based upon diplomatic appetite and nineteenth century exploitation. A worthless Greek dynasty was held more worthy than any selfless principle. LEAGUE OF NATIONS 45 America retired from the game, verv pro- perly, but too late. What is served up to us now as the thoroughly Christian ideal of these Conference holders is a League of Nations, without Wilson, without America, with the British Foreign Office as the only real power at the Board— our Foreign Office and not Great Britain, and even Great Britain not independ- ent but hampered at every turn by narrow politicians from small countries with enlarged heads. It was tersely described to me at Nagpur as consisting of—" a pack of dagoes and Lord Robert Cecil ". Can one ever make a super-nation out of that tolerated collection ? Every parliament is too suspicious to leave any decision to its delegate upon the Assembly of the League. Every Foreign Office is too jealous of the Council of the League to allow any authority whatever to this newfangled diplbmacy. This must be particularly true of Britain ; for, in diplomacy, power decides in 46 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH privacy, while votes and public speaking decide in the League. Greece or Ecuador can vote from their national point of view and speak as well as Britain, but we are the only party to the League who can afford to be altruistic and with power behind the vote. A League of Nations with no weapon, with no authority, without America or even Ger- many, above all without any of the unselfish- ness the private man shows in private, cannot possibly become a super-state. It cannot impose peace. It cannot even impose the statm quo. It cannot save the world from future wars. It is a Bench of Magistrates without a policeman ; it is a Board of Delegates with no common interest. Soon it will cease to be even reported. Convocation is more important, or a meeting of Sanitary Inspectors at Moose Jaw. There is an anachronism about the whole thing. Before the war there were eight great powers : America, Germany, France, Russia,. LEAGUE OF NATION.^ ' 47 Austria, Italy, Japan, and England. Now there are only two. Germany is at present enslaved. The popu- lation of France dwindles even as her debt grows, and any claim to sea power has vanish- ed. In Russia the old harvest has been gather- ed and the seed of the new sowing time is still deep underground. Austria is in pieces; Italy tottering on the edge of revolution. Japan draws back to eastern isolation, aghast at a mechanical warfare it cannot understand. Two powers stand where there were eight in the old world. In the old world a League of Nations was thought of as preventing cliques and intrigues against each other between the component parts of the eight powers. The League might have been a holy alliance against Socialism, or to limit Navies, or to divide China and to exploit and to develop Turkey. Each of the eight would be a little jealous of the others. 48 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH and more than a little suspicious, but they were all birds of a feather and about the same size. A League to prevent a rumpus between them and to divide spoils between them, seem- ed natural and fair enough— to them. I suppose it seems fair enough to France and Italy now. Politeness forbids us to tell our late Allies that we love them and are sorry for them, but that we cannot regard them as great powers in the old sense of the term. And even France and Italy prefer to be one of a council of Four, rather than one of a Council of Forty-four along with Portugal. Gradually it is dawning upon the intelligence of mankind that if they want to avoid going along always in the old ways that lead to war, it is America that matters and can help most- America and Britain— America more than Britain. Americans do not grab, they are more of all nations, they grow so quickly— like the sun LEAGUE OF NATIONS 49 comiDg up out of the sea. But does anyone imagine that any of the other nations can be induced to prefer a British Empire, or an Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth, to a Super-State of Nations such as the League might have been ? That road is blocked. Is it not possible however, to get to the Super-State via aj Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth on the model of the Free Dominions of the British Empire ? How far could the other nations tolerate an Anglo-American world -peace ? It all seems to me to rest upon equal citizenship, bringing equal rights and equal good conceit : And our own good pride shall teach us 10 respect our comrade's pride. We have widened the family to the self-govern- ing Empire. We are widening the family to the race. Can we widen the family to the world ? The other nations cannot be expected to join any commonwealth, whatever its name 4 * 50 THE INDO-BIUTISH COMMONWEALTH if they are to be inferiors-looked down upon. Equal rights are essential. They must not ic^n any commonwealth which will selfishly control and exploit them. Self-government is essential. It is useless for any nation to ioin any such commonwealth, if they are so far ignorant and behind the modern post-war „,ind, that they cannot comprehend the use or morality of a commonweal above the damned and narrow nationalism of the mneteenth century. IV OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH Insolence, selfishness, and ignorance wrecked all the previous attempts to unite mankind in one community. The Greek world was based on slavery. The Roman world in addition selfish- ly exploited the Provinces. Both failed also through ignorance. They had no printing press, no communications, no general education, ibe same ignorance wrecked the empire of Charlemagne. Selfishness was the chief ob- stacle to the European bond of the Catholic Church. The churches became national to free themselves from Roman exploitation. The Spaniard sucked dry the countries he ruled for selfish ends, and began that national insolence 52 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH which has become the characteristic of western civilisation. The France of Louis XIV and Napoleon carried on these seeds of failure. While ignorance and even selfishness diminished, insolence was never carried to greater heights than under German hegemony. An intolerable national pride exhausted the patience of mankind. ^j,^ ^e — how do we stand ? No previous Empire has had to contend with less isnorance. Even the Roman had no such universal language. It is the lingua franca of India and China. In Japan it is the alter- native language. In the South Sea^, the Spice Islands, the West Indies, no other tongue is known to Commerce. A Sinhalese can make a speech in English but not in the vernacular. In Burma school-boys go on strike because they cannot get an English education The blacks of St. Helena and Jamaica and JNew Orleans have English as mother-tongue. The OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH 53 Burghers of Ceylon have completely forgotten Dutch. The printing press, the vast common liter- ature, the telegraph, the publicity of Parlia- ments and Councils and News Agencies, have minimised the blank universal ignorance in which past empires floundered. The lightning spread of education is everywhere putting the brains of men, and possibly of citizens, into the heads of the dumb driven cattle upon whom past empires battened till they putrefied. Ignorance will not be our difficulty. We might appeal to sense. Selfishness! Will that wreck world-union upon British Dominion lines ? We have a rather bad reputation for selfishness in India, but not elsewhere. At least, over vast areas, by smaller backward peoples, we are held to be the best of a bad lot. The Czecko-Slovak, the Hungarian, the Austrian, Lithuanian, Georgian or Arab, if he must have somebody bothering 54 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH him to feed the children, or dig his ruins, or straighten his finances, prefers an Englishman, because he is either too honest or too stupid to feather his nest to any large extent outside the scope of his salary. Missionary traditions and the non-conformist conscience have made the helpless black at least safer in English hands than in the clutches of other Europeans. Attention has already been called to the good repute of manv British Missions in dilapidated Eastern Europe. The tales told in India of the rapacity I of the old East India Company are atro- 1 cious ; and, when we look back one hundred I years, to the time when retired Civil Servants settled down on England as 'Nabobs' with just the same air and habits as does to-day the Johannesburg millionaire or Borneo oil king, we may as well admit that in the old days we frankly plundered those we OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH 55 could. Plunder is less respectable to-day, but India from old traditions still shows the worst side of the ' objects of administration '. The concession -hunters and company promoters help themselves to monopoly and privilege, and the Civil ser\'ants — their servants — find upon retiring, seats upon the Board of Directors. The shipping companies, who have ' arrived,' hate intruders. The merchants and banks like to keep ' it ' in the family. The Indian has a poor chance of a fair field and no favour. The Colonial Office has better traditions. It has stood between the European exploiter and the * native ' of Africa — not consistently but noticeably. Wilberforce has prevailed. The missionaries have helped. Nearly one hundred years ago it was the benevolent attitude of the Colonial Office towards the natives of South Africa that was the chief cause of the Great Trek. The fight with Slavery in the West Indies and Africa did the country and the office 56 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH good, improving their traditions. Governor Eyre, who hanged and shot the negroes of Jamaica, would not have mattered in a German Colony. His action, and the rage of liberal Britain brought, however, to a head and established, so long ago as 1866, the principles ■ of our Colonial rule. These principles were to be betrayed once more in 1915 in Ceylon, they are none too safe under the present Adminis- tration, but they have generally held good to this day, and make the interests of all the Colonial subjects Britain's unselfish aim. East Africa is no doubt a bad case of selfish government — what one must call, for want of a better term, the German type of rule, though one might just as well call it French or Belgian. The exploiters rule. The planters, by reason of their British social standing, have excep- tional power in East Africa. They have cowed the Colonial Office, and it is to them that we owe the iniquitous Labour legislation and Pass OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH 57 laws, the land grabbing, the bitter and damag- . ing insult to India. The Colonial Office knows that it has done wrong in Bast Africa, and it is something to have the conviction of sin. In Nigeria, on the other hand, and generally on the West Coast of Africa where European planters have not settled, the spirit of Lord Cromer is better carried out. " Every Englishman coming to me, must under^ stand that we govern Egypt in the in- terest of Egyptians and not in the interests of Englishmen." We have governed Nigeria frankly in the interests of the people of the country and not to make them work for white masters. No white man is allowed to acquire land in Northern Nigeria.' If you govern in the interests of the * native ' you must want them to be fit to ' This may no longer be true. I hear of hind leased in Bauchi to capitalist graziers. 58 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH govern themselves. It is a severe test. I hardly think that the Colonial Office has yet reached that pitch of selflessness. Indeed under a series of Conservative Colonial Secretaries there are marked signs of retrogression towards the German type, m East Africa, on the West Coast, in Nigeria, in Rhodesia and in Ceylon. We are still first cousins to the Hun. Selfishness is by no means stamped out, though in the Colonial Office the traditions of Wilberforce prevail more or less over the traditions of Warren Hastings. The India Office has forced through the Montagu Reforms. It may be held to have turn- ed over a new leaf, though with infinite hesitation and distressing accompaniment of submission to the Hun-0'Dwyer spirit. Henceforth we would hope that selflessness and the doctrine of India for the Indians, will prevail where once Dalhousie ruled. OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH 59 The Colonial Oflace started with better tradi- tions of selflessness. It can return to them under the changed direction. The Foreign Office has a policy neither selfish nor selfless, but purely dynastic. It is a close corporation looking after its kind in all countries. Its interests are more concerned with establishing cousins as monarchs and attaches than with estabHshing a British Commonwealth. The eighteenth century has survived within these sacred walls, and the aris- tocratic survivors of the eighteenth century are bothered by having to deal with such fellows as Kramarz, or Tchitcherin, or Simon, or Bauer, or Venezelos. They have accepted America and France, but the present world with its ruck of bourgeois Socialists is a trying world to refined natures, and needs putting ' right ' — back to its place. We can just say, perhaps, that we are less selfish than the empires of the past, that 60 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH England and America have a larger altruistic element than other countries, that an Anti- Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society survives with a political and religious backing of some strength only in the English-speaking lands. We may add that under the future Labour Government, born and bred in the Chapel, the altruistic element would prevail still more strongly. But the third test ? Insolence ! Insolence has been the bane of Spaniard, Frenchman and German in the past. Neither Spaniard nor Frenchman nor German is insolent to-day. It is evidently peculiar to a dominant race, and a dominant race which is attacked by the disease, ceases some day to be any longer dominant. No race believes itself to be insolent ; for insolence is certainly bad manners, and to many it is better to be called a coward than a cad. It is the other fellow who observes the insolence, and I am afraid that both OBSTACLES TO COMMONWKALTH 61 •Europeans and Indians, though thej would not for the world be so ill-bred as to say so, do think the English insolent — the English rather than the Scotch, the women rather than the men. It makes them curl up inside their shell, it makes them afraid to speak, afraid to show friendliness, it isolates us in this world which we would unite. The ' coloured races ' feel it more than Europeans, those * coloured races ' who are subject to us feel it most of all. There are many Indians who would rather be under French or Russian rule than under England. Bribery, corruption, every sort of great and petty injustice is better than insolence, daily sapping the self-respect of the victim. It is said, in doubtful circles, that Mr. Lloyd George's fundamental objection to Lord Robert Cecil is, that " he always makes me feel so mean ". I am afraid Lord Robert cannot help that. If that were all, no harm but good were done. But tens of thousands who are not Lord 62 THE INDO -BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Robert, trade upon his existence and without having his virtues make other people "feel mean". This is the breeding of that canker worm called " prestige ". The fewer qualities a man has to recommend him, the more surely will he dote upon national prestige. Prestige is necessary to a vast mass of our countrymen who would otherwise appear obviously inferior . to the ' coloured man ' they strive to impress. The Lord Robertses create the prestige, the Dyers require it — " I was afraid they would laugh at me ! " The people who create the prestige are not afraid of what people may think or do. Fools laugh. But he was afraid ; so he shot them down, as they shot down the last man on the " Flying Scud," with fingers all of a tremble till the last round was fired. He had not the grace to be sick afterwards. Patriotism implies that you are ready to die for your country, ready even to be unpopular OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH 63 for it. Prestige implies merely that you are ready to be insolent for it, for your own imagin- ed aggrandisement. From the point of view of Britain the insolence is slightly out of place and time. A millionaire may be bad mannered and yet get service and retain the regard of poor relations ; but an ex-millionaire, who has gone back to the office, cannot afford bad manners. Perhaps, too, before we educated them in the West, perhaps the people of the East, then, liked crawling on all fours. They do not like it now, and are tired of the bad manners. " The French behave as though they were visitors in India — you, British, as though you owned it," said to me an Indian of Pondicherry. This insolence of bad manners is not natural to the inhabitants of Great Britain in Great Britain. The real Irish never get it, nor the American ; even the Scotch are largely exempt. It is peculiar to the English middle class animal. \ 64 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWlfiALTH When he gets ever so little out of his element, and feels strange, like a fish out of water, he tries to assert himself. If he merely crosses to Boulogne he gets loud. If he gets to Paris he positively has to look down upon the French for fear of being himself looked down upon for his ignorance of the place and language. The further he gets from his moorings, the more he has to rely on England for his glory. There is, apparently, a sort of proverb in India that the Englishman east of Suez "leaves off his manners with his black dinner jacket ". ■ Bad manners are baxi enough in themselves, but if they persist now in this new world, if under the influence of victory they get worse, they will ruin us — destroy us, as Insolence destroyed Carthage, Rome, Spain and Potsdam. This insolence appears to me to come from dealing with subject-races. Just as servants have one voice for the servants' hall and one for the parlour, so OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH 66 Englishmen in the East have one voice for ser- vants and one for their skin-relatives. " The only Indians they know are their servants, and wjien they do speak to us, they think we are the same," said to me an Indian Member of Council. " The meaner the European the more he shouts," said an Engineer of Jamshedpur. It is the servants' hall voice of Europe. Gandhi says we want ' a change of heart '. We might well pray for it, but that will not change his master's voice. If you would substitute subjunctive for imperative you must change the facts. The facts are — we rule. The Englishman does not swagger about Japan looking as though he had bought the bag of tricks ; still less does he swagger through Sydney or Toronto. In those places he is a new chum and behaves himself accordingly — till he has a vote. It is where ' the coloured race' is ruled by his own countrymen (who 66 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH would disown him if they could) that he gets on to his highest elephant. The English official is lucky if he does not catch the disease too. No Post Office girl behind the counter is so annoying as the Deputy Assistant something-or-other who keeps a 'subject' Indian waiting half an hour upon the veran- dah door-mat while he discusses the races and a cigarette with his fifth cousin from Geelong. If the Deputy Assistant realised that the gentleman upon the door-mat paid him, if he knew that he had a vote, could get nasty questions asked about him in the Council, and might get him sacked, he would then discuss th^ races with him instead of with his fifth cousin. Instead of grunting, he would say: "Good morning, come right in!" or whatever was the equivalent in the local vernacular. He would say to his cousin : " This is one of my best pals, Rambhuj Dutt Chaudry, OBSTACLES TO COMMONWEALTH Q7 a sportsman to the finger tips," and R. D. Chaudrj, having no taste for business either, would sit down, endanger his immortal soul by having a drink, and go home saying of the Deputy Assistant : " Jones is a gentleman." As it is, he consumes himself with impotent rage, and dreams of revenge on all the insolent swine who misgovern India. Nothing else will change Jones. No series of Viceregal Circulars will induce him to com- promise himself, particularly in the eyes of his wife, by treating a ' subject ' as though he were a British Citizen. This, I have no doubt, was all that Mahatma Gandhi meant when he told me that a com- promise could only be expected if there were a change of heart on the part of the rulers. The only way to get that change of heart is— self- government and equal rights. Even bounders, cease to be insolent when they find that it does, not pay. 68 THE INDO-BRITTSH COMMONWEALTH We can stop this handicap (and we must stop the handicap if England is to pull through) by extending the Dominion idea and putting the quickest end to this idea of subject-races. The three handicaps to world union by means of free Commonwealth are Ignorance, Selfishness and Insolence. Ignor- ance is vanishing; so far as selfishness is nationally damaging, self-government in Dominions cuts it out ; insolence too can only be ended in the same way. Free institutions in every intelligent part of the Commonwealth, and equal rights for all throughout the Commonwealth! By these, these only, can insolence, selfishness and ignorance be vanquished and a true Common- wealth established. EQUAL RIGHTS FOE BRITISH CITIZENS Once upon a time, when I administered after the Boer War the district Ermelo-Carolina, a Boer farmer said to me— he was one of those whom we wished to bring into the Administra- tion as J. P.