THE MIST NOW SPREAD OVER INDIA.
IT is high time that the attention of the public, and if possible of statesmen, shouldbe called to an evil which, i though in part accidental, is also n part the result of design, and may prove of great moment to the Empire. It has ceased to be possible to obtain either full intelligence or independent intelligence from India. For the past five years, as all poli- ticians are painfully aware, the importance of India as a factor in British policy has been steadily increasing. The Ministry have deliberately reduced Great Britain to the position of the brightest jewel in an Imperial Crown, and have regulated their
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policy with a primary view to the fety and the aggrandise- meat of what before their new departure was but a valuable dependency. They have end. eavoured to make India bear to the United Kingdom the position Which tion which Brazil for many years bore to Portugal. Their action n Europe, their negotiations with foreign States, their attitude towards Russia, have all been governed by the assertion that India was invaluable, that India was in danger, and that India must be protected by un- usual, or even adventurous, plane. Parliament has sup- ported them, and the country is at this moment engaged in an enterprise of first-class magnitude, which may involve a most serious war, and must involve two years of costly cam- paigning, during which almost any misfortune, from a second Isandiana to a second Indian Mutiny, is not only within the range of possibilities, but within the range of such possibili- ties as statesmen take into calculation. The public has per- ceived this, and "our Indian Policy" is watched with an interest not displayed since 1857. Statesmen defend and attack particular plans, the few experts pour out books, pamphlets, and letters, and no Member of Parliament addresses his con- stituents without a few words en Afghanistan. All this while, the information accessible to the public, the record of facts, the summaries of opinion on the spot, all the usual
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means of forming an accurate judgment,av been slowly allowed to disappear. No regular public letters are now published from India. The journals have turned their correspondents into telegram-makers, and private letters seem so old that they are not allowed to appear. The Indian Press is, for English purposes, dead. The articles are never quoted, the narratives are too old to reprint, the speculations are contra- dicted or confirmed before they arrive. We do not believe five persons in London not directly interested in Indian journal- ism could give an account of the line the Indian Press has taken about Afghanistan, or anything approaching to an accu- rate sketch of present opinion among Indian officials. No full narratives are published, n i
o eneeches, and above all, no Opinions. There does not exist n any form accessible to the public any full statement whatever of the important hill-war going on, which is apparently about to end in the abandon- ment to the hill-men of nearly all we gained in the last war, of the Peiwar, Alikhel, and the Pass of the Shuturgardan. It is specifically stated that the orders, are out for abandoning them, and that is all. In civil affairs, the want of information is complete. We know that after long and strenuous debate, the Government, by a sort of dead-heave, succeeded in carrying "Mr. Hope's Deccan Ryot Bill" into law almost unspoiled. That measure is far and away the most important, and as we think the most intelligent and original effort ever made to get rid of the mortgage difficulty in India, that singular instance of the clashing of two civilisations which made of English honesty in maintaining contracts a ruinous oppression to the people. One would have thought that in England the deliberate adoption by an English Government of the Mosaic plan of a Jubilee year—which is the essential thought of this great effort—would have excited discussion and attention, but it has not been explained, save once in our own columns, and will, when the debates arrive, seem old news, and be forgotten. The telegram-compiler has mastered everybody.
