31 MAY 1935, Page 21

Empire and Morals

The Duty of Empire. By Leonard Barnes. (Gollanez. 10s. 6d.) MR. LEONARD BARNES' new book is the most ambitious essay in polemics he has yet attempted. In Caliban in Africa and The New Boer War he concentrated his attack on a relatively narrow field. His third engagement is with the Empire as a whole ; and, while his readers will find in it the same vigour and felicity of style and the same burning earnestness, they cannot expect the intensiveness or thorough- ness of the earlier books or, what is more important, the same personal familiarity with the facts. Inevitably, perhaps, with so vast a theme, the treatment is uneven. Except for an interesting statistical chapter on the Ottawa Agreements, the discussion of the Commonwealth of Nations is rather perfunctory, and the. Indian problem is still more summarily dealt with. The greater part of the book is concerned with British Africa ; and far the best of it is the concluding section in which in some forty pages Mr. Barnes, with his eyes still mainly on Africa, sums up his case against the Empire as it is and his hopes of what it might become.

There is little in his conclusion with which any Englishman with a twentieth-century mind will, in principle at any rate, disagree. He will admit, for example, that the assertion of national sovereignty in the colonial field is likely to prove an increasingly awkward factor in international relations. Many of those, indeed, who pin their faith to the " collective system " are thinking, like Mr. Barnes, that a solution may perhaps be found in extending the mandate principle to all dependent colonies and protectorates until the time comes when their peoples are able to " stand by themselves " as members of a world-society. And nobody will quarrel with the view that the " colour question " is the dominant question of the Empire, indeed of the world, and that it is now entering on a most difficult phase—the phase of economic competition between the coloured races and the hitherto dominant European." The only hope of ultimate adjustment, as Mr. Barnes sees—and it is indisputable—lies in the willingness of the white races to deal with the coloured races on a footing of equality. That, of course, implies something more than common sense. It needs a moral effort ; and only the stoniest cynic can be altogether unresponsive to Mr. Barnes' final plea for poetic imagination in our imperial policy, for another Milton or Shelley to inspire the moral insight and enthusiasm wanted for the better doing of the " duty of Empire."

Poets, says Mr. Barnes, are made for something better than framing practical policies or propaganda. If they look too closely at worldly politics, they are stunned and blinded by " astonishment and indignation." And, if the earlier part of Mr. Barnes' book is less attractive and less useful than its close, one suspects it is the poet in him that is to blame. It would seem that his personal acquaintance with the Dominions has been only or mainly with South Africa, and his direct contact with the colour-problem has been only or mainly with the particular example of it with which he was confronted in the Union. Did his experience fill him with such " astonishment and indignation " that, when he looked at one or two other parts of the Empire, at Kenya for example, and found similar shortcomings, he jumped to the conclusion that it is all of a piece ? Twice; it is true, he confesses that " to belittle the credit side of imperialism's account is merely to mishandle the facts," and pleads that he has written mainly about the " debit side " because we are already too self-satisfied and fail to realize how radical is the reorganization needed—nothing less, indeed, than a wholesale application of Socialism. But these few sentences are lost in a sea of condemnation so stern and so sweeping that one wonders if Mr. Barnes can really believe in that " credit side " at all.

This dominance of the satiric poet over the fair-minded politician could be illustrated from Mr. Barnes' treatment of the Commonwealth of Nations or of British relations with India ; but it is most noticeable in the discussion of Africa.

Let us • frUnkly. That " white settlement " inevitably increases the difficulty of doing our " duty " to the Africans ; but " White settleraent " only occurs in a small fraction of the vast area under the control of the British Government and Parliament, and the problem it creates is only acute in Kenya. Yet Mr. Barnes' generalizations, inadequately guarded by an occasional " mainly " or " mostly," convey the impression that the natives of all British Tropical Africa who number roughly 50 millions are being treated in much the same way as the natives of Kenya who number less than 8 millions— that all the territories were brought under British rule by the methods and with the motives of " racketeering gangs " in Chicago, and that all their peoples have become the miserable serfs of " economic imperialism."

On one of the pages in which Mr. Barnes refers to the " credit side " he pays a tribute to the honest efforts of many officials " to promote genuine native welfare." " These are the men on whom, under suitable guidance, Socialism will have to rely when the time comes to carry out the colonial revolution." Has it not occurred to .Mr. Barnes that, if the general situation in the countries where they serve is half as . bad as he depicts it, these men could not be honest and - continue serving for a day ? But does he really think them honest ? Anyone who has seen the system of " Indirect Rule " in operation, and especially the great work of Sir Donald Cameron and his devoted disciples in Tanganyika and Nigeria, knows beyond a doubt that the purpose of it is to preserve and strengthen and liberalize the traditional African institutions so that the Africans may be enabled to resist the disintegrating forces of European contact and acquire as soon as possible the capacity for full self-government. But that is not Mr. Barnes' opinion. Indirect Rule, he says, is used " rather as a part of the machinery of British administra- tion than as a means of educating native institutions for independent life." Those institutions are respected less from a sense of their intrinsic value than from " a profound con- viction of their inferiority to British counterparts and there- fore of their greater suitability for backward peoples." And the advance towards self-government on the basis of those institutions is being made as slow as possible." If this is a true version of one of the best things in our colonial administration, what is there to put on that " credit side " ?

The " central fact " of imperial relations today, says Mr. Barnes, is the ." colour-bar." But is there not a " colour- bar " in his own sense of justice ? One would not have him less of a poet than he is. His imagination, his sensitiveness, his moral ardour—these might do much to help public opinion to detect and destroy what is bad in the Empire without distrusting and discouraging what is good. But it was not Shelley's invective that most helped humanity : and, when Mr. Barnes appeals to the memory of Wilberforce, does he remember that the secret of the great influence he acquired over his hard-headed fellow-countrymen lay not only in the force of his moral indignation but also in his fair-mindedness and charity ?

R. COUPLAND.