—" No ! as long as you treat us like Kaffirs and not as citizens you can manage the country yourselves and go to hell in your own unaided way." Then they got their vote and their Dominion Home Rule. Fourteen years later, as I was wandering in the train of General Smuts through German East Africa, a long Khaki officer of a British 70 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Cavalry Regiment jumped from his'horse and embraced me. It was the same last-ditch Boer, become Colonel Ben Smit of the South African Horse. His father had been the General Smit who stormed Majuba Hill. From Majuba Hill to that little wood be- tween Bapaume and Flers, where the South Africans died, is a long way, but it is a short time in the life of nations. Equal rights have bridged the gulf, cut down the time, and made the transformation. When I went ashore on the " River Clyde " on V. Beach in 1915, there served under me in the ranks a very gallant gentleman called Barton who went out to get in the wounded | under fire after dark. But that man is now an Irish M. P., in gaol as an Irish M. P. should be while we continue to take Ireland to hell in our own unaided way. " Givis Eomanm sum " put Ben Smit into aj British Uniform. Dublin Castle put Dicky EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 71 Barton into a British gaol. We cannot even be friends without equal rights. There is really little serious difficulty in the way of equal rights for all white British citi- zens. Ireland will soon have finished with Dublin Castle, and Sir Edward Carson, and Martial Law. The real struggle is going to be over equal rights for white and ' coloured ' British Citizens. Hitherto we have gone on with the pretence that the Indian or Burman or Jamaican was not yet fitted for full citizenship. But now we are getting up against obvious facts. If they are sufficiently fitted to have the vote and res- ponsibility for government in their own coun- try, why are they not yet fitted for equal rights outside their own country ? Th^y are no longer children. We do not consider them children. But we do not like mixing with them, and — British Citizens or not — we won't ! Australia shall be white Australia. South Africa shall be — well ! whatever colour it 72 * THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH thinks it is. Canada will not allow her Unions to be undercut by Coolie Labour. Here we come to the real objection. The white man says that he does not wish to mix with the brown or black, he means that he will not, if he can help it, be cub out by the brown or black. It is an economic question. White labour on the Pacific coast, the great Labour Unions of Australia, see themselves faced with ruin and destruction if the cheaper labour is allowed to arrive. America is trying the same defence against the cheaper labour of Europe. All employers clamour for cheap labour of any colour ; all workers oppose and will oppose it by law and votes or violence. In South Africa and East Africa the anti- Indian movement comes not from Labour, for labour is black and cheaper still, but from the middleman, the shopkeeper and clerk, the trader who would be undercut. There, it is not immigration that they seek to stop, but EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 73 independence and settlement. Again the objection may be called racial, but is really economic— just the same reason that causes street loafers to chase Chinamen or negroes in Cardiff or on the East India Dock Road. In South Africa they prevent the Indian from buying land. In Cardiff they prevent the * niggers ' buying women. Free competi- tion is the devil ! How can this position be met and harmonis- ed with equal rights ? The foundation of the British Commonwealth is non-interference. Neither Britain nor an Indian Dominion can or must attempt to coerce Australia. So far as Indian immigration is concerned, and Indian penal laws in Africa, the matters must be left to free negotiation between free partners. Some concessions may be made when India is respected : others will be still refused. India has but one weapon— retaliation (which is at present denied her). She can 74 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH some day apply the same rules and laws to the Australian or South African who wishes to use India. It would be much better for India if she did not retaliate. She must, however, have the chance, for the chance means justice and equal rights. It is her own business, of course, but restrict- ive legislation and all interference with free intercourse leads to the same end. It hampers development as well as narrows the mind. The argument applied to India, applies equally well to all the Dominions that use these restrictions. As we have seen, the real objection to Indian immigration is economic and not racial. The real answer to restrictions is economic and not racial. Australia is prepared to face the econo- mic result, but let us all quite understand that the economic result will follow. Statesmen are for ever trying to tamper with and break laws of nature or laws of political economy ; EQUAL RIGHTS FOR RBITISH CITIZENS 75 and always all the time the natural law comes back on them like a punching-ball. Indian immigration into Canada is prevented. Indian workers, therefore, remain in India, or perhaps go to Mesopotamia. In the Punjab or in Mesopotamia they produce the wheat that they might have helped to produce in Canada. They produce sugar in Burma instead of in California. The world of consumers is just a little worse off, as one must suppose that the goods could be produced more economically in Canada or California. The landlords of Canada and California are certainly worse off as there must be less demand for their lands. The Indian coolie must be a little worse off, otherwise he would not have wished to go to California. But how India (or the Indian landlord rather) is supposed to be worse off under the restriction, I cannot understand. India is insulted. True ! But an insult that pays becomes a joke. 76 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH They will not have cheap Indian Labour inside the Dominions, nor I suppose would my colleagues of the Labour Party like to allow such labour in Britain. Very well, let us look economics in the face. That same cheap Indian Labour will in a few years be producing in India, from up-to-date factories financed by British as well as Indian capital, vast masses of cheap goods at prices we cannot meet. Australia, to preserve her racial purity and standard of comfort, has already enormous tariffs which eat up, as they are increased, the aforesaid standard of comfort. All lands that try this labour protection fall back upon this dreary round of economic restriction-failure, yet more restrictions — more failures. On the whole, first and last, I prefer edu- cating up the Indian to western knowledge and western wages by freer intercourse and freer knowledge. This can be better done if they are in close contact with whites. Raise, rather EQUAL BIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 17 than segregate ! All these things rebound so in the end, and that which is just, is also in the long run that which is expedient. If Labour in Australia or in England tries the other road, it must have its way ; but I am against that way, and, throughout, for freedom— because it is right, and because it pays. What has been said about the rights of Dominions to restrict immigration (of white or brown or yellow or black) if they so choose, refers to Dominions only— to Colonies that have risen to that rank, with popularly elected legis- latures representing the whole people, and with Governments responsible to the whole people.^ It does not refer to Crown Colonies where the Colonial Office is supposed to watch over the interests of all His Majesty's Subjects. The insolent attitude of the Kenya Colony Colnnt'^^K' ""f«'^""^fc«ly. '^ofc true of <3outh Africa, juat in that Colony where we could have made it true to the inestimable Our s';S;.Td'"^^ "' f"^ '■°'""'""^ l^^°I^'«' ^"' °f the EmpTre. Kmr smn are nnding us out. 78 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH Grovernment towards Indians and ' natives ' is a direct violation of the principle of equal rights without an atom of justification. It is difficult to write with restraint about the Kenya Colony. When it was founded twenty years ago the land was largely given out to varioi>3 British aristocrats and it has remained an aristocrat-planter colony, with all a planting colony's hunger for land and labour. Year after year saw the lands of the ' natives ' further restricted and further pressure put upon them to work. The planters were frank. There has surely never been so frank a commission as that which enquired into the Labour question in B. E. A. some dozen years ago. Even the compulsory clothing of the ' native ' was sug- gested in order that he might have to work for wages to buy the clothes. The Kavirondo ladies do not dress as a rule and, in the interests of Society {i.e., of the Planters) their EC^UAL BIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 79 husbands should be compelled to buj them Manchester fig-leaves. The Report and Evidence must be seen to be believed. Yet it has been actually surpassed by the Kenya Commission that dealt with the 'Indian peril '. The Indians were in East Africa before the British. They were used for making the railways and building the country. They run the railway and the retail trade. The bulk of the wholesale trade is theirs too, as that trade is chiefly with India. When the war came, the Indian Army defended the Colony from the Germans. The Indian railways and railwaymen ' ran ' the war. The Sikhs and Punjabis were dying for the country in the jungle of German East Africa, while the Somalis and even white Nairobi troops were mutiny-struck. Now, thanks to the Planter Commission and a weak Government, these same Indians are 80 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH segregated like Jews in a Russian Ghetto, for- bidden to buy land, deprived of education and the vote, while a hundred indignities are piled upon the heads of the people who in truth have done the work and have made Kenya possible. Not even Fiji makes all India so ragingly indignant. The Colonial Office should understand, that on one side are 315,000,000 Indians justly indignant, and on the other 3,500 white settlers unjustly triumphant. And what sort are these settlers? One man shoots a * native' whom he suspects of sheep-stealing. He does not kill him but allows him to die slowly of his wound like carrion. When arrested he pleads guilty, but is found 'innocent' by his mates on the jury. By dint of great Parliamentary pressure he is expelled the Colony. By dint of great social pressure he is allowed to return there. Another man of a million acres, flogs * natives ' in front of the Governor's nose to show his contempt ECiUAl. BIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 81 for one Governor, and lectures another for two hours on his arrival, on what he has got to do if the planters consent to accept him. Alternately the planters threaten secession from the British Empire and whine for British money to build railways to develop their estates. Every Governor save one has gone under in the struggle, and * done pooja ' to the settler kings. The one who stood up lived in strict seclusion to avoid seeing them. It is for this gang that we sacrifice India, humanity and equal rights. The Dominions must have their way. But at present, the British Colonial Office and the' British Parliament is responsible for Kenya and Tanganyika. We will grant Dominion Home Rule to Kenya ; but let it be quite clearly understood that, when we do so, whatever the ' education test applied, the hundred of thou- sands of Indians and Moors, and the millions of : * natives ' shall have votes on the same terms as ! ' 6 82 THE TNDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH the Other British citizens, and for the same territorial electorates. Equal rights alone can take the place of Parliamentary supervision, and equal rights will operate a good deal more efficiently than the Colonial Office and Parha- ment have done so far in East Africa. Even now the Delhi Legislative Assembly might send a commission to Fiji and Ceylon to report on the conditions of Indian labour in those Colonies and to lay down the sole condi- tions on which that labour will be allowed to emigrate or to remain. So far as their nationals are ''concerned, they even now can take the place of the British Parliament in directing the Colonial Office. The points to be constantly emphasised are : no restriction upon immigration of Indians into territories under the control of the British Parliament; equal rights for Indians and 'natives' and Europeans when inside those territories ; no grant of any free constitution to EQUAL RIGHTS FOU BRITISH CITIZENS 83 any such territory without votes being granted to Indians on the same terms as to the other inhabitants. Equal rights must also involve for all citizens, irrespective of colour, equal pay for equal work,* at least when working for the Government' Again the economic objection shelters itself behind the colour bar. The educated English- man, as well as the Australian worker and the South African shopkeeper, will do all in his power to prevent the Indian educated man from freelj competing with him. It is in the lower rather than in the upper ranks of the Civil Service that this struggle still shows itself. In the regular Civil Service, this battle has now been almost won by the Indian and he is accepted as an allj. It is in civil life, in com- merce and industry, that the gulf is preserved more carefully than in the semi-responsible services. An Indian finds it difficult to rise to the top in the fields of commerce and finance TH^NDO-BKITI SH OOMMONWEALTii and the difficulty is not all of his own making. That however, cannot be remedied by Act of Parliament, that depends on the gradual assertion of economic laws. The one employment in India in which the ' native ' is completely free to compete on equal rights with the European is in the profession of"" the law ; and in that profession he has, in spite of the prevalence of British judges, almost competed the British lawyer out of the field. Mr. Eardley Norton, M. L. A., alone can stand the competition and survive. Equal pay for equal work has justified itself and India in this profession. It is a little hard but quite understandable, that no class of Indians is so disliked by the European in India as is this lawyer class. That they are in many cases patriots and nationalists is an offence less heinous than the standing proof of their success in open competition. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 85 There remains the more difficult question of equal rights for African Negroes, In the case of Votes, in such territories as may become fitted for either diarchy or self-government, the difficulty is not serious. Educational tests will prevent the flooding of the more civilised element of the population. In such territories equal rights to hold, to purchase, to lease and to mortgage land can be freely given, and should be given. No immi- gration problems here complicate the question. Each Crown Colony is too jealously preserving its own ' Labour Force ' to allow recruitment for outside masters. The only labour Right to be demanded or preserved in Nyassaland and Rhodesia is the right to leave the country. The difficulties of rights for African, Papuan West Indian Negro are connected almost entirely with Labour Laws and Land. The Pass Laws employed to coerce labour apply to or 86 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH black and not to white. Of course ; for you cannot make white men slaves. The abolition of these Penal Laws is as vital to the pride and future of British citizenship as is self-government for British citizens more developed in civilisation. The right of a worker to choose and change his master ; the right of free movement and free choice of domicile : the riofht to be sued before a civil and not before a criminal court for any alleged breach of contract ; the right to use the land ; — these rights should be fundamental wherever the British flag flies, just as under the flag the slave was freed. This is one of those matters that Labour men well understand. They understand the object of the capitalist. They know the helplessness of the worker with law and the policeman against him. They know too that what the capitalists do with the African, the same people would like to do with British Labour. The EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 87 Iron Heel will draw no subtle colour dis- tinctions. White, brown, or black, there can be no pride in being a British Citizen if a British citizen can be put in gaol for leaving his job, or haled before a magistrate and jlogged for being insolent. That will not do for the Indo- British Commonwealth. " Givis Romanus sum " saved any Roman citizen from being flogged. If planters in Ceylon can consent to abolish this semi-slavery, I see no good reason why planters in Kenya, Rhodesia, Guiana and Trinidad should not do so too. Then South Africa for very shame could not long continue the iniquity. Intimately connected with the Labour legis- lation is the right to hold land. Over most of Africa, land is naturally held in common by the village community. The law of the white man has introduced individual tenure and cannot conceive of their common ownership. 88 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH The interests of the white men lead to the same conclusion as their laws. They covet land for themselves ; they want labour to work the land. The African with enough land of his own to cultivate will not work for them. He must, therefore, be deprived of his rights in the common lands. The French and Germans in their African Colonies were quite clear on this point. All the land became immediately upon annexation the property of the French or German Govern- ments, to lease or to sell to white or black as they chose. We were more careful of the "rights of property," or more hypocritical. Bach village community has a chief or head-man. He is in effect trustee of the village lands for the community. We treated him as an English squire of the parish and allowed capitalists to buy his people's land from him, often for a mere song. He was of course ready enough EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 89 to part cheaply with what was not his own. The black coast lawyers helped the chiefs to sell and the concessionaires to buy. They lent money and helped themselves to the land also. They joined very effectively in the expropriation and exploitation of their fellows. They are now the chief obstacles to the reforms which E. D. Morel has always advocated. To do the Colonial Office justice, they have tried to check the expropriation since it has been called to their notice. They do now put considerable difficulties in the way of Gold Coast Chiefs 'on the make'. Only leases of land are allowed. The area is inspected with a view to preserving the present cultivators. Part of the rent obtained is retained for educa- tion or otherwise for the good of the tribe. In Nigeria the Colonial Office has stopped the practice altogether, made all the land the common property of Nigeria (not of England) 90 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH leased it out to individual cultivators, with secure tenure and at revisable rents. No European or Coast lawyer can acquire any land in northern Nigeria, except a mere build- ing site, and that only on lease at revisable rents based on the land value at the time of revision. The benefit has been threefold. First, a very large increase in production by natives from their own soil. The bulk of the ever- growing export of cocoa from the Gold Coast is native grown. Cotton in Nigeria bids fair to repeat the experience of cocoa on the Coast. The second result has been a contented and happy population where once was turbulence ' and Moslem fanaticism. No part of the Moslem ^ world passed through the war so quietly as did I the Fulani of Nigeria. Lastly the land revenue has increased largely every year and consti- tutes now almost the single tax in northern Nigeria. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS * 91 But elsewhere in Africa, outside the West Coast, conceptions of land ownership and res- ponsibility have been very different. Generally the British State or the Chartered Company have assumed ownership, and allowed the natives to live in such reserves as Government thinks fit. Ever, as settlers want the good lands, the unfortunate native is moved on to an inferior reserve. The worst examples of this came from Kenya and Rhodesia. If one could but stabilise the reserves even as they are at present, and secure for the sole benefit of those living in them, the rents or taxes levied upon the reserve inhabitants, some sense of right would be preserved. That might yet save the British 'Native ' of Bast and Central Africa, but the pressure is worse to-day than ever before. Labour is so urgently required, and labour can be only obtained from the landless man. The inhabi- tant of the Sudan is happy in this, that he 92 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH inhabits a country which is too deadly even for the recruiter and concession hunter. The sun and * sudd ' still preserve from civilisation the Babr-el-Gazal. But the right to a reserve of land to culti- vate, a reserve for his grandchildren also, is not the only Land Right to which the British- African is entitled. He is disabled at present by law, in South Africa, Rhodesia, Nyassaland, Tanganyika and Kenya, from buying or leasing land outside the reserves for his individual use or cultivation. Apart from sheer chattel slavery one may say that no step has been omitted to preserve the essence of slavery. The British Common- wealth, Indo-British or American-British— can never proceed to world -union, while such denial of the Rights of Man continues to mock at equal citizenship. One inequality of right remains to be men- tioned. In many parts of the world we govern EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BRITISH CITIZENS 93 through native chiefs and by native custom. We find this in parts of Nigeria, in Ashanti, and in other less developed ' spheres ' of the West Coast. It is the system in the Malay States. Apparently we are to find it in Mesopo- tamia. Sixty millions of Indians live under the system. So do the Arabs, if Arabia is under our Mandate. E. D. Morel would pre- serve this. Mr. Woolf would look forward to representation and destroy it. It is all a question of time and development. In such cases there is often gross injustice, tyranny without redress, more than semi- slavery, even murder and torture. The in- habitants have no real rights as British citizens. On the other hand 'Native' Government is what they have been accustomed to, and, as they can conceive of nothing better, the majority probably prefer this state of affairs to the rule of some white official whose soul revolts at their customs. Traditional injustice and 94 THE INDO-BRITISE COMMONWEALTH inequality becomes almost sacred. It is a question of degree. We must perhaps leave the position as it is for some time, trying to influence the native chiefs and pressing above all for the education of the people. Since we began 'civilising' it has always been a question of degree. In India we have repressed suttee, but we have not yet raised the outcast panchama to equality in the schools. In Benin we have suppressed witch-doctoring, but semi -slavery continues. VI RESPONSIBLE DOMINIONS Geneeally speaking therefore, equal rights can be granted to Indo-British citizens consistently with continued Dominion Self-Government. But Equal Rights presuppose that intelligent citizens have the right to votes, and votes of equal power and responsibility in the govern- ment of their Colony, Province or Municipality. All depends upon responsible government. Wherever responsible government is held back the only justifiable excuse is that the intelligent citizens are so few in numbers and so con- centrated in interest, that they would be more likely than alien officials to bully and to exploit the uneducated majority of their own people. 