And the military section of the Government has mastered him. Only one account of Indian events which is even par- tially independent now reaches England. The Times' corre- spondent in Calcutta can, we presume, discuss, if needful, and sometimes he does record opinion unfavourable to the Govern- ment. But usually his telegrams are neither more nor less than careful digests of what the Viceroy wishes to be said. We do not blame him for sending that digest, in any way. The Viceroy's opinion is by far the most important factor in any Indian situation, it ought to be reflected, and it can be best reflected in the journal to which people look, first of all, for the heavier news. But more is required, and as there is a limit even to what the Times will spend in one department, more is very seldom forthcoming. No other journal supplies Indian telegrams by the column, and no other has independent correspondents, though one man on the Standard succeeds by great adroitness in conveying valuable hints. The Generals have succeeded in inducing Lord Lytton, first to prohibit the presence of independ- ent correspondents with the Armies, and then to place them under a prohibitory censorship, the unhappy writers being placed under martial law, and then compelled, under those conditions, to submit all letters and telegrams to the Head-quarters Staff, whose verdict, again, the proprietors at home are under written pledges to accept. Correspondence, under such circumstances, is impossible ; and the home jour- nalists, though they could baffle, or nearly baffle, all these precautions, are not yet quite prepared either for the ex- penditure or the risk their agents must undergo in main- taining concealed correspondence. The total result is that the public at home is dependent on short, official tele- grams, which never contain more than a portion of the most visible facts—for example, we have not one intelligible word about Afghan or even Cabulee feeling as to recent events, or Yakoob Khan's position, or the general attitude of the hillmen —which never report opinions, and which scrupulously con- ceal everything really unfavourable to the official policy. Nothing is explained, nothing is predicted, nothing stated that can be helped. We hear nothing of the condition of the Army, nothing of its health or sickness, nothing of transport, except that every delay is attributed to transport difficulties. For aught that England is allowed to hear, the operations of the great army in Afghanistan (thirty-five thousand men, in ail) might be a movement of armed police, necessary to repress a riot, or an outburst such as has just taken place on a mountain-side in Assam,—about which, by the way, we are welcome to any amount of detail. The Press Commission, which this Govern- ment, in defiance of the long-continued and wise Indian tradi- tion, under which the Government was to do as it pleased and its subjects were to talk as they pleased, has allowed to be set up, is, as regards England, entirely useless, and the British people, who have not only to pay for all, but ultimately to guide all, is left in an ignorance which no private firm would endure for a single month.
We would ask Lord Beaconsfield, who, after all, is master, and who has lived through so many wars, whether this is wise ; whether he sincerely deems it expedient, in a democratic age, to sacrifice the enlightenment which is the only substantial check upon democratic action ; whether he does not admit that public attention strengthens, instead of crippling, British armies. It is so, whether he believes it or not. There are evils following on the system of special correspondence, some of them in war-time considerable evils, but there are benefits which more than compensate for them. A General may now and again be hampered by fear of criticism, but the body of Generals are inspired by the presence of the eyes of the world at home. An opponent may learn something from correspond- ence about want of transport, but under correspondence the Transport Department is conscious of an unrelaxing, unend- ing stimulus and pressure. Afghans may learn from letters that cholera is among the Peringhees, but the surgeons learn also
that all England is behind them with sympathy, and succour, and fresh men. The help of the whole people in a country like this is an endless force, and it cannot be given, and is not given, unless the people is informed. There was no help in the Crimea until William Russell spoke out, in letters even now not forgotten. In the Khyber, he could tell us nothing, under penalty of martial law. And finally, to use the most serious argument of all, the freedom of correspondence checks cruelty. British Generals are not cruel, or their sol- diers either ; but both are trained to rely on force and terror as the only effective weapons, and both forget that when we have to govern half-civilised tribes, the worst beginning is to create blood-feuds. To shoot Mahommedan doctors for preaching the first article of their faith—the moral duty of subjugating the Infidel—is not statesmanship, any more than it is justice ; and had free correspondents been present, they would not have been shot. As we have asked,—Is this wise t We have no sym- pathy whatever with the wild talk which comes from India about the " insult " to the Press involved in General Roberts's regu- lations. General Roberts does not want to insult Correspond- ents, but to prevent their appearance within his jurisdiction. Like many another good soldier, ho hates them, as he hates politicians and all critical civilians, and does not understand the enormous force which, in our modern day, the opinion of a whole people, when once fully informed, can bring to his side. He sees that correspond- ents reveal his deficiency of quinine, and does not see that they attract quinine to his camp from all corners of the earth. He is doing his duty, as he sees it ; but soldiers are the ser- vants of statesmen, and it is the statesmen we ask whether they believe that this ostrich policy can add to the strength of their armies, and the wisdom of their Viceroys. It is the right of England to know what is doing in India, and the right is now refused. •
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