96 THE INDO-BRITISH OOMMONWEAJiTH This excuse for hesitation did not arise in the case of Australia, or Canada, or New Zealand, or Newfoundland, when these Dominions demanded and received responsible government. The intelligent were sufficiently numerous, the franchise sufficiently wide, to obviate all danger of the sort. Dishonest and corrupt these new rulers might be, but the whole of the inhabitants of, say, Newfoundland, would get what they deserved and could correct it when they wished. In the case of South Africa, the gift of res- ponsible government provided no adequate safeguards and was, on the above consideration, premature. For the great majority, Blacks and Indians, were left voteless, at the complete mercy of the intelligent white voters. Only the Blacks in Cape Colony retained their restricted franchise. I shall be told that this was inevitable as arising out of the terms of Peace at Vereeniging RESPONSIBLE DOMINIONS 97 in 1902. That is not so. The Indians might have been given voting rights; they were intended to have such in municipal matters, and had not an English official Member of Council voted against the Government, they could have got the municipal vote. Nor did the terms of peace affect Natal, where also justice could have been done to both Indian and Native. No ! it was not merely the peace terms, it was an unlioly alliance of exploiters against exploited. Briton and Boer joined together to preserve their privileges at the expense of the coloured i-aces and of justice. How they have used their power since, over both Indian and Native, is too well-known to need telling. South Africa is the latest of the existing Dominions. It is the least British, thanks to the disinheritance of the non-European. There will some day be trouble there, for slavery destroys owner as well as slave. There is no 98 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH land where the Iron Heel is more visible. It has already produced the butchery of blacks at Port Elizabeth to add to that of the white miners at Johannesburg. Thanks to the dis- franchisement of the non-European, there may soon be international political trouble, when (if ever) responsible government gets into the hands of General Hertzog and his back-veld Boers. General Smuts and Premier Cresswell cannot last for ever. Tlie hope of South Africa lies in a remnant of liberals— Rose-Innes and Merriman ; it lies in Colonel Cresswell and his Labour Party; but Labour, deprived of an unskilled labour vote, is Labour hamstrung. If white labour is not too jealous and blind. General Smuts and Colonel Cresswell may yet get together and find the way out by extending the franchise. Canning called in the New World to redress the balance of the old. If Labour could call in the Indian, they might redress a RESPONSIBLE DOMINIONS 99 just as dangerously unjust balance in South Africa. The other four more purely British Dom- inions just go on cutting their wisdom teeth. Australia's troubles are few— a chronic want of cash is the most worrying. Australian babies appear to be frightened into being good by horrid tales of Japanese conquest. But anyone who has fought beside Australia and seen Japan, remains unimpressed by this bogey. Five millions to sixty would make no difference. If all the rest of the world were sunk beneath the waves, Japan would have more reason to be nervous than Australia. One is told that Australians are ashamed of their ancestry. It would appear, however, that the poachers and rebels— trades unionists and others— who were sent to Botany Bay come of the best, not of the worst, stock in the old country. It may have left them with a cockney accent, it has also bequeathed them a 100 THE INDO-BRTTISH COMMONWEALTH contempt for rank and caste and position that would have delighted Robert Burns. And the result is that there was some justice in the appeal— ironic or pathetic— made by a certain journal: "Will someone come and help Australia win the war ? " Probably the real trouble in Australia will be a stationary population, due to reduction of the birth-rate and restricted immigration. This will be coupled with increasing cost of Hving and rising wages. They have set their heart on a ' White Australia,' and a ' White Australia' I suppose it has to be. If they keep the Northern Territory empty, it is their own look out. When I see furious complaints in the Times as to the iniquity of keeping empty a territory where 30,000,000 coolies could work, I reflect that the complaint may well come from those who would like to have coolies to develop their property for them. I would prefer to see the Indian coolie RESPONSIBLE DOMINIONS 101 developing India as a free man. There is too much * coolie' in the South Seas. Australia will always be a White Labour stronghold, for the average working-man intelligence in Australia is the highest in the world, and there is no split in Labour's ranks between skilled and unskilled, no Avhite and coloured to divide. Many wonderful Socialist experiments will be made with their property, which is Australia. Local taxation levied upon the unimproved land value, a general tax on land values over and above the local tax, make big landlordism somewhat difficult in Australia. It is made difficult to hold back nature from man to deprive the man of a chance to live free. A large step has been taken towards making the land of Australia the Right of the people of Australia. It may be that the consciousness of this right has done something to make the Australian what he is. The land lesson that 102 THE INDO -BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Labour has taught Australia spreads, and is becoming the commonplace of the free Do- minions. May they infect also Great Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth ! So far as the British Commonwealth is con- cerned, the Union of Britain and Australia has been strengthened by the war. There is much gratitude on one side, and an increased pride in the combine and the combined victory on the other. The freeing of Ireland, which cannot now be long delayed, will establish the Union even more firmly than the war ; for the Irish in Australia, as in Britain or America, breed like Catholics and have a habit of coming out on top in politics. The future of the Canadian Dominion and Canada's relation to the Commonwealth is likely to be nearly as smooth as Australia's. In Canada the population will increase, but most of the increase will be immigration from the States. The French Canadian will breed and RESPONSIBLE DOMIXIONS 103 spill over into Ontario; the new Western Provinces will grow and overshadow the old East. If one can call America foreign, Canada must tend to become more foreign. If, however, we look from the wider point of view to^vards an Anglo-American world-union, the Ameri- canisation of Canada is not to be regretted. Canada has been in the past something of a wedge, keeping Britain and America apart. The Maine Boundary, the Oregon treaty, the seals of Behring Sea, the route to Dawson City — what a number of diplomatic worries have arisen with America by reason of Canada ! Now Canada may well become a bond uniting the old and new races. Fifteen years ago Canada and the States were on the bicker, assei-ting themselves against each other, spreading their tails. Possibly even now an active press— Hearst or anti-Hearst — might work up again something of the old 104 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH feeling. But it would be flogging a dead horse. They have fought side by side. Before the time of Ypres young Canada had to show off and bluster, if only for its own satisfaction. Now it is unnecessary; they have arrived. There are fewer gross inequalities calling out for Rousseau in Canada ; only, there is visible, coming from America, a growing tendency to hold down, stamp on and savagely assail orga- nised labour. In North America, earlier than in other lands, the Iron Heel will provoke assas- sination. Pinkertonian methods and Citizen Committees dispense witb justice, but those who use them, in Winnipeg or elsewhere, may not always be in power, and injustice is a two-edged sword. As for New Zealand and Newfoundland, little need be said. They are British in stock and unlikely to change. Newfoundland is the smallest of the Dominions. Complete repre- sentation and responsibility has been given to a RESPONSIBLE DOMINIONS 105 community of only 243,000 souls. We are mdebted to them for a very gallant regiment, and they are indebted to us for the settlement of the Fisheries and French shore questions on terms far more favourable than an independ- ent State of that size could possiblv have secured. New Zealand is no doubt a more model Dommion than Newfoundland. It is the Mecca alike of the Single Taxer and the total abstainer. It supplies us with frozen mutton and solid argument on every political problem. We ourselves are responsible for the only' mistake in New Zealand. It provided the only case in the Empire of communal representation -the only case, that is, prior to the Indian Reforms. The Maoris, a disappearing race were given votes when the constitution was settled ; but they were not given votes on the general electorate, but only for 2 or 3 special Maori constituencies. As a protection for this 106 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH minority of 80,000 souls, this special repre- sentation is futile. I'heir representatives are debauched and bought, while the ordinary M.P. having no Maori voters among his electors can afford to neglect their interests as though they did not exist. Both New Zealand and Australia, in bud- ding off, have adopted Crown Colonies of their own. New Zealand has now Samoa ; Australia has added Nauru and Kaiser Wilhelm's Land and all the German cannibal islands south of the line to their old Papuan Colony. The Dominions are, as one should say, shouldering the white man's burden ; and, though in fact the nati7es of these islands will have to shoulder the burden of the white man, that burden is not likely to be heavier than when the German ruled. The Australian and New Zealand Parlia- ments however, have yet to develop the Wilberforce-Buxton strain in their politicians, RESPONSIBLE DOMINIONS 107 and the friends of justice will watch with anxiety the Land and Labour developments in these new and distant fields of exploitation. Phosphates do not make for freedom. One may feel reasonably and regretfully sure that the present League of Nations is little likely to demand a very exacting account from their very independent mandatories in the South Seas. In June this year all these five Dominions, and official India, will be represented at the' Premiers' Conference. There they will discuss whether to tighten or to slacken the bonds of the Commonwealth. Shall Canada have her own diplomatic representatives? Or, on the other side, can we look at any scheme of Imperial Federation ? How, possibly, could any Imperial Conference commit a Dominion to Imperial expenditure on defence or debt or trading credit 'f How can currency be stabilised, and bills on London provided for the needv ? 108 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH To my mind they had better leave these questions to nature. We got along in the past by making necessary adjustments ; a stitch here and a stitch there, and the old shirt serves. I distrust the superabundant energy of new tailors. Our new Colonial Secretary may try to fit us to the style of coat he likes best, but we want the coat that fits. They would better spend their time in discussing equal rights for all British subjects. They would be better employed in considering the next great move —the widening of the Commonwealth. There is one simple way in which it could be widened at once without any trouble. In the summer of 1918 I put the following Re- solution upon the Order Paper of the House of Commons : " That in the opinion of this House the time has now come when the rights and privileges of British Citizens should be conferred auto- matically upon all Citizens of the United States RKSPONSIBLE l^OMINIONS 109 of America who may be within the bounds of the British Empire." The proposal was favourably received in high quarters, but it was judged inadvisable at that time to distinguish in any way between our allies. There are many Americans in our Colonies whose votes are needed and would be wisely given. The passport restrictions are also particularly galling to Americans, who not unnaturally object to being treated on a par with possible Bolsheviks. Whether America reciprocates or not, it would be a safe move in the right direction. On the one side, therefore, let the Premiers' Conference approach America with a free offer of equal citizenship in the British Empire. On the other side let them extend the number of the free Dominions— let them extend the conception of real equality to Ceylon, Burma, and Palestine, to India and above all to Ireland. Vll IRELAND Secession has an ugly sound, but I cannot think that Abraham Lincoln was right. It seems to me that if a great body of citizens desire to secede from any country, and are prepared to take their share of that country's old indebtedness and liabilities, they are entitled to do so. I prefer Jefferson to Hamilton, democracy to efficiency, even for defence. An unwilling partner is a greater danger to any country than a separate country free and no longer held by force. I do not know whose fleet is supposed to be going to threaten Great Britain from the safe ICELAND 112 refuge of Berehaven, but I would rather have an enemy using Berehaven, than twenty million bitter Irishmen scattered throughout the world and seizing every opportunity to destroy those who hold their country down. In any case whether the danger be greater or less, the nght to secede is the right to govern oneself : it IS primary. The Jews went out into the wilder- ness. The Boers trekked north into the un- knovvn beyond the great river. Both were withm their rights. So too, as we now reckon were the thirteen states of j>^orth AmericI withm their rights when they seceded, so was Brazil when it left Portugal, or Columbia under Bolivia. Qualifications are, however, necessary. One Js, that joint obligations responsibly entered into, must be honoured, if right is to be pre- served. Another, that a majority of all inhabitants of the seceding area must be for secession, not only some, who happen to be 112 TBF, MDO-BBITISD COMMONWEALTH White or powerful. Another, that the minority who do not wish to secede must not suffer for their convictions. Viewed from this perfectly democratic point of vision, Ireland has a right to secede from the British Empire, and the five counties, or the greater part of them, have a right to secede from Ireland-provided that the seceding Irish will take their share of the National debt for the incurring of which they «e as res- ponsible as are the rest of «s. What their share may be is a matter for arbitration. The protection of the rights and interests ot the non-national minorities is the matter which always causes most difficulty "'.- "^^^ f secession. The Catholic Irishmen ,n the Fall Road district of Belfast, and the Protestant n,inority in Dublin and the south will think that they at least need protection, the one from Ulster, the other from Ireland. If secession has to come about, if there is not still a way IRELAND I 2 3 out through Domiuion Home Kule, then for the whole of Ireland, both these minorities would be best protected by being given ten years, within which time they mav decide whether they will accept Irish or British citi- zenship. If in that time they find that there 18 no danger to themselves or their property in the alien land, then they will doubtless remain citizens of the country in which they live. If on the other hand, they consider that their interests would be better looked after by their own countrymen across the border, then they could ' opt ' to become Irish or British Citizens. That there would be in the latter case some bickermg continually between Ulster and the rest of Ireland is undeniable. The Irish Con- sul would be unpopular in Belfast and the British Consul as unpopular in Cork. The solution is, however, just, and beyond tliat one cannot go. Other safeguards might be provided by special representation, but such safeguards H 114 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH tend to perpetuate divisions and cannot be welcomed in any democracy. It seems to me, that this standard of absolute right is a better jumping off ground for the eternal Irish question than any argument of expediency, or religion, or ' retribution, or reparation. The Irish desire no gift, but their rights— their right even to be fooHsh. They do not want to be grandmothered by bullies. It nauseates. The wise statesman would even now hold a plebiscite, parish by parish, in Ireland. "Do you, or do you not, wish to secede from Great Britain?" and every parish that voted for secession and was terri- torially connected with its fellows should be offered to De Valera as Sinn Fein Ireland. Safeguards for minorities, share of debt, trans- portation problems, possible redistribution of and compensation for border population,— all these points could be freely discussed upon IRELAND 115 efjual terms once the Sinn Fein M. P.'s are recognised as representative of, and responsible for, independent Ireland. Bitterly must every Englishman regret that it has come to this pass. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. We of this and succeeding generations shall pay for the tyran- nies of landlordism in Ireland which our ancestors supported or tolerated, and for our modern Black and Tans. We shall pay ! It may not perhaps be so well realised what we shall lose. What we owe to Ireland is not cash, but character and dignity. The Irish are the gentlemen of Europe. We were very proud to belong to what we imagined to be the same race. They added to the prestige of our nation— a nation sometimes inclined to deplorable snobbery. It is in the House of Commons that we shall miss them most. Whether statesmen are wise or not, soon— too soon— the Irish Member will 116 THE INDO-BElTIS}f COMMONWEALTH be a thing of the past, a delightful memory to those who knew him. With Joe Devlin and Jerry McVengh, with the last of the Redmonds, will go the last of the breed that made the glory of Parliament. They knew the machine and how to work it, they desired no office nor title; poor men, they were unimpressed by pomp and dignity, and they " laughed at the world as they found it ". How we already miss some of them, in the tea-room, on the terrace, on the floor of the House! John Dillon the radical, Willie Redmond with his perfect oratory, the wan who carried corn sacks when at home, and who required six policemen to carry him out ; McKean who knew that heretics would roast in hell, but gave me a holy medal to keep me safe through the wars ; above all Colonel Arthur Lynch with his waving arms and delight in battle, 'my honourable and gallant friend' whom they sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. IRELAND ]17 The family is broken up and the Irish have left us. Thej shall not go far awaj if Labour can help it. Mv impression is, that those of us who wish for a free Union of Self-governing peoples can still preserve Ireland within that Union. First the Irish who wish to secede must have their right. It- must be no gift nor grace. Their Right is to govern themselves, not to govern all Ireland. Belfast will be outside their pale. Yet^ every Irishman wishes to see Ireland one. Now what reality does Independence offer that is not already included in Dominion Home Rule. In fact, as we all know, Great Britain can interfere with, and be a nuisance to, a foreign Government with greater ease and greater frequency than she can in the case of a self-governing Dominion. If Mr. Lloyd George were to say : " We were wrong. Irishmen out- side the five counties are perfectly entitled to secede. Secede if you will ; or, if you prefer 118 THE INDO -BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Dominion Home Rule for the whole of Ireland, then take that "—if Mr. Lloyd George could be wise and think of the future of the country instead of the next election cry, then I am confident of Ireland's choice. The whole of the Irish export trade is with Great Britain. Their banks are in Belfast. Their every material interest is in the Union of all Ireland and in a business connection with England and Scotland. They flame easily, but the saving grace of humour prevents race- hatred of the abiding sort. Flames die out more quickly than smouldering grievances. Every Irish martyr will be remembered for ever ; but no name, save that of the unfortu- nate Cromwell, is remembered in execration among the Irish. Bearing all this in mind it seems quite possible to found a sixth Dominion— let it be the Commonwealth of Ireland, if the word Republic is barred out for the time to save IB ELAND 119 susceptibilities. A Commonwealth was once as republican as any Republic. Self-determination for Ireland is based in this book on grounds of right. It will have a practical beneficial effect upon the future fortunes of Anglo-American world-union also. Expediency in this case again coincides with right. We are told that there are 18,000,000 persons of Irish blood in America. A large element hostile to England will be, if not reconciled, at least deprived of their ammuni- tion. It should, however, be clearly understood that the Irishman abroad is far more irreconcilable than the Irishman in Ireland or England. Irish leaders abroad are a force in the politics of every country in which they settle. They are a force because of Ireland's grievances. It is the grievances, even more than their united church, which binds together their voting followers. Only the unpatriotic Irishman 120 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH Stands outside the Irish machine, and there are no unpatriotic Irishmen. The leaders and the machine rely for Union on grievances, and therefore they will find grievances to preserve the machine. It is self-interest, self-preserva- tion. Hearst's papers will continue to find ' copy ' so long as it pays them to find ' copy '. So too we must expect Irish leaders abroad to find grievances, as long as grievances pay better than those constructive policies which divide rather than unite the machine. I do not know what the temperance societies and lecturers in America find to do now that America has gone 'dry'. Mr. Johnson evidently comes to England. But they must one and all be feeling a little depressed. Othello's occupation is gone ; the times are out of joint, and the comfortable travelling lectureships closed. Just so I imagine will Mr. Coghlan or Mr. Murphy feel, away back in IRELAND 121 Illinois or Wagga Wagga, when Ireland gets her own government. He will be riled, not reconciled. All that is not material. Labour wants Ireland to be free because that is her right. Fiat Justicia mat coelmn. We believe also that if we do the right thing, surrender power, or regaha if you will, it must help our world-union. That world-union depends primarily upon America. If we do the right thing, it may not reconcile Irish -American leaders, but it' is a pledge of good faith to the peoples in America We can hold up our heads again in the world and our friends can do the same. VIII INDIA THE DANGER When I called this book The Future of the Indo-British Commonwealth it was because any world-union, built up on these free lines, must bring in Asia or it would inevitably fail, and deserve to fail. In earlier chapters I have shown that Anglo- American friendship for a multitude of reasons is likely to strengthen with time. We have seen that militarily, financially, diplomatically, commercially and industrially the war has increased the relative credit and importance of England. She has never looked so strong. The strength may not depend entirely on India's co-operation. We have to a very great INDIA THE DANGER ] 23 extent done without that co-operation in the past, and for our old work of a narrow national Empire I suppose we can carry on without India's willing help. But for the wider work of the new Commonwealth, the basis of world- union and peace, Indian co-operation is vital. The Non-co-operation of India takes away the keystone of the arch. We need Asia. In Asia 18 the danger to peace. The real danger is, in my opinion, so great that for safety, as well as for justice and world-peace, India must come in quickly. For four hundred years now, Europe has ravished and exploited Asia. When the Portuguese first arrived with powder and shot, (the invention of the devil) they were a set of blood-thirsty torturing pirates, far below those they murdered in culture and civilisation. Mellowed to a certain extent by education, con- science and expediency, the same sort of thing has gone on ever since. 124 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Force, fraud, ruthlessness, from Basra to Pekin, sanctioned by long usage, have become the established method of dealing with these fat and helpless lands. Europe has gorged at leisure ; and gradually Asia has been learnmg —learning via the West-riot only how to loathe, but how to shake off the West, even how to shake it off by suicide, if necessary. The boycott of Western rule, of Western civilisation-passive resistance ^nd the power of passive resistance recognised— that is the danger to the West and to any world-union. « Beware of the people," said Mirabeau, « the people who, to become dangerous, have only to fold their arms." The East under the influence of a saint-like leader, half religious, half nationalist, is becoming dangerous to the West and to itself. It is becoming dangerous because it is desperate, and has no longer belief in justice or high sentiments coming from the West. INDIA THE DANGKE 125 All tlirough the great war, thinking Asia looked on with some ill-concealed satisfaction at the mutual throat-slitting <,f the European. i-be Indian, for instance, certainly did not wish the German to win, for even a Ion? way off, a Prussian looks to the weak more fiendish than an Englishman. But though be wished Britain to win, and helped her to win, he did not wish her to win by too much. The sudden Armistice and the complete triumph of Britain was a disappoint- ment. His dreams of freedom and equality with a Western world, new and verv piano in tone, vanished. He found himself dealing with ma.,ters more accursedly proud than ever. Ihe Muslim, who at times during the war had seen in prospect the crescent floating a^ain' from Tangiers to Tashkent, over Georgia "and the Crimea, over Azerbijan and Tunis, even possibly over Delhi, suddenly woke to the reality, that Turkey was finished. Within 126 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH three months of the day when Islam had seen itself recoYering the glories and pnde of the Seljuk Turks, the last Muslim power perished I said to Muhammad Ali, the Indian Khilafat Ambassador to England in 1920: "You fear becoming like the Jews, a despised and home- less people." .„ "That is exactly it," he said. "We wilt die first." And now from Stamboul to Singapore, wherever two or three Muslims are gathered together, they are stretching impotent arms to heaven, saying: "Is Islam destroyed and m he dust ' We will die first. Allah ho Akbar ! It is not their religion, it is their national pride for which they are prepared to sacrifice all. This is the other danger, a lesser one perhaps pan-Islamic desperation. Gandhi has linked the two. , . , Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as the Mahatma or Saint, is a very difficult man INDIA THE DANGER 127 to place. When I met him first, he stepped from his high-powered motor into mine, and began talking of his early life, and Ruskin and Tolstoi. He told me that he formed his views of the truth before he met with these co-work- ers, but those who understand Tolstoi will understand exactly that side of the uncrowned king of India. He wears coarse white home- spun, and believes, as all that sort do, in re-establishing cottage industries. Gandhi's view of the truth is a world in which all men live on their own land, with few wants, self-sufficing, not worrying or worried by their neighbours. He alone of all Indians has never said to me one bitter word about England. This is partly because he is a gentle- man, and partly because bitterness is * wrong '. The Mahatma's weapon is passive resistance' indifference to what force and Government may do. Take no part in governing, in law, in civilisation ! Do not recognise the West, nor 128 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH use their courts, nor their goods, nor th^r practices, nor even their idea«! He preach- es this daily to tens of thousands, and the tens of thousands agree with him in theory and revere him as a prophet. They cannot agi-ee in prax>tice, for his gospel is Ae destruc- tfon not so much of Western rule a8 of Western civilisation, and too many depend upon the established order of things. " If we go you will have anarchy. To that Gandhi calmly replied: "I prefer anarchy to alien rule." "If we go you will have the Amir in Lahore, Holkar in Delh. and the Gurkhas in Bengal." , , ,. „ .. If we can break the English rule, says Gandhi : " no other rule can stand agamst us_ Such is one side of Mahatma Gandhi-the fanatic with supreme faith. The other side is the politician. He more than any man, has united Hindu and Mussul- tZ into Indian. The union may not be stable. INDIA THE DANGER 129 but no man, save he, could have effected it. It IS his child. At the bottom of his soul he must look down on the Muslims with their fanatical faith m the authority of a prophet. As a politician he has taken up the cause of the Khilafat and united India. He stands firmly by the Muslims and will hear no word against them. " They are Indians, men like you and me first, men who want liberty." The practical policy of the man is obvious — the boycott of the West, inspired by loathing of the West. He is the leader of H. M.'s op- position. He intends to make the Government increasingly unpopular, and every now and then to give them samples of his strength, so that they cannot for very shame continue to govern. He says: "A time will come when they will come to me, to my party, and say, * Take a hand! What do you want? Let us co-operate to change the system ! ' " 130 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH Gandhi considers that he has many more turns of the screw to give as he becomes more powerful— boycott of English goods, non-pay- ment of taxes, filling the gaols, stopping re- cruiting, even tampering with the army. Every one of these steps brings India nearer the precipice, but he does not care. The practical politician sees the steps to take. The fanatic does not fear accidents. Not being an Indian, I can like the man— his determination and his saintliness. If I were an Indian with a stake in the country, I should be too nervous. And how nervous they are, running about Hke a hen after her chickens^ and making plaintive, hesitating noises to Government. He has done what any leader of the opposition tries to do. He has brought Government into con- tempt, and the whole machine is rocking. The propertied classes rock with the machine. Every hitherto stable thing and man is shaking. INDIA THE DANGER I'Sl Gandhi liimself is the mainspring of the morement. Never during the Christian era has any man so commanded the hearts of India. His toothless smile, his white convict cap, his fasts, his simplicity and saintly life have done " more than any doctrine to endear him to the people. Even the seemingly impossible doc- trme of " No violence, mind ! Or I retire to the Himalayas ! " has added to his good repute. Such a man with such doctrines must be above the world, and one and all look up— some with terror, wondering whither they are being swept, some ecstatically, not caring whether or no the' avalanche leaves them or anything undes- troyed. Hitherto, in all ages and in all countries, the struggle for freedom or against oppression has always involved violence and force of arms. For that sort of struggle the Indians-all Asiatics except perhaps the Japanese— are lU-equipped, both materially and morally. 132 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH In spite of Muhammad Ali and Shaiikat Ali, their leaders, the Muslims know v it too. The sword has failed them. In these days of machine-guns and armoured cars, of wireless and railways and aeroplanes, armed rebellion becomes suicide or ever a blow is struck. In these post-war days there is nowhere in Asia, between Japan and Mustaphakemal, any force which could meet in the open 5,000 British troops properly equipped. Probably Mus- taphakemal himself would prefer to retire to his mountains. For Asia, force is no remedy, but she has found another. What the women of England can do, Indians can do more easily. Christabel Pankhurst and her Amazons won on passive resistance. The Indians of South Africa used it with fearless unanimity under Gandhi, and only failed because they were themselves in a minority. Labour has used it repeatedly in all lands. It would seem that in INDIA THE DANGER ] 33 this last year Egypt has so used it as to convert Lord Milner. This is the lesson Gandhi is trying to teach India. India is a long way from being homo- geneous enough to spring straight to the unanimity of fanatic Egypt. She is too implicated in the civilisation which Gandhi would destroy, to find all its sons willing to take the plunge yet. But India is soaking it in. When, if ever, the day comes that every Indian official stops at home, that every rail- way ceases to run, that servants walk out from their white master's houses, and prisoners refuse to plead, when that day comes, the West has just got to leave India, and India knows it. The knowledge of the new weapon is spread- ing. In Burma the schools and colleges closed —unanimously, quietly, without violence. A law had been passed of which the Burmese did not 134 THE 1ND0-BEITI8H COMMONWEALTH approve— that was all- or was it a trial run of the Burmese Nationalists ? Fat and pacific Ceylon turns upon the Colonial office and snarls : " We will boycott you and your sham councils." The threat is effective. The new weapon daunts the Govern- ment. I do not see what is to stop the spread of this movement in the East. As national consciousness awakens, Sinn Fein gets stronger. It involves much sacrifice, but sacrifice for one's country is an infectious complaint. If they want freedom badly enough, they can get it, and every additional educated man means one more recruit for self-govern- ment. Most thinking Englishmen, a majority even of the present House of Commons, would like to conceive of the British Empire of the future as a Commonwealth of free Dominions, includ- ing India in the family. It seems to them a INDIA THE DANGER 135 proud, a patriotic, and a reasonable develop- ment. Only many would say: "Do not be too quick ! " ; many would say too : " Consider our Anglo-Indians " just as they said : " Consider the Protestants in Ireland." I would say : " Do not be too slow ; do not sleep in England." I also would say : « Con- sider our Anglo-Indians— their true interest, which is surely not race-hatred." Let there be no mistake. The Government of India wants a way out quickly. India has never before seen a Gandhi, never since Gautama Buddha, but Gautama could not pass on a rail- way train from one gigantic crowd to another preaching freedom, acquiring the worship and adoration of millions. The machine is beginning to crack. I surely believe that our last chance in Asia is upon us — our last chance of preventing India drifting through anarchy into more than Irish hatred. 136 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH • If we are to have Asia against us instead of on our side, all hope of peace through a world- union of British Dominions fails, and I do not believe there is before us any other way of securing world-peace. The statesman who makes an Ireland out of India prepares ruin for the world. The way is still clear for union, but union only on equal terms. IX INDIA FREED In August, 1917, Mr. Montagu made liis famous declaration promising India Home Rule, pro- mising an instalment— at once. In December, 1919, the first instalment— the Government of India Act— was passed giving a directly elected majority on the Indian Assembly, and on the Provincial Councils, and Diarchy or partial responsibility to these eight Provincial Councils. There was much that was niggardly in this Act; the absence of any control over expendi- ture and revenue was over-cautious. Other parts of the Act showed plainly mistrust just when trust should have been shown. The old m 138 THE INDO- BRITISH COMMONWEALITI Adam peeped out in the elaborate arrange- ments for communal representation, designed to perpetuate divisions among the governed and so help and excuse our control. The Rules and Regulations passed by Parlia- ment in 1920, with their elaborate precautions to prevent lawyers and politicians from getting on to the Councils, intensified the feeling of mistrust. There was clear evidence of mistrust. Such for instance was the lamentable residency qualification, adopted in certain Provinces, which restricts the choice of electors to a candidate residing in the district. Such too, and more dangerous, was the careful segrega- tion of county constituencies from the towns, and the grouping of the towns into Most seats,' which alone should be surrendered to nationalist politicians. Such too was the ela- borate grant of the franchise in the Punjab to all pensioners and village headmen, who could be trusted to vote as Government wanted. INDIA FKEED 139 You cannot with seemliness ask people to trust you and then show obviously that you do not trust them. Yet that is what emerged more and more as the Montagu-Chelmsford Report blossomed into a Draft Bill, as the Bill was doctored by the Joint Committee and became an act, as the act was diluted by the Rules and Regulations and became the working Indian Constitution. Lack of trust is writ large across the face of that document. As one of those few who fought line by line to improve that Act and those Rules, to make them more worthy of Britain and acceptable to India, I would bear witness to the liberalism, skill and tenacity of Mr. Edwin Montagu. No one else but he could have extracted from that harassed War Cabinet of 1917 the famous declaration. Its members were persuaded, almost jockeyed, individually and collectively into a declaration more important to the future of the world than any declaration since the 140 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Declaration of Independence indited by the Fathers of America at Philadelphia. No one but Mr. Montagu could have been submitted to all the Anglo-Indian influences, and, at the end of the Indian tour, signed that report which is called by courtesy, 'Montagu- Chelmsford '. No one but he could have in- vented a Joint Committee, and so ' wangled ' his Bill out of the way of a 1919 Parliament. The ruhng caste in Britain rule the 1919 Parliament. They are impregnated with the Anglo-Indian-Prussian spirit. They are blood relations to the same crowd in India. Yet Mr. Montagu steered his Bill, some Bill, through the rocks ! No one else could have got that Bill through that Parliament. It was, as one looks back, a marvel that they— the rulers— let it pass. But, as its price, Mr. Montagu sacrific- ed I fear just too tmich. It has not been the Government of India Act that has wrecked the Government of India Act, INDIA FREED 14J[ it has been Lord Chelmsford and Sir Miclmel O'Dwjer and the Anglo-Indian garrison of India. The sequence of events is plain to see. During the war they had to solicit India, to make promises to India, to smile— and Indians believed the promises, liked the smiles, and helped. Meanwhile, with her Home Rule League, Mrs. Besant was creating the national consciousness and self-respect. Then came peace, and a crushing victory ; and the same people in authority who had smiled and made promises tried ' to recover their old pre-war position and altitude. Co- operation between the new nationallj-conscious Indian and the official was shut down with a snap. Instead of immediately liberalising the administration, official India introduced the Rowlatt Bills, using some skill in circumvent- ing the Secretary of State. No one can explain now why the Rowlatt Bills were ever 142 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH introduced, or why one of them was carried through against the votes of every non-official Indian member. It was madness. The Act has never been and never will be used. It reposes upon the dust heap. But it did its part. It showed clear and deep the distrust of just those people in India whose co-operation a few months before the Govern- ment had been seeking. The fault of the Rowlatt Act was not what it contained, but the folly of such an act at all. Certain members of the Government must have meant by that Act to exasperate and to annoy the poHticians whom they hated. They suc- ceeded. The politicians were exasperated and hit back. Their reply was the new passive resist- ance movement. It was the birth of a new idea, the forging of a terrible weapon. Gandhi declared ' hartals ' or strikes, days of mournmg and fasting, on account of the passage of the INDIA FREED ] 43 Act. The strikes brought the people into con- flict with authority, out of that clash came riots, innocent Indians were shot, innocent Europeans were murdered, General Dyer got to work, and Sir Michael O'Dwyer began to 'save the Punjab' by establishing Martial Law. I feel certain that O'Dwyer saw in his look- ing-glass a twentieth century Lord Lawrence, leading again our loyal Sikhs to the Delhi Ridge to save India. A twentieth century Sim Tappertit ! Sir Michael had no real resemblance to Lord Lawrence, and the results of his pos- turing have not been fortunate. Down through the ages the story of that accursed Jallianwalla Bagh massacre will echo; a fit match for the (Jawnpore well ; but, in reality, what wrecked the Government of India Act was not so much Jallianwalla Bagh, as O'Dwyer's Martial Law which killed the pride of a brave and martial race. To have lived three months dominated by fear of the police, 144 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH afraid of being denounced and consigned with- out known reason to gaol or to the gallows, is an experience men do not lightly forget. They knew that they were cowed, they realise that the rest of India knows that they were made afraid. When it came to the pinch, the martial races failed, and so learnt what shame meant. In Kipling's "Drums of the Fore and Aft " a British regiment fails, and comes again. In India to-day, there are thousands, particularly among the students, waiting, teeth clenched, to come again in like manner, and show that they are not cowards. This, together with the Muslim desperation, has sent through India the wave of exasperation that has almost wrecked the reforms. Mr. Montagu might have saved all, had he obtained Lord Chelmsford's resignation. He might have punished General Dyer, he might have punished the Punjab officials who were found guilty by a Commission of their own INDIA VMKED |45 countrymen. But he did none of these things. He sacrificed all to getting his Bill through and he got it : but the price he paid was too high. We must now start again. His is another heroic corpse in the line of advance—a man who did his best. What is needed now, is no more gifts to India, but co-operation with the Indians. That however unpleasant it may be, means consulta- tion with and deference to the wishes of the Indian leaders. This is what will be asked for— Dominion Home Rule and some revision of the Sevres Treaty. They will probably be content with the present reforms, if the Rules and Regula- tions are altered so as to give proper repre- sentation and some immediate control over the purse. What they want is to have a direct voice in the stages towards Self-Government— a treaty not a gift. The only co-operation 10 146 THE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH possible is towards the definite and certain end —the abolition of Anglo-Indian rule. They put great stress, and rightly so, on the building up of a Territorial Army to be officered by Indians. They wish for this, just because they have no real taste for anarchy. I have said they will probably be content. It is only a chance, for Gandhi is not as other men. I think he prefers the forlorn hope and prison bars, to peace. He has no inclination for one of these ' constructive policies ' with a seat on the front bench of the Assembly, where he would be responsible for the civilisation that he hates. And then, how can we revise the Sevres Treaty, on which his allies are so determined ? He is not the sort of man to let the Muslim down. Peace may have to be made without Gandhi. Even that is possible. Everything is possible, if we only set out honestly determined on Home Rule for India. INDIA FKEED 247 Suppose it came to Dominion Home Rule at ouce ! Is this so risky ? Evidently we must retain Army and Navy till India has built up her own defences. Evidently, unwilling Civil Servants must be pensioned, and the willing secured in their financial position. European capital, so far as it is not intimately mixed with Indian capital might require special safe- guards. Debts and contracts would be gene- rally considered safer of observance in India than in Labour Australia. The most serious nsk that must be considered by honest people IS the nsk to the uneducated, to the tenants to the workers, and to the outcasts of the' Indian continent. It has been already said that wherever res- ponsible government is held back, the only justifiable excuse is that the intelligent citizens are so few in numbers, and so concentrated in interest, that they would be mor^ likely than alien officials to bully and to exploit the 148 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH uneducated majority of their own people. When, as so often, the British Official in India dilates on the natural wickedness of Indians— on their old religious murder customs, on the cruel greed of Bania or Chetty money lenders, on the difference between Indian and European employers of labour, on the habit of cutting Muslim throats or breaking Hindu heads —always he has at the back of his mind the wish to find justification for his own existence, and his own shortcomings. Almost inevitably he exaggerates the villainy of the wolves. It is a pity that the Anglo-Indian cannot point to greater watchfulness upon the part of the shepherd. Why has he left so many sheep with- out education, the natural means of defence ? If Indian landlords grind their tenants, why have the tenants to wait so long for protection ? Why are labour laws so backward that even Trades Unions are unprotected at law? The alien official has done his best according to his lights. INDIA FREED 149 but it has uot been a very good best, so far as his protection of the Indian underdog is con- cerned. It is true, as the official will point out, that for many years to come, intelligent voters in self-governing India are likely to be few. With education neglected as it has been in India, that is inevitable. The few who are fitted to have the vote are not liowever merely the wealthy in India : clerks and underpaid minor officials form a large proportion of the electorate. Both Bengal and Madrat> turn out annually from their colleges a very large supply of intelligencia who are penniless and must earn their own living. Theirs will be good radical, not conservative, votes. They have no interest in exploiting the bottom class, for in many respects they are that class. In any case it is absurd to suppose that a nation which will follow Gandhi, is likely to be 150 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH found oppressing anybody. Gandhi's whole life has been devoted to the oppressed. In a country where the outcaste is indeed cast out, even under British rule, the man has the courage to risk all his popularity by publicly announcing that he had taken an outcaste into his family, and that in his National Schools outcaste and Brahmin shall sit side by side. If Gandhi ever governs India, that land will be governed more in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount than any other land on earth. "Gandhi will never govern India." That too is possible ; I cannot myself conceive of Gandhi governing anybody except himself. For that reason it might be well in the new Do- minion constitution, to safeguard the voteless worker, outcaste, coolie, or aboriginal tribe, by a liberal supply of nominated members on the Assembly and Councils. Nominated Members on the present Councils have not inspired much confidence either in those supposed to be INDIA FEEED 151 represented or in the good faith of the Govern- ments. One might suggest that in future such no- minations should be confined to, or even made on the recommendation of that admirable Society, the Servants of India. Even if Gandhi does not rule, a nation which can pro- duce the self-denial and life-devotion to social service shown by this Society, is as fitted as any other nation to look after those who cannot look after themselves. We have been told ad nauseam that the Indian is by nature hopelessly corrupt, and therefore, in the interest of all India, India must not rule herself. This self-complaisant argument is false and hypocritical. Like must be compared with like. It is indeed probable that an English gentleman, Oxford-bred and well paid, has a higher standard of honour in money matters than an Indian butler or village headman. He can resist temptation better 152 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH than a District Magistrate on Rs. 120 a month, with a family of ten to keep on the salary. He has no tribe of poor relations on hand who want jobs. But if the self -complais- ant Oxford gentleman lived for a while among the upper working class in England he might find that the works foreman and the green- grocer and the police inspector had powers of resistance to temptation and standards of honour not very different from those of the people he condemns so contemptuously in India. The fair comparison is of like with like. Our Oxford gentleman must match himself with Kashmiri Brahmins who have known Oxford, with the Tagore brand of Brahmin from Bengal, with " The Servants of India "—gentlemen all in the widest sense. It is true and regrettable that this class in India do not at present go in for business careers, but they go in for politics and administration. They can set a standard INDIA FREED 153 for public service in India, for they have given flaming proof. Men like Gandhi, Motilal Nehru and his son, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Srinivasa Sastri, have given up all for the cause. Lala Lajapat Rai and C. R. Dass have done the same, and thej are not even Brahmins. These are the ])resent political leaders of India. Gokhale and Tilak were of the same type. With all my confidence and pride in the in- corruptibility of British political leaders, I say that India can provide men to be followed, not one whit inferior in either honesty or intellect. The large majority of the English in India I will say that the Indian is not yet fitted for self-government. It is an ex parte statement W from men who govern now and like governing. Many of the same sort of critics would say that the British, particularly the British work- ing men, are not yet fitted for self-government. Those who do the governing never think the 154 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH Others either fit or safe. It may be that they are justified. But bitter experience has showD that those who do the governing are themselves neither fit nor safe. Experience has shown that those governing always tend to govern m their own interests. The only partial safeguard that has been found is democracy, i.e., that all should bear a hand in that for which no class by itself, no sex by itself, and no person by himself is either fitted or safe. Are Indian common folk less fitted than English working men for the vote? Are Indian leaders less fitted than English political leaders ? One must compare like with like, not the actual with perfection. Indian common folk are, I think, less fitted for the vote than the same sort are in England. In the first place they are less educated and cannot read so as to acquire information and varied argument. We concede that this must and can be met, by limiting for a time the INDIA FfiEED 155 franchise. In the second place there seems to be in India more of the herd-feeling and less individual thought or action than is to be found in England. Education may reduce this ; in- tolerance cannot wipe it out, for it is the brutal- ising result of thousands of years of servitude. On the other hand, there is a finer atmo- sphere of abnegation, less self-indulgence, more real and universal piety among the Indian than among the English crowd. The Indian crowd seems less sordid, though to the credit of both crowds it must be said, that to each, the appeal that goes home best is to the ideal and not to the material. To the English politician, accustomed to the peaceful argument and cheerful politics of the West, the Indian fury and refusal to hear the other side comes as a shock. But put Mr. Lloyd George down with an open meeting in Glasgow and there would be little to choose between the foaming rage of the class-conscious 156 THE INDO-BRWISH COMMONWEALTH socialist aBd the foaming of the nationally- oonsoious Indian. The realisation of political or economic subjection makes those who do realise it see red, especially when their masters trv to soothe them with fair words. On the whole, though I cannot put the Indian voter of the future on the high level of the average British working man. he seems to be verv comparable with the more fiery French or ItaHan voter. The Indian intellioenaa alone is British in political sense and spirit. Undoubtedly the vast mass of women m India are still politically dead-as they are in all Mediterranean and southern lands. 1 hey come to meetings and enjoy their husbands poli- tics • but it is the women in India as elsewhere who' themselves cherish purdah and caste and man-worship. Few break away and seek free- dom for its own sake. There is a wonderful woman, Ansubhaya. who controls the mill-workers at Ahmedabad : INDIA FREED 167 Mrinalini Chattopadhyay, coming of a family of free mind, can both break caste and organise the labouring class of Madras. A few other Europeanised women there are who recog- nise duties outside the family, but the vast mass have no ambition at all outside this family. How do the Indian leaders compare with our leaders ? They are of finer stuff, but they have not yet been tested in the fire of responsibility. They have sacrificed far more for their country than has any Eluglish politician for the last two hundred years. Whether they would sacrifice as freely, even their career, for political convictions one cannot certainly say. The presumption is in their favour — Gandhi would, without any doubt. They have been accused of want of political courage. Every politician is so accused. I am so accused myself. No man's courage is perfect. 1.58 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Every politician will make to himself wbat excuses he can to avoid unpopularity. Such is human nature that the real test of a political leader is not, alas, has he courage to face the storm of unpopularity, but only will he realise that he lacks the courage and feel uncomfort- able when he drifts with the stream. If you would love mankind or political leaders you must not expect too much from them. It does not enter the head of the bad political leader to face any storm for any principle, because he does not carry that sort of cargo. Judged by this test the Indian leaders come out well, but it would be unkind to give the evidence. Their knowledge of political ques- tions and of political machinery is, however, far indeed behind that of English leaders. Their knowledge of economics matches that of Irish politicians; and it is because their whole world of politics is, like the Irishman's, nationalism, that they too have little time or INDIA FREED 159 thought to spare to consider exactly the things that they would do if they were in power. Like every opposition the burden of their song is that an ideal Grovernment is to do everything when they are that Government. It is to tax imports and prohibit exports. It is to raise wages and lower fares. It is to protect tenants and to preserve landlords. It 18 to fix prices high or low according to the sentiments of the audience. There is the pathetic faith in the omnipotence of the State to do everything, that one finds in all leaders who have never yet been " the State ". In % England, Tariff Reform lecturers are distin- guished by the same faith and nonsense. So, too often I fear, are some of my own party. Only through power can busy leaders learn to comprehend political and economic questions. Yet from this general charge of political ignorance one must, to be exact, exempt some such men as Lala Lajpat Rai and the ageing 160 THB; TNDO-BBITISB OOMMONWKAI.TB politician of Bombay, Sir Dinsha Wacha. Sir Dinsha is still, as always, the embodiment of all that we understand by The Manckeste'r Ouardian. Lajpat Rai's political writings, coupled with brains keener than those of the Americans among whom he has lived, have taught him every phase and phrase of radical- ism His book on National Education is such as one never dreamed of reading in the slow unmoving East. It is symptomatic of the minds of men of this type in new India that the meetings in Lahore are held in a Brad- laugh Hall and are such as Bradlaugh would have blessed. So far as oratory is concerned, Indian leaders have the advantage over us. That must be so when every crowd is at least 10,000 strong. In Madras and Bengal the oratory is generally and wonderfully English. Sir Snrendra Nath Banerjea is, I am told, as like Mr. Lloyd George in oratory and matter, as one pea is like INDIA FKEED 161 another. The crowds love best to Jisten to Malavija, or to Lajpat Rai as he rolls forth the Urdu language. Gandhi thej come to see. He is no orator. Shaukat Ali is still less melodious. Muhammad Ali would do best of all in Parliament. He can argue. The oratorical framework of all nationalist meetings consists of Hindu monks in the yellow Swami robe, and Muslim Moulvis, with long staff and long cloak, swaying, with one arm raised to heaven in the best camp meeting style. But the religious Eastern talks a language I do not understand. The Nagpur Congress, and the Subjects Committee of that Congress on which I had a seat, gave one an insight into the rank and file and the leaders. Affairs were well managed and the business conducted on the lines and in the manner of the ordinary Labour Party Congress. If Labour is fit to govern, so is India. When you deal with politics there is little difference 162 THE INDO-BRITISH OOMMONWfeALTH between East and West. In that field of opera- tions human nature takes the same, sometimes tortuous, course. It is also true of Indian, as of Labour leaders, that they have little love for responsibility. For similar reasons in either case, they may well mistrust themselves. They have never tried. Civilisation often, for its own salvation, enters into a conspiracy to impress upon the minds of all governed peoples the ineffable wisdom of existing Governors and governing class. How can common clay equal the gods ? Even the common clay itself acquires that feeling of unworthiness. With Indians responsibility has seemed so unattainable. They had dreamt of being ap- prenticed to Government, of entering the exist- ing machine. The rank and file will not allow this. One-fifth of the human race is a big thing to govern when you have had no practice. INDIA FEKED ] 63 Reactionary Civil Servants will tell one that Indians do not want to govern themselves, da not want democracy at all, that what they long for is an Indian instead of a British ruler, that they must worship somebody, and have not a conception of self-government. They quote Gandhi's position as proof of this, and the love Indians bear to the rulers of Hyderabad and Nawanagar and Rampur ! As far as concerns the intellectuals, Anglo- Indians are wrong in their judgment. As to the rank and file, if what they say is true, the more shame to those who bought them up. Slaves do hug their fetters— but not free men in a free country, as the British Commonwealth should be free. The boycotting of the Councils has to my mind been a stupid blunder, and not least be- cause it has been so much to the satisfaction of these same reactionaries. " We told you the Indians have no self-reliance. You see ! they dare not assume responsibility." 164 THE INDO-BRH-ISH OOMMONWKAWH Except in Madras, caste does not enter into or affect politics; and Madras, almost because of caste, is perhaps best of all the provinces fitted for self-government. At least we have there already party government based on caste, and a keen political interest because of caste The outcasts of Southern India lie below the triumphant non-Brahmin party, they are part of the voteless workers. The day for their salvation is not yet, and it will come as much through the brotherhood of the Trades Union as through political democracy The modern caste distinction between skilled and unskilled labour, already to be seen in America, is more permanently deadly to the unskilled of white countries than the old caste divisions in India which no longer correspond to an economic cleavage. ,. A real danger in the way ot immediate Dominion Home Eule is that the people have never yet used votes, nor do they understand INDIA FftEKI) 165 in the least that the vote is power. The stride from 5,000 years of being governed to complete responsibility is too much to conceive of at once. Those elected, look upon election as the com- mencement of an official career. They are becoming partners in Government, not critics of Government and representatives of the elec- tors. The electors regard it as though they were being called on to award an O. B. E. to deserving merit. This is another unfortunate but inevitable result of Non-Co-operation as carried out in India. It has deprived India of experience as well as of a voice in the govern- ment of the country. This political ignorance is a real danger, but time will remedy such damage as may be done and time will remove the risks. However much one may regret the inexperience that will now be put in power, the other danger from the continuance of the present system is much 166 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH greater and more pressing. A daily growing risk of anarchy, a daily increase of race-hatred, is likely to produce trouble for us all far more serious than Indian inexperience. The actual obstacle in the path is not danger or fear of what might happen under Indian Home Rule, but the very natural exasperation of the India Office, and the British public at the Indian attitude. With a great sense of virtue they screwed themselves up to * setting India free '. They thought out a novel and experimental plan which had great cleverness. The British public gave it to India with a bene- volent and generous smile, expecting bouquets and garlands. All they got were cat-calls. So they have retired hurt, injured in their finest feelings. Somehow they must be made to understand that the cat-calls were evoked by Sir Michael O'Dwyer and meant for the system he adopt- ed, not for any genuine overture of British INDIA FREED 167 friendship. But the misunderstanding is a nasty stile to cross. There is not only India's face to be saved, there is England's face also. Sensible men will not hesitate because their amour jpropre is wounded. India at present is a danger not only to herself and England but to the whole future of world peace. Salvation lies only in coming together again and helping India to set up house at once. We need the first ' coloured ' Dominion as evidence and proof of what the British Empire stands for in the world— the first step towards an Indo-British commonwealth of nations. If we take this road, all the nations of the East will gradually come in. What they fear is domination and exploitation. What they need is protection and credit. To a union in which India is as free as England, all can come with- out fear or hesitation. To a union in which j India is as safe as England, all might well wish to belong. 168 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Persia, torn by internal feuds, spotted all over with alien armies, rocking in anarchy, prefers, at present, Bolshevism to British absorption-the Red Flag to the Red Cross. But if she might copy India, feel her borders safe and obtain internal peace, knowing that she could work out her internal afiairs in freedom, helped by 70,000,000 free Muslims in India, then Persia would choose otherwise. Mesopotamia comes under the same category as Persia. So may soon Arabia and the old Khanates of Turkestan. Some day, trouble internal or external may come to Afghamstan or Siam. If there is one great union, a power without a colour bar, into which they can enter and be safe, they will come in and achieve peace. There must be one quahfication for the candidate who wishes to come m — democratic government. At present, the British Empire is a white Empire with coloured subject-peoples. It INDIA FREED 169 cannot remain so because the subject-peoples will no longer remain subject. It can shuffle off the coloured parts and remain a pure white national Empire, such as Spain was or France or G-ermany ; or it can cease to be a national Empire, and become an International Common- wealth, the germ of world -union. All hangs upon the admission of India as a partner. BURMA India has 320,000,000 inhabitants— one-fiftli of the human race. In this mass are many diverse tongues and races. The difference between Briton and Italian is not more marked than is the difference between Punjabi and Tamil, between Mahratta and Bengali. Yet over the whole of this vast territory, with one exception, you will find the one national spirit— the love of India ;-and, among Hindus, but one religion —the Indian religion based on the Vedas. The Unit of India is cut out by nature between the Himalayas and the sea, as well as by the patriotism and religion of its peoples. But BDRMA 17] Burma is the exceptioD. Such unitary India does not in any way include Burma and the Burmese. The Burmese are Buddhist. Their whole past history is unconnected with India, as is their race. In Burma the women are the equals of the men. There is no caste system. Education, thanks to the Young Men's Buddhist Associations, is much more widespread. The people have no servile taint. Of hatred of England there is as yet little or no trace. W^e have not been long in Burma. One hopes that that does not explain the absence of servility in the people. English rule has lasted three quarters of a century in Lower Burma, and it is thirty.five years only since we took Upper Burma and deported King Thebaw. Lower Burma is to some extent international and modern in thought. Arrakanese are in Arrakan; Burmans, Indians, Kareens and Tilangs mix in Pegu; Tilangs and Malays in 172 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWBALTH Teuasserim. But Upper Burma is Burman and nationalist. , It is unfortunate that we have taken over ■from the old autocratic Burmese Kingdom the degrading practice of sUkot, an oriental pros- trftion made to offieials of rank. Many British officials refuse to allow the prostration to themselves, but the general acceptance and toleration of the humiliating posture by a British Government is an indication of the oriental ideas still actuating Government in Burma. It is^ut of date, degrades an educat- ed and self-respecting people, and insults all ideas of British citizenship. As in Ceylon, the Buddhist and national revival in Burma have gone on hand in hand. Their nationhood centres round their rehgion which is their pride rather than their comfort. A fierce passion for education is the mam outlet at present for national and religious energy. Just as Government in Ceylon resents BURMA j 73 Temperance agitation because the troublesome nationalists are Temperance fanatics, so in Burma the Government have the curious appearance of trying to check education, of resenting aspirations which any other Govern- ment in the world would welcome with both hands. The other side of the Nationalist Movement is not so happily founded. It insists on the non-Indian character of Burma. It preaches separatism. The fact is, the Burmans fear the Indians, who have had two centuries start of them in Western civilisation. By getting education at the eleventh hour, Burmans will try to compete; but they will take any means of preserving themselves. It is for that they want education. ► Burma should be separated from India, and set up house on her own as a self-governing Dominion. As it is, India will overshadow and outbalance all other partners in the 174 TtiE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH Indo-British Commonwealtli. It would be as well that there should be other Asiatic Dominions more moderate in size, and, I may add, Asiatic dominions more friendly to the British partner. The amicable and natural change m the relationship of governors and governed m Burma has been wantonly upset by the mis- fortune of a reactionary Governor. Sir Reginald Craddock was one of that band of Anglo-Indian officials who still believed after the war that tbey could hold up sun and moon like Joshua, that they could even restore pre-war conditions and relations. He succeeded in getting Burma excluded from the Government of India Act, and pre- pared a rival scheme, suitable as he thought for quiet Burmese, suitable also for old-fashioned Anglo-Indian rulers. Suffice it to say that the scheme gave no responsibility whatever to the Council, and elected that Council mdirectly and with worse hooks and crooks than any BURMA ] j^ t^ Other Provincial Government of India dared to suggest. After prolonged negotiations, and after an India Office Committee had sat at great length, Mr. Montagu resolutely turned down this scheme and reverted to the India model. But the harm was done. Burma has had no Jallianwalla Bagh, it has had no martial law such as in 1915 embittered the people of Ceylon. But the struggle with their Governor over the Constitution has pro- duced the same atmosphere of exasperation. Ihey are not on speaking terms. Any emoarrassment for either side that the other side can discover will be used to the full. Race-hatred is raising its ugly head . Neither side expects or will get fair play. They suspect the governors of trying to work up against the Burmese the rival tribal spirit of Tilangs and Kareens, and the Governor suspects the Bur- mese of instigating the college strike, which I 176 THE INDO-BKITISH COMUONWKALTH has advertiBed in Whitehall the unpopularity of his rule. The Burmese accuse the Governor of assisting foreigners U> rob the P-^-' Vumele land ; and the Governor accuses the Burmese of being agitators, almost thinly veneered dacoits. X When the Governor three years ago put forward his scheme of sham democracy, we were told that there was no genuine demand for reform in peaceful Burma. Now it is darkly hinted in Hotels and Clubs that women and children are in danger among this savage and relentless people. All the storm in the teacup because schoolboys want a better education- they want to be taught in English instead of in the vernacular. . But behind it all is much more senous trouble. In Burma more than in India, Western rule means Western exploitation, government and capitalist are hand in hand. All the minerals and oils have been leased out to BURMA l*^y foreign capitalists and now land grants are going the same way. All the trade and industry is in the hands of Europeans, Indians and Chinese. Cheap coolie labour pours in from Bengal and Madras. Rangoon has become Indianised. Soon a railway between Mandalay and Bengal will bring in swarms of coolies to * develop ' Upper Burma also. The proud and easy-going Burman sees him- self being ousted from his own country. He sees coolie labour undercutting his wages. He sees Indian and other capitalists buying up his cultivated lands and getting wide grlnts of wild lands, the patrimony of future generations Western men and Western civilisation, either direct or via India, are destroying his comfort- able civilisation. A peasant people are bein^ squeezed out. If the Burmese are not all to become hewers of wood and drawers of water for others, they must be allowed a chance of education. They 178 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH see tWs, and resent most bitterly the inferior education given to their sons and the inferior chances of degrees, employment and career. They see European and Anglo-Indians and rich Chinese and Indian children being well educated at their expense, they see them being given all the chances. The Burman, handicapped by language and by natural indolence, is given no fair chance even if he wishes to escape the fate of the land- less proletariat. There is no medical, commer- cial, agricultural or engineering College m Burma. The theory would appear to be that we con- quered Burma by the sword, and that we are justified in exploiting it as though it were Africa The same methods are used; make the native landless and then he will soon learn * the dignity ' of labouring for other people, i his beautiful well-watered country, full of fearless men and fair women who are just wise enough I BURMA 179 to see their fate ahead of them, is bein- smashed by the march of Western civilisatioiT and the British Government, which should protect them, participates in the crime. As a rule the peasants hold five to fifty acres of rice-growing land from Government and pay a rent or tax of about Rs. 5 per acre. The rent IS revisable by Government every twenty years but IS so much below a rack-rent that the land has a large selling value. Money lenders and others buy it up, and the former holder becomes their tenant and pays about twenty-five instead of five rupees, and holds only ' at will,' with no security. At Mandalay they told me of one Indian capitahst who had bought up in that manner 200.000 acres in the neighbourhood, and the Government had leased him a further 30 000 of wild land. Other more important Indian capitalists were on the prowl, counting on the railway t-, bring cheap labour for their 180 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH latifundia. So the digestion goes on, and the rich collect in their palaces in Rangoon, and the dispossessed poor drift into the slums. . ^ There can be no doubt that, there in Burma, the intelligent citizens are sufficiently diverse in interest and sufficiently numerous to ensure an absence of tyranny and exploitation ojer the helpless. They would have to be very few and very plutocratic to be " more likely than the alien officials to bully and to exploit the uneducated majority of their own people . As in the case of India there will doubtless have to be safeguards, for a time at least. The railway, for instance, is a British company, though most of the capital was found by the Indian State. Kareens are Christian and scattered, and if they are not elected in suffi- cient numbers in the ordinary territorial consti- tuencie., some of them may have to be nomi- nated to protect their interests. BURMA 181 The Anglo-Indian or Eurasian may need special help by nomination. The Tilangs and Arrakanese have their own territory and will elect their own men on to the Council. The Indians too will protect themselves. They have proudly told the Governor already that they have no use for the proffered communal representation. The Chinese are rich and their interests are the Europeans' also. Generally, what is wanted is a straight- elected Council with a clear elected majority, diarchy and the commencement of responsi- bility, a sympathetic Government that wants to raise and not to rule. This would satisfy the Burmese for a time, and train them for early Dominion Home Rule. The Burmese political leaders are not up to the standard of Indian leaders in intellect and knowledge ; but they surpass them in friend- liness. No Englishman can help loving the 182 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Burmans above all peoples of tlie East. I see no reason why they should be less constant and trustworthy, or more corrupt than the men who have made the Indian nation. There is no greed for gold in Burma ; and there is the Buddhist religion which, notwithstanding all its monks, makes for toleration and kindhness between man and man. The National Movement goes always hand in hand with the tenets of the Buddhist faith. It shows itself in innumerable schools for common people, and in the preaching of the Temperance cause-not a bad foundation for politics. They must beware lest Buddhism becomes more to them than brotherhood ; for neither the trading and Christian Kareen, nor the Indian, nor (for aught I know) the Shan, understand Buddhism in the least, and they are likely to get exasperated, as a free thinker gets exasperated with a Wesleyan missioner. The pious Buddhist, like other pious people. BURMA 183 tends to become a bore to the philistine. It will not do to have Burman snapping at Indian to the unholy joy of the reactionary official. However, here we have in Burma, with perfect safety for all interests and subjects, place and time for another ' coloured ' Domi- nion, ready to join the family on invitation— to the greater glory of the Empire and to the greater security of the human race. XI CEYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA There is another Asian people ready, fitted and waiting for self-government. The low country Sinhalese have been subject for over four hundred years— they have had roughly one hundred and fifty years of Portuguese domina- tion, one hundred and fifty years of Dutch and one hundred years of English rule. The result may be seen in a large number of pure Sinhalese with Portuguese names, a large Burgher population which has forgotten the Dutch language, a strong Christian element among the intelligencia, and a universal know- ledge of English. The result is also the most Europeanised population in Asia. CEYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA 185 Inland is the old Kandjan Kingdom which was annexed first by the British in 1815. They too are Sinhalese, but less Westernised, less able to compete with civilisation. To the north are the Indian Tamils, the here- ditary enemies of Ceylon, progressive and industrious ;— now after 400 years of common subjection united to Ceylon in all but language. They are the Scotch of the mixture. And all over the country, keeping shop, are the Moors or Indian Muslims— the Jews of Ceylon. There is yet one other Asiatic element that matters. Coolies ! This is a planting colony. Rubber, tea and cocoauut grow as nowhere else on earth, and the chief source of labour is the expatriated coolie from Southern India. Over half a million of them work in Ceylon under conditions that no native Sinhalese would endure. They are mostly low caste or out- caste, but by no means unintelligent. Thev 186 THE INDO-BRITISU COMMONWEALTH are better educated than they would be in India. Sinhalese as well as European com- panics own the plantations, and the cool.es. For a hundred years after the surrender of the Kandyau Kingdom, Ceylon wascontent tobe prosperous, without bothering about aught else The peasants mostly own their l^^d. Ihe island is fertile even as Honolulu or Eden. They browsed and were content. Then, about ten years ago, as land values increased, a wealthy new class arose, educated and virile. They were the fisherman caste from the sea coast. Buddhism revived, and a pride in the history of ' Lanka . With Buddhism came a strong Temperance Move- ment. It was a useful outlet for national feelings, far from seditious, but yet national. The country was given an impossible Local Option Ordinance, and used it thoroughly. Be- cause the Government had made it impossible, the people made it possible. CEYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA 187 Then came the riots of 1915. About these riots, no Sinhalese can speak even now without an ugly snarl. The trouble began bj a pogrom against the Muhammadan traders. It ended bj young Englishmen from the plantations and Colombo going out on shooting expeditions and 'potting' Sinhalese at sight. There were three months of martial law Every Temperance leader was put in gaol though none could say what murdering Mus- lims has to do with Temperance. The Gover- nor surrendered all power into the hands of a particularly foolish General, and we made in fact just one of those panic blunders, as in Jamaica in 1865, and as in the Punjab in 1918 which destroy our reputation and create race^ hatred. Justice slept, and the great British tradition was shattered. Since 1915, the growth of the National spirit and the agitation for constitutional 188 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH reform have grown continuously. But Downing Street is far away. Thanks to our habit of doing the business of Government in watertight compartments, the Colonial Office knew htt e of the Constitution that was being granted to the neighbouring Indians. They devised what they thought was good enough for Ceylon, and launched the scheme last year (1920). This scheme gives no responsibility whatever to the Legislative Council, and no elected majority on that Council. While it is not in some ways so ingeniously reactionary as the Constitution for Burma which Mr. Montagu rejected, it is even more thoughtlessly thrown . together, and is obviously ridiculous. No sooner were the details of the scheme made public, than the national party met in conclave and decided to non-co-operate. It was said, as is usaal, that the ' National Party represented only an extreme minority. But m Ceylon voters have to claim votes and register CEYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA 189 themselves, and Non-Co-operation did not ex- tend to boycotting the register. All the voters promptly registered through the machinery of the National Congress. A wise Governor took this as evidence of the national character of the Congress and came to a compromise. A promise was given to recast the constitution in a year and Non-Co-operation was dropped. When that constitution is recast, it will not do to let Ceylon lag behind India. They know well enough, even if Downing Street does not, what has been granted to Madras, what India has regarded as too mean for her to accept. The Sinhalese resent bitterly being left behind India, being treated as infants when Indians are treated as grown-ups. To them, India is " the place where the coolies come from ! " Bitter indeed is the feeling of shame that they should have fallen behind India. Bitter is the resentment that this has come 190 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH about because they have been too loyal to be * seditious'. Of all the countries of the East, Ceylon seems to me to be the best fitted for immediate Dominion-hood. Education is free and com- puisory. English is the lingua franca. Sin- halese and Tamil share with English the power of capital. They also are the planters, and are associated with Europeans in all the enter- prises of the Colony. They have shown moderation. Outside 1915 there has been no cause for race bitterness, and the people are accustomed to use the vote. This last point needs amplification. It has been mentioned that there is a Local Option Ordinance in Ceylon. In any area served by any public house the voters can close that house. The pressure of Lord Harcourt when he was Colonial Secretary caused this Ordinance to be passed, but the Ceylon Government hoped that the conditions attached would OKYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA 191 preserve their public houses on which they rely for revenue to the extent of a million a year. They set the condition that 75 per cent, not of the voters but of the whole electorate, must vote * no licence ' if the house was to be closed. They relied on the blind, the dead, the indifferent and the absent, to preserve the publican ; they held the poll in inconvenient places miles from the electorate and during insufficient and inconvenient hours. Yet dis- trict after district has 'gone dry*. As many as 96 per cent of the whole electorate have been known to take a day off and march for miles in procession to vote for the Cause. The training in politics and political speaking has been admirable. Indeed the Buddhist temperance politicians remind one in every feature of our sturdy politicians of the chapel and the " pleasant Sunday afternoon ". There 192 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH is the same altruism, the same fine religious sentiment, the same principle which admits of no two readings. Looked at from the point of view of the 'underdog,' there is no more likehhood of danger to any minority or helpless class m Ceylon from these conscientious pohticians— Buddhist or Christian-than there is from the ordinary Colonial Office official. The 500,000 coolies are the depressed class of Ceylon.' They work under Penal Labour Laws which make them more than semi-slaves. They are recruited from India ; and India has at last forced the Ceylon Government to take action to put an end to the Penal Laws. It is regrettable that in such a matter the official should have waited to be shown what was the duty of the British administrator. Even now, it seems, he asks for more delay. A Sinhalese Planter Government, responsible to Ceylon, would at least be no more backward ; and, in any CEYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA 193 case, India which supplies the coolies has the last word. Religious bitterness there is none. By some marvellous accident every candidate at the forthcoming elections happens to be a Christian, and that in a Buddhist country ! The Muslims' probably have the best right to fear Sinhalese rule. But they enter no protest, and they probably know that if Muslims have votes they are little likely to suffer from elected Christian and Buddhist legislators. Whether it be the Muslim trader of Ceylon or the Jew trader of Poland, both know that the only hope of fair play for them lies in Democracy. The Tamils, another most sturdy minority, rival the Sinhalese in enthusiasm for the' National Congress. Even between Burgher— often half-caste— and Sinhalese\here is no ill- feeling. The fact is that Ceylon is a very prosperous Western country. It is so impregnated with 194 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH British moderation, ideals, and culture, that it is better fitted for self-government than even Italy. There is only one risk in connection with Ceylon, and that is, that postponement of Justice might spoil both moderation and anglo- phil education. In Ceylon irreconcilables are not born but made, and it is time that the factory was closed down. One cannot help comparing Ceylon with the other plantation Colony of Kenya. The Eng- lish population and the total population of both are about the same. Both grow more or less the same tropical produce gathered by semi- slave labour. Both have Indians and Arabs doing the work of trader and artisan. Both have the same history in many ways since Affonso de Albuquercque roasted them both impartially in the name of the Saviour. But whereas no sane man ever contemplated giving a constitution to Ceylon which conferred the CEYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA 195 vote and the sole responsibility for Government on the European planters of Ceylon— to the complete exclusion of coloured persons; yet, in East Africa that seems to be the accepted conception of the right thing, both by the lordly planter and even by the Colonial Office. Kenya, by reason of the backwardness of the native, is not so fitted for Dominion Rule as is Ceylon. But whenever this Dominion Rule be granted, it must be the educated Indian, Arab and Native who will vote and bear their fair share in the ruling of the Colony, not merely the handful of planters who at present rule through submissive Governors, and call the tune while others pay. What is good enough for the planters of Assam and Ceylon must some day, and at a not distant day, content the planters of Nairobi. The Malay State and Singapore, though similar in many ways to Ceylon and Burma, present special difficulties. The 'native' 196 THE INDO-BEITISH etOMMONWEALTH Malay is less civilised than the Sinhalese, less even than the Burman, and without a patriotic religion. The Malays are overlaid too by a vast foreign population— Indian and Chinese coolies and traders. The land, more than m Ceylon, is given over to capitalist plantation ; Singapore is even more cosmopolitan than Rangoon. But the greatest difference is that Malaya is a jumble oi inrisdictions. It is a collection of Sultanates, some wholly, some only in minute degree directed by European officials. Except for the immediate neighbourhood of Singapore, Malacca and Penang, we govern Malaya through the native chiefs— as we govern Nigeria or Uganda or the native States of India. This system will be clung to tenaciously by all those financially interested in the Colony, for it lends itself unfortunately to the easiest form of exploitation. The ' native chief ' has only to be won over and 'kept sweet,' and the CBYLON, KENYA AND MALAYA 197 rest is plain sailing for the concession hunter ; land, and labourers without land, can be hired or acquired. Any protection given by the best intentioned white official to the people of the country, is likely, to meet with active hostility from chiefs and from all those who cling to the old system and batten on the people. Tin and Rubber come from Malaya. Both industries are passing through a severe crisis. I was told, in Colombo, that the cost of rubber production is higher in Malaya than in Ceylon, and that therefore it will be Malaya that will have to go out of business. It is more likely that determined and ruthless efforts will be made to cut down the cost of production in, hitherto rich, Malaya. There never was, therefore, a time when more care was required to see that the helpless uneducated coolie was properly protected. Just when the planters of Ceylon are being forced 198 THE INDO-BRITISH OOMMONWHALTH to give up semi-slave labour on their plantations, it would be monstrous to allow the coolie of Malaya to be driven further into the abyss. The conditions and government of Malaya should be the subject of a Royal Commission. At present nothing whatever can be done in the direction of Dominion Home Rule ; other problems there are likely to be more clamant for many years to come. |i XII DOMINIONS AND DOMINIONHOOD It would be idle to go through the whole of the British Empire of to-day to see how far the elements are grown up, how near they are to the coming of age as Free Dominions. There are so many parts and one must know each personally. "What are to be the positions of Gibraltar, and Malta and Cyprus ? How far are fragments like these, fragments of great mili- tary importance, to be left free to secede to their own narrow national state? How small can a self-governing unit be ? Are the Falkland Islands to rule themselves? Are the Bermudas? Both peoples in the bulk are white, or at least 200 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH white enough to rule, judged even by pre-war standards. The only guide must be the old one, follow liberal rather than conservative traditions. The one is, trust in the people qualified by prudence; the other— distrust of the people qualified by fear. I see no objection to a small unitn-to the smallest unit— if it has no neighbours to co- operate with or annoy. Government by consent —not even Government by a majority, but by unanimous consent— is the ideal of Democracy ; and the smaller the unit the more nearly do we approach the consent of all in that unit. The decisions of families, of juries, and of village councils are generally unanimous in the end. There would seem to be some willingness on the part of the west Indian Islands to federate as a Dominion, with or without Jamaica. That would be a convenience for the Colonial Office and reduce responsibilities. But it is difficult DOMINIONS AND DOMINIONHOOD 201 to believe that islands with rival interests wiU consent to govern themselves as a federation when each already has more individual and direct self-government. All federations of the past have been forced together by common danger. The larger aggregation gains in strength, morally and financially, but loses in direct self-control. .The Commonwealth we have been considering in this book is not a Federation, but just such a thin and voluntary Union as binds Australia to the mother country, a Union in which each controls entirely its own home affairs. The proposed West Indian Federation would gain, chiefly, in financial strength. But it is doubt- ful if the prospective gain will be sufficient to outweigh the claims of the parish pump in Tobago or Dominica. Common feelings and common interests have hardly grown old enough m these sunny islands to cross the seas and pool the profits. 202 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH In any case, it would be wise to remember that a Dominionbood in the Commonwealtb presupposes equal electoral rigbts witbin each Dominion. An education test there may be ; it will wear out as education spreads, and it is justifiable at present- But a colour or racial bar is tahu to the World-Empire that we are considering. That brings us to Rhodesia, the last white man's land to fill up. Rhodesia was promised dominionhood when the inhabitants voted for it. They voted for it last year. Union with South Africa was as distasteful to the settler as was the continued rule of the Chartered Com- pany. Now Lord Milner has postponed the grant till the result of the next Rhodesian General Election is known in 1923, for the Chartered Company's Charter expires in 1924, when a fresh start can be made. It would all be so simple if it were not for the cash difficulty 1 A great enquiry is taking « DOMINIONS AND DOMINIONHOUD 20""* O place to decide how much money the Chartered Companj has spent for somebody in deve- loping and administering Rhodesia, and in those little settler wars that first acquired for them the property. AH, particularly the accounts of the company, is delightfully vague. The bill may work out at anything from five to fifteen millions ; but no one knows yet who is to pay the bill, or whence comes the liability. If payees there are to be, there are only three such possible payees visible. The British taxpayer, the future Rhodesian Dominion, and the sale or mortgage of the unalienated lands of Rhodesia— lands which might some day be sold to raise the money but are now occupied by natives. The British taxpayer is in no mood to pay anything, anywhere, for anybody, till he has paid his legal debts. His debts are over £200 a head already. Probably (one fears), the settler of Rhodesia would rather forego self-government than shoulder such a 204 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH debt amounting also to £ 200 a head, though it is no more than ours in England. It remains, therefore, to take the unalienated lands from the natives-to make the Chartered Company owner of that which they do not own Generosity to shareholders at the expense of the native is not new, but this is rather a blatant example. One can almost hear the bolshevik denunciation: - Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites ! Your capital- ist civilisation is founded on robbery and is maintained by slave labour." If the money is legally due for the develop- ment of Rhodesia, it should be charged against Rhodesia as a whole. If part of the Rhodesian lands are native lands, money must be charged against their lands just as it is charged against the rest of the lands and minerals of Rhodesia. A very moderate tax on all land values would both find the interest, and produce land for the market. To take land from natives which DOMINIONS AND DOMINIONHOOD 205 natives are not using, and to transfer it to a Chartered Company (or other land speculator) who continues to hold it off the market— that process, though called development, does nothing whatever to develop a colony. The land monopolist starves the settler and the world, and robs the native and his descendants. But the issue at stake in this Rhodesian question is wider than the questionable debt. Lord Milner will not face it. It is postponed until after the next General Election, not only in Rhodesia, but here in England also. Is the Colonial Office to abdicate and hand over Rhodesia to 50,000 white settlers, when there are 500,000 voteless natives in the country? Liberal or Labour will know well enough their answer. Self -Government ! Yes ! But votes on an educational basis for natives, on the same terms as for whites. Even this will not be enough to protect the native. For some years special representation 206 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH of the natives must be provided by nomination, preferably the nomination of missionaries. Rhodesia will fill up, just as the American West has filled. But if we do not do our duty, the natives will be lucky if they are left to wither away quietly as have the North American Indians. Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Tanganika, Kenya, Malaya, even Uganda in the near future— they all present the same problem. While they are under the Colonial Office the Colonial Office must protect them from masters and from landgrabbers wanting land and labour. Will the Colonial Office keep back complete self- government till the inhabitants of the Colony are sufficiently grown up to be responsible ? When the Colonial Office does pass on control to the Colony, will they see that voters are of all sorts and colours ? It is lamentably easy to make use of the black ; it is easy and natural to help one^s DOMINIONS AND DOMINIONHOOD 207 fellow countrymen at the expense of the black. It would indeed be a triumph for England if we lead the way, alone among the owners of Africa, played the game for altruism and humanity, and gave white no further advan- tage over black. The British : Commonwealth must rise to that height if it is to stand and be worth joining fortunes with or working for. XIII Pi^LESTINE Among the results of the war which the Germans would call real none is more impor- tant and definite than the re-establishment of the Jews in Palestine. When in 1916 I first urged this step upon Colonel House at Wash- ington, there were three objects to be gamed. It would be a desirable buffer between a German Turkey and all Africa-a buffer which I hoped might be under American pro- tection It would restore to an ancient, long- suffering people a home address in the world, and their national self-respect. The protection of the persecuted Jews over all East Europe, which one felt must ultimately fall to the power protecting Palestine. PALESTIXB 209 Ihe first object is no longer of importance, iurkey is no longer German, nor is any buffer needed anywhere by the British Empire. The second object is achieved. A Jew is now no longer ashamed of being called a Jew They are, with Irish fervour, « a Nation once ^gain," with a homeland, a Jewish Gover- nor, and a refuge for all those who can escape from the dying civilisation of Eastern Europe. That they have preferred to be protected by Britam rather than by America is a great tribute which Britain has done little to deserve —and a great opportunity. After the ex- perience of two years of English military rule It 18 something of a surprise. The third object, the protection of Jews throughout the world, has not yet been attained. Taken right- ly, the mandate over Palestine gives a great opportunity to the British Commonwealth to justify Its existence. 210 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH Recently the British Labour Party sent a Mission to Hungary to enquire into the alleged White Terror there. My colleagues and I found, indeed, a AYhite Terror. We found, too, a hideous persecution of the Jews —only a sample unfortunately of what is still to be met with in Roumania, in Poland and the Ukraine. These unfortunate people in Hungary were beaten, murdered, even tortured to death without any cause save that they were Jews. Thousands had perish- ed. It was apparently no concern of Eng- land's, or at least of her Foreign Office ; and at that time, it is true, the mandate for Palestine had not yet been formally conferred upon Great Britain, nor was Sir Herbert Samuel appointed the Governor. But if England, by reason of her Mandate, became protector of the Jews even as France is protector of the Catholic Church in the East, then indeed it would be an opportunity PALESTINE 211 to reinforce traditions founded in the days of the slave trade by Ciarkson and Wilberforce. Just as America and Britain are the only countries sufficiently altruistic to trouble them- selves about the Congo, or a famine in China, or the elementary rights of aboriginal Africans exploited by some of their own people— the only countries that fought or have paid to abolish the slavery of inferior races— so too America and Britain have been the only coun- ti'ies that have treated Jews as equals, and have made them citizens in every sense, with ecjual rights. Anti-semitism is a continental vice, regard- ed as ' ungentlemanly ' in England— as absurd in America or our Dominions. The Jews know this. Therefore the American-British, or Indo-British Commonwealth here considered, is well situated on the moral plane to attract and absorb into the Union the great Jewish race. When a Jew in Kiev can appeal to the 212 THE INDO-BIUTISH GOMilUNWHALTIi British Consul and say Givis BritanniGus sum, not only will the Truce of God have come for the Jevvs, but the great Commonwealth will be getting into its stride towards protecting and securing justice for the world. First I would make British-Jewish citizen- ship easy to acquire in Palestine. Later I would give all Jews the option of nation- ality. Always I would use our power to protect Jews. Let the millions of Jews throughout the world look to the power of Britain till they can look to the power of Palestine. If we offend Hungary and are in the right, what harm is done ? Hungary does not matter compared with the trust and affection of the Jewish race. We have only to say : " They are our people " or even : " They are as our own people," and all mankind will know that Great Britain stands for justice to Jews, just as she declared that no slave, nobody's slave. PALESTINE 213 remained a slave on British soil or on a British Ship. We pledge onr faith that at last the Jew Shall wrest Christ's name from the devil's crew, A trophy to hear as we march, Thy band, South, East and on the pleasant land. A free Jewish Dominion of the Common- wealth would he a half-way house between the White and the Indian Dominions. Europe, Asia and America will contribute equal shares to the future Palestinian. Unfortunately, at present that distracted country is too raw, too unaccustomed to peace, to step into full self-government. While our statesmen have seen clearly the object they had in view, a Military Administration has been working for quite other objects in Palestine — ever since, in October, 1918, the Emir Feisul was pushed in front to enter Damascus. It would seem that the Cairo military clique found Arabs congenial and Jews uncongenial. This sentiment fitted in with their designs upon [ 214 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH Syria. To them, the Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916 was a weak concession to French greed and sentiment, entered into before the British conquered Syria and created a fait accompli. No doubt that Sykes-Picot treaty was a poor solution of the Turkish subject domains, from the British as from the Palestinian point of view. For this Sir Mark Sykes was not to blame. The Foreign Office professed openly, in the presence of both Sykes and Picot, * disinterestedness ' in all to the north of the line from the Egyptian frontier to Bagdad. It was with the greatest of difficulty, after this profession, that Sir Mark got the Une shifted north of Haifa and Lake Tiberias. Sir Mark is dead and cannot reply to his critics. As one of his friends, I protest against the injustice of blaming him for making what was best of a bad position. Obviously, if there were to be any modifi- cation of the Sykes-Picot Treaty, it must be PALESTINE 215 made bj and with the full cognisance of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. The Military tried to rush in ' on their own '. For this purpose, Jews had to be put down and Arabs exalted. The Arabs and Feisul were to be our catspaws in Syria. Excessive goodwill shown to the Arabs was taken by the Arabs to be the equal of any promises. The Arabs relied on the Military goodwill, on General Allenby's half-spoken pledges. Now, both the Arabs, who have been deserted, and the Jews, who have been subjected to Arabs, can join in condemning this wild unauthorised policy. While the game was being played, much harm was done in Palestine, not only to the Jews, but also to the good name of Britain. It ended in a pogrom in Jerusalem at Easter, 1920. The blunderers went too far back into the dark ages. Lieut. Jabotinsky was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for raising arms to defend 216 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH his countrymen and countrywomen. This sen- tence opened the eyes of England. Jabotinsky was set free, and military rule came to an end. The reverse policy of pleasing France at any cost to Palestine is now being followed, Palestine accordingly finds herself provided with an exasperating frontier on the north and east^ whereas a straightforward policy would have ensured the whole of Dan unto Beersheba. Meanwhile Arabs have been encouraged to lord it over Jews and to come in to Palestine. Since the war, some 40,000 must have come in and settled on Government land. The Pasha landlords who had flourished and * jumped claims ' under the Turks, progressed even more under a more orderly rule which gave to them security of title. The Zionist organisation is handicapped, and although Jews are now coming in at the rate of 1 ,000 a month, there are to-day in Palestine at least five uneducated Arabs to every Jew or PALESTINE 217 European. We have, as it were, encouraged the Islamists in Palestine and supported Egyptian and Kemalist pan-muslims against both the Jews and ourselves. As things are now, after the muddled, crook- ed policy, we can only trust to Jews coming to Palestine in sufficient numbers, and postpone any real self-government for some ten years, till Palestine is the real home-land of the Jew. Fortunately we have in the Zionist organisation a body which, in spite of all the new difficulties, IS determined 'to make a success of the Palestinian experiment. We who look to the wider Commonwealth can only wish them luck. XIV THE MUSLIM WORLD Some future day may see a solid home for the Ottoman Turks, stretching from Anatolia to "the rich homelands of Thrace," playing as the Muslim unit a similar part to Palestine in the new Commonwealth. Even India with 70,000,000 Muslims can never be to the Musalman what pure Muslim Anatolia is. Such a solution may seem hopeless at present ; and if any such solution is to be, we must first understand how and why the Muslim world has changed from the ' sick man ' of Europe to the bull in the Eastern china shop, to the 'mad dog ' of the East. THE MUSLIM WORLD 219 Long since, from the time of the Crimean War and from the time of Disraeli and San Stephano, the Turks learned to lean upon conservative Britain. Nor was it only the Turks who then relied upon British statesmen. The greatest number of intelligent Muslims are now to be found in India. By religion, race and tradition these Indian Muslims make them- selves identical with Turks and Turkish history. They too leaned upon conservative Britain and received favours. They too regarded Gladstone and these humanitarian liberals with contempt and dislike. To them Mr. Lloyd George is no gentleman as they understand English gentlemen. The uproar over the Armenian massacres in 1895 annoyed them. Then Abdul Hamid fell, and under the Committee of Union and Progress the Muslim world was to revive and blossom like the rose. We allowed the Com- mittee to become our somewhat contemptuous 220 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMON WBA.LTH enemies and to be suborned by the glamour of the Kaiser. 'Gentlemen' had ceased to rule England. Enver and Talaat found the Germans * gentlemen ' more after their own idea. At that time the Turkish Empire stretched from Tunis to Bahrein, from Scutari to the Arabian sea. It was still in the eves of all Muslims a great power. Then Italy fell upon Tripoli, apparently with the good wishes of all Europe, except Germany. Islam had no help from Britain and little sympa- thy. From that time Indian Muslims began to feel the bitterness of inferiority and defeat. The • wars of 1911 and 1912 carved up Turkey m Europe and brought down Muslim prestige throughout the world. Britain was obviously no longer protector of Turkey and of the Muslim faith. After Turkey entered the war against the Allies, Muhammed Ali and his brother Shaukat Ali began to preach against Europe and against Britain. THE MUSLIM WOKLD 221 The Great War has torn Turkey to pieces, after it had seemed for a while that Turkey had defeated all comers— even Britain. Im- mediately the Khilafat movement swept all Indian Muslims into determined hostility to Britain. They had lost their Great Power. They had lost high hopes. Prestige was slip- ping from them. The Sevres Treaty, which robbed Islam of 'the Island of Arabia' (t.e., Palestine, Arabia and Mesopotamia), was in their eyes the work of Mr. Lloyd George, he who had promised Indian Muslims that there was no intention of depriving Turkey of those * rich home-lands of Thrace '. Faith and Pride —the pride of those who ruled India two hundred years ago— rage at their mistaken reliance upon friends who have failed them— have produced no more bitter enemies of England than the Conservative Muslims of India. It is reported of Muhammed Ali that he was one of those who were listening to the King's 222 THE INDO-BRITISU COMMONWEALTH speech in Calcutta in 1911 when the partition of Bengal was reversed, Bengal united, and India rejoicing. He turned round not caring who heard him and cried : " My God I We have been sold ! I will never trust them again ! " It was not India then that mattered, but the glory of Islam which ought to rule in East Bengal. It is not India now, with either Muhammed or Shaukat Ali. It is still and always the glory and prestige of Islam. They are impotent ; true ! But this burst of rage is anything but helpful to the real peace of the world. Yet what can we do ? A revision of the Sevres Treaty which should restore Thrace to Turkey, which should con- stitute Smyrna an autonomous territory under Turkish suzerainty, such a revision is possible in view of the part Greece now plays. It would, however, be unthinkable deliberately to restore Turkish rule over Mesopotamia, Arabia^ Syria and Palestine. Such a restoration would THE MUSLIM WOULD 223 have no ethical basis. We can give way to any demand for justice ; it would be rightly damaging to our real prestige to give way to a demand for injustice. I fear matters will get worse before they get better between Muslims and the Common- wealth. It looks as though Mustapha Kemal was to be the founder of a new dynasty of Sultans of Anatolia, as though the Khilafat would be declared vacant and conferred upon either Mustapha Kemal or on the Amir of Afghanistan. That the Amir should become the Kalifa is the wish of every raging Muslim in India. He is on their borders, almost in hand, a permanent threat to British India. Every con- queror save one has come down from the Afghan Passes. India, apart from the Muslim, wants no more conquerors. It might not be unfortunate if the Amir did indeed become Kalifa, much as the 224 TEE INDO-BEITISH COMMONWEALTH Indian Government dreads such a happening. It would make things clearer. India, as a whole, does not want what the Mus- lims want. The leaders of Indian thought and politics desire democracy, and fear rulers— whether Runjeet Singh from the Punjab or an Amir from Cabul. The temporal power of a religion seems to them as wrong as it does to us. As education spreads, India may convert the Muslim— or the Muslim may convert India. It is quite certain that after what has passed Britain cannot convert the Indian Muslim from his rage, either by force or fraud or kindness. That conversion must be left to time and India. Nevertheless, when India is a free Dominion, it would not be surprising if the hands of the Asiatic members of the free union were to be strengthened by a Muslim accession. Their complaint is against Europe, and not agamst India. So soon as the Commonwealth becomes THE MUSLIM WORLD 225 a free imi(ju of European and Asiatic, and ceases to rule and to coerce subject peoples, there will be gain and honour to be s'ot within the fold. When the riotous East settles down, it will need quiet and safety, just as Persia needs it to-day. If quiet and safety can be bought without selling honour and Home Rule, then one by one Muslim states may join in, on the basis of Democracy. Mesopotamia is on the road already. Neces- sity has compelled us, the rulers, almost to prod them into Democracy. Instead of deny- ing it we have forced self-government upon a people who want no government at all. After collossal expenditure we seem to have even sacrificed Mosul oil— at least for a time. Arabia will no doubt lie fallow politically for many years. It is ' ruled ' by an independent King of the Hedjaz. At any moment he may meet a rival ' ruler,' and, to Arabia's perfect 15 226 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH satisfaction, the ups and downs of Bedouin life will split Arabia, among many shifting rulers, shifting between Mecca and Nejd and the Yemen. They will be independent just as the Sultan of Oman or of Koweit is independent. That is to say, they will clamour for munitions and money for their defence against ' rebellion,* and offer anything for that support— till it has proved efficacious. By the gracious consent of the other European ' powers ' the clamour will be addressed to Britain only, and from us only will the support be expected. , Then some one will discover oil underneath the Hadramaut and there will be more trouble. Our direct interest in the whole country, at present, is confined to getting Indian Muslims safely to Mecca and out of it again. The pil- grimage does not seem to be working very smoothly under our King Hussein. It will be a relief when free India can settle these matters direct with Kings and Sultans. An Indian THE MUSLIM WORLD 227 regiment can do this only under Indian instruc- tion. For an Englishman the role is as dangerous as that of the pacificator between husband and wife. The future of Persia depends more directly upon Indian freedom. At present, and not unnaturally since the time of Mr. Shuster or the partition treaty, Persians prefer Bolshevik assistance to any Treaty relations with Great Britain. To the north and east and west, Persia has seen imperialist absorbtion in action. Red-riding-hood prefers a Red Hood to the British Wolf just because the Red Hood is less * civilised '. Russia has receded into Asia and is now on the way to become one of the helpless, exploited group of races. Till India is more to be envied than at present, Persia will prefer the Asiatic if she must be ruled from outside. But, to a careful observer, Russian rule to-day looks as transitory as were the anarchic 228 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH empires of Ghengiz Khan or Tamerlane. Ex- plosive fragments will fly forth and be absorbed all over the East. If new compound peoples in search of peace can also find freedom, they too in time may join our Union. To such peoples there will be no limit in western and central Asia. Egypt stands by itself. On top of the Muslim exasperation, comes a nineteenth cen- tury wave of narrow nationalism. No power can stamp that out. It must be lived through. The great war dealt hardly with Egypt. They were worked to the bone, and they met with little sympathy. B ritain was their master, and the cause of forced labour and forced recruiting. To hold Egypt by force would be the blackest mark against the free commonwealth to which we look forward. Lord Milner's scheme amply protects the financial interests we have in Egypt and our military interests THE MUSLIM WORLD 229 in the Suez Canal. There is now no danger of any other power taking our place in Egypt because there is no other power save America. The Egyptians are a particularly cross-bred race, without many ideas or ideals to contri- bute to the common stock. That, however, is no cogent reason for trying to coerce them, or even for desiring their association. With the Sudan we are on a different foot- ing. There we have at least as much right as the Egyptian. Our right and position depend upon what we do with the African. There are signs of land-grabbing and exploitation already visible — Sudan exploration syndicates and what not. If that is the civilisation we are to give to the Sudan, the sooner we hand the unlovely process over to the Egyptians the better. On the other hand we might look to and copy Nigeria on the other coast of Africa, where an exactly similar problem has been dealt with to the great advantage not only of 230 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH the Muslim native, but also of the revenue. Unfortunately the Sudan has been till now under the Foreign Office, an office without a liberal tradition on its files. All may still be left in the hands of some ex-military man at Khartoum, who will see as far as the end of mess table except when he glimpses the chance of a good directorship on which to retire. Any satisfactory settlement of the Middle East depends now, by good fortune, upon the Colonial Office, where native rights are at least under- stood, if not always protected. XV RESULTS OF VOLUNTARY UNION With these distant Muslim lands, we have almost got to the realms of dreams and pro- phesy. If they come in, other democracies will wish to come in too, and for the same reasons — protection and stability combined with freedom. The gain to the world is obvious. What the Roman Empire failed to do through greed and ignorance, what the Holy Catholic Church failed to do under Leo and Charlemagne (because in those days the world was too insular and lusty), the new Union of Freedom will have achieved. The sea will no longer divide, but unite through unitary sea power. Intellect will no longer produce hatred, but common wealth. 232 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH For two thousand years the best hearts and brains have sought to unite mankind. This is the best chance. _ Versailles might have achieved it in a differ- ent way, but Wilson failed us, Clemenceau was a nationalist, and Lloyd George an adjuster of bargains. The League of Nations is just a League of Victors. There is no other way visible for the old narrow nationalism to die and the new super-nationalism of humanity and freedom to arise. If this fails, we go back to the old flag-cul- ture and race-hatred. From the cradle, the babies of Germany will be taught revenge. Huno-arv will live only to spring at the throat of Roumania. Slav and Pole will wait feverishly for the appointed day tore-start plunder, murder and the brute beast existence of Europe's eastern march. Worse still may come from the Bast, for Asia grows and Asia has found a weapon RESULTS OF VOLUNTARY UNION 23S wherewith to fight Europe. While Europe commits race-suicide, Asia grows in numbers as well as in western education. There is no birth control in Asia with the possible excep- tion of Japan, where it seems to be beginning. Infant mortality in Asia rises at present to 250 per thousand, and the death rate has not yet begun to shrink as it has in Western Europe. When the infant death rate does shrink, the population of Asia, as in times past, must overflow. Europe is verging towards a positive decline in population. AVealth increases but numbers fail. The Whites tend to become the economic masters, the Browns the economic drudges. Such a state of affairs is unstable, especially when the drudges have learnt the weapon of the strike and* of passive resistance. If to economic advantage you add exclusive political power, the situation becomes even more strain- ed. The only safeguard for the white, as well f 234 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH as the only just course, is to take in the East as an equal partner. Many persons will say : " It is all very well for Britain to wish to stabilise now. She is on top. She may talk of peace. We will not leave things political as they are. A time will come ! " That would be all very well, if there were any other power, even on the horizon, round which mankind could rally to unity. But there is not, unless it be America, and America is merely another version of Britain. Sea power is Britain's and has never proved itself more decisive than in this last great war. No one, save America, can ever shake that sea power. In old days the Romans could build a fleet in six months to beat the Carthaginians. The Beggars of the Sea could rise among the dykes of Holland, and by personal prowess drive from off the seas the power of Spain. But RESULTS OF VOIiUNTARY UNION 235 nowadays, no personal factor enters and the time required is long. Dockyards, factories, guns and battleships, apart altogether from training, take decades to create and cannot be concealed. In an unstable world, sea power is alone stable. You must have the policeman or anarchy. Sea power alone can be the police- man. It were safer to be a shareholder in the policeman. And, if this were hegemony and not mere partnership that we are advocating, what race or nation has a better title to the place ? We may have exploited the Indian in the past. We may even now be jockeying the ignorant native of East Africa. But at least we have a cleaner record in our relations with the ' coloured ' races than have Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and all the rest of the exploiting powers. We have not yet heard of the intro- duction of diarchy into Java, or into Cochin 236 THE INDO-BBITISH COMMONWEALTH China. A Nationalist Movement in Korea or in Madagascar would meet witli short shrift. The ownership of every yard of land has been taken from the natives of the Congo and the Kameruns and Senegal— taken and nationalised for another nation. The Herreros of South West Africa can judge between us and Germany. If we have made money out of our Colonies, we have kept the open door for all comers on equal terms. The French would not leave doors open. Though there are lamentable signs that we are weakening and losing that supreme confidence in ourselves, we are still Free Traders at home and abroad. Though m future we can say nothing effective to Do- minions which may oppress the helpless, exclude the foreigner and his goods, or behave like schoolboys, yet the spirit which has made the Commonwealth will survive to guide all on the old sane lines of fair play and unrecompensed justice. RESULTS OP VOLUNTARY UNION 237 What then do we profit — Britain, not the world — if we take in so many junior partners to share the profits ? Why not carry on as we are, with subject-peoples wisely administered by our own stock ? We are supreme and inviolable. Let us grow by conquest and hold by the sword. I do not believe that this can be done much longer in face of the boycott. If it is tried and succeeds, such a British Empire is not the Empire we want. It will not do for the Labour Party. If it is tried and fails, the British Empire cannot then start converting itself into a free Commonwealth. It will be too late. Hate will have got deep roots. With the collapse of the idea of a free Union of Dominions, will have collapsed also the idea of world-union. What we gain is perfect security from outside. Co-operation of such a force from East and West would be irresistible. 238 THE INDO-BRITISfl COMMONWEALTH We may assume something more than mere security and moral weight. The Commonwealth will presumably share the expenses of common services— as they do at present and quite voluntarily. There is always a temptation to put these imperial contributions upon an obligatory basis, to turn the periodic Imperial Conference into a taxing authority. That seems the fair way and the normal way of raising funds for a common purpose. It is the Hamiltonian as opposed to the Jeffersonian method— to draw an analogy from America. On the whole, for many years to come, I prefer as safer, the voluntary contribution on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy. I prefer it for the same reason as one preferred voluntary enlistment for the war to conscription. There will not only be less sparring among the partners in the Commonwealth, but more generosity and sacrifice if what each member RESULTS OF VOLUNTART UNION 239 can do for the common good and defence is left to each to decide. The beginnings have been made. Every Dominion produced contributions to the fleet even before the war. India kept and paid for an Army ready for use. Malaya found a battle- ship. During the war they have provided more than ships and money, they have provided the men who saved Europe. It has all been voluntary, and till the Voluntary system fails, it would be better to retain that sys- tem even at some sacrifice of symmetry and justice. , The Imperial Conferences will tend to be- come more and more gatherings where they will say " What can we do ? " not " What more liberties can you give us ? " What can each of us do for the common defence ? for the common credit ? for immigrants ? to provide land ? to facilitate exchange ? to give the rest of us moral support ? 240 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH The Premiers cannot bind their legislatures. It is best that they should not. In these matters the Premiers would, however, have more power to implement their agreements, than had the princes and potentates of the eighteenth century. The Conferences may help to serve another purpose. Will the new Dominions quarrel among themselves, quarrel so bitterly that instead of world-union, we shall break up the strong British Empire that now exists, and produce instead Civil War ? It is to be hoped, that whenever Dominions differ, they will deal directly with one another, until either of them prefers to use the mother-country as Post Office and moderator. If the mother-coantry, as adviser and as arbitrator without powers, can do nothing more or needs advice, then the Imperial Conference should be summoned to do its part. At present, disputing nations have no ' powerhouse of the line ' to appeal to, unless it ftKSDLTS OF VOLUN'IAEY UNION 241 be that both will go to a rather condemned and numerous, but impotent League of Nations. If the League of Nations plays the role of adviser and arbitrator without powers and fails (as over Vilna), that is the end. With a further reserve of moderation in the Imperial Conference, further delay, and above all with a common fleet and army, war between Dominions seems much less likely — than between nations that are not in partnership. It is true that partnerships are often gal- ling and lead to deadly quarrel, but a voluntary partnership from which any partner can with- draw at will, without sacrifice of cash, need never lead to quarrels — especially as the partner who goes outside cannot possibly run a rival business. Neither India nor South Africa can set up as rivals to the Commonwealth. They can only leave the pack ; and one or other must leave the pack if it comes to mortal combat. • 16 242 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH India, with just one voice in the Conference, would be irritatingly under-represented, might indeed be driven by the handicapped position to leave the pack. It would be well that each of the eight major provinces of India should send its Premier/ Negotiations then would be better matched ; and, on occasion, Delhi is as good a meeting place as Westminster. ^ There are eight , without Burma ; the average population of a Province is 30,000,000 souls. XVI BROTHERHOOD One thing is sure. We have to bring the nations together on a new basis. All the old Empires of the past hoped, by one-man rule, to cement the peoples ; and the one man died and the structure flew to pieces. The basis might conceivably have been a common religious faith, if men could have believed enough in the altruism of the old Gospels. They could not, neither could the teachers believe, and the old religions tended to divide, not to unite, even to subdivide still further nations and families. The only basis of Union that has not been tried yet, is democratic Union. With the growth of education should come increased 244 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH appreciation of the one-ness of mankind, of common interests. There should come, too, a general moral sense in the rightness of good faith and justice. History shows that these feelings can grow. The complete sense of national unity has extended from the Heptarchy to England, from England to Great Britain, from Britain to the self-governing Dominions. Inside these wide bounds there is now the sense of one-ness, of common interests ; there is good faith and good justice of a sort. We want now to extend the sense of unity and these feelings of decency wider still, to the whole of the Empire, to the Anglo-Saxon race on both hemispheres, to the whole world. Democracy has stretched it so far. Cannot the same democratic institutions stretch it wider yet? If the brotherhood of man is to be anythmg but a fine phrase, anything more real than the BROTHERHOOD 245 Kingdom of God for which we pray without conviction and hope to find only after dissohi- tion, the way to that brotherhood must be prospected, surveyed and worked for. Christ- ians think every one must be converted to the perfect likeness of the Christ before we can get to the brotherhood of man. Socialists think that every one must first be a Socialist. They are both right so far as perfect brother- hood is concerned. But we can get there quicker, if we get first that imperfect brother- hood which eliminates national prejudices and racial animosities. Those who want to cultivate brotherhood must clear the miasmic jungle first. We can clear away quietly and steadily, without inviting bush fires to burn us all to red cinders. Remove gradually the injustice of arbitrary rule, of unequal citizenship, of racial insolence, of opportunities for exploitation. But keep the end in view; that end is Brother- hood, I see no other road to it, but the road 246 THE INDO-BRTTISH COMMONWEALTH that is called Democracy, founded upon the belief in the perfectibility of human nature and the predominance already of goodness in mankind. Yet I would not be too sanguine of success even for democracy. Lenin may be wiser to believe in force directed by Marxian Socialists. Gandhi may be right to base his hopes on Tolstoian anarchy. Democracy seems to me to be more just than Bolshevism and therefore better. It seems to me more practical than preaching a return to nature's anarchy and reliance upon individual conversion. Yet democracy alone, or union through democracy, is certainly not enough. Democracy might unite the world, for other and sinister forces are also interested in Union and willing to help provided that they can direct that Union. But Union of States or Commonwealth is not itself the brotherhood of man. The oligarchs of finance and the BEOTHEBHOOD 247 proletariat will still remain as enemies, not brothers. Armies and machine guns will still exist to be used for keeping things as they are, oppressor and oppressed, within each nation's borders ; they will go on being so used until, either Democracy by law breaks the plutocrats, or the Plutocracy by money-power shall break democracy. Union alone through democracy is not enough. Education in democracy is essential, as well as a free run for democracy, safe from brute force. If the education is sufficiently widespread and sufficiently true, we may find the way from Union to true Brotherhood. They say that a Parliament which really menaced big business would be broken by a Coup (VEtat. It may be so, but till the Pluto- cracy use force, British labour will use no force. They say that world -union in our present civilisation would only lead to further exploitation and more gigantic financial 248 THE INDO-BRITISH COMMONWEALTH combines. These results may follow, and brute force may be used ; but I^abour's duty is clear — to do the right regardless of possible conse- quences. We may in any case have to go through the stages of plutocracy and civil war. To fear risks would only postpone the inevitable. What is clear is that which is right and immediately before us, that is, to give equal rights to all British citizens, and to extend responsible Government to all peoples within the British Commonwealth who, like Indians, are fitted for it. Whatever may happen in the years to come —whether it lead to World-Union, to the Iron Heel of Plutocracy, to Secession from the Empire, to Peace or to War— Labour can never be wrong in pressing constantly for the ex- tension to others more helpless than themselves of that liberty and justice which is the Right of Man. 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