LETTERS TO NOBODY.*

h is safe to say that no Finance Minister in India ever before had such exciting adventures as fell to Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson --or rather, let us say, as ho deliberately chose for himself.

Leuer, to Nobody, 1908-1913. By the Right lion. Sir Guy Fleetwood

nusQ11, K.C.M.G. London : John Murray. 112e. net.]

Nobody but Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson could have written these letters. As he is extremely frank in dissecting the characters of men, as of animals, he will not think it an offence on the part of a reviewer who is unknown to him to say something about the habit of mind which is revealed in this book. Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson writes with some impatience of the endless " social functions," to use the rather absurd current phrase, in which he was expected to take part in Simla and elsewhere ; and he dedicates his book affectionately : " To my good friends the Simla monkeys, whose entertaining companion- ship helped to stem many a wave of overwhelming depression, and who seemed to understand me as I think I understood them." This almost implies that he preferred the monkeys to the men.

After we have read a few pages of the book, we are inclined to say to ourselves of the author, " Not a very genial man." But presently quite a new aspect presents itself. We find the author deploring the want of camaraderie between Englishmen and Indians ; we find him doing a thing which had never been done before—giving a dinner to all the members of the Reformed Legislative Council, including all the Indian representatives.; we find him entertaining Mr. Gokhale for a week at Simla and wondering why all other Englishmen deprived themselves of the pleasure of such delightful and illuminating companionship ; and finally we find him, when his five' years' term of office had

come to an end, honoured at a great dinner given to him by Indians. The author, in fine, can be sweet or acid as he pleases; and we fancy that a slight strain of perversity makes him speci- ally sweet sometimes when he is elaborating his regard for some- thing or somebody commonly disregarded.

Nothing would be pleasanter than to agree with all the author's sentiments about the companionship of Indians. An extremely complicated question, however, is involved, and Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson refrains from discussing it. Complete and unembarrassed mingling of white and coloured races has certain logical conclusions. Miscegenation is one of these, and because miscegenation is not approved, a line of distinction is sharply drawn between the white and coloured races. All this is a commonplace, but we should be interested to know how far, in the author's opinion, Europeans could cross the line without imperilling its existence. Individual personality, tact, and graciousness permit many Englishmen to seem to ignore the line, often crossing it with complete success and to

the satisfaction of both parties, without committing themselves to its removal. But other Englishmen have not the personal qualifications for these graceful movements. For the mass there must be some rule. No doubt Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson ii quite right in thinking that there might be less constraint than there is ; but it depends upon sending out to India the type of man who can perform a small social miracle. It would be a disaster if the Indian Civil Service ceased to attract the sahib. The problem, anyhow, does not approach in difficulty that with

which the Americans are confronted. The nearest approach to a formula for the solution of the negro problem came from the late Mr. Booker Washington (himself a negro), when he said that white men and coloured men should be like the fingers of a hand, quite separate yet an essential part of the hand.

Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson was an ardent admirer of Lord Morley's Reform Scheme. He saw, however, where it was leading, and ho prophesied that India would go through much trouble before she reached what he regarded as the inevitable

and satisfactory end of self-government. When he was Finance Minister the Military Member of Council had already been suppressed, and Sir Guy came into more constant relations with the Commander-in-Chief, who was Lord Kitchener, than he would otherwise have done. Here is a picture of Lord Kitchener :—

" The more I see of Kitchener the more I am disposed to call him ' the man of contradictions.' I am convinced that he would gladly be burned at the stake rather than save his life at the cost of a lie. Of this I am confident. But to get the best of a deal in the interest of his country, I have known him lie like the proverbial trooper. I well remember, when I was his Financial Adviser during the South African War, the effron- tery with which he gained his point when driving a bargain with a transport company. He had determined to cancel one of the appalling ' agreements ' which Lord Roberts (the antithesis of Kitchener as regards expenditure) had effected during his command. I told him that the agreement, however disastrous to public funds, was quite en rigle and must be re- spected. He asked me to be present at the conference with the company's officials, but extracted a promise that I would not utter one word from first to last. After playing with his adver- saries as a cat with a mouse, and with extra velvety paws, he sighed and, pointing to me, said : I don't like to insist, but there sits a gentleman sent out by the Government to order me to withdraw all protection from your property unless you agree to review this agreement? And he got his way. I remained speechless, not only during, but for long after, the termination of the conference ! Another contradiction ' is his scrupulous observance of a financial undertaking and his bare- faced readiness to repudiate an engagement in which no money is involved. I experienced this more than once in South Africa. Kitchener cabled to the Government and asked that I should be sent out. I was Assistant Under-Secretary of State for War at the time, and retained that rank whilst abroad, so that I was in a large measure independent of him. From first to last we got on splendidly,. and I have nothing but very pleasant recollec- tions of our association, but just at first I had one severe tussle with him. We had come to an understanding that if what he wanted done was done as I advised, I should sign .the decision and be responsible for it. On the other hand, if he insisted on doing a thing his own way, he was to sign or initial the document and bear the burden as regards result. The first time there was trouble was when he refused to initial his instructions, and denied ever having agreed to do so. Eventually he yielded and appended his initials in pencil, but so faintly that the result was quasi-invisible. My temper flared up. I stepped up to his writing-table, seized his gum-pot, and laid a good dab of gum on his signature. ' Why on earth do you do that ? ' said K. ' Because,' I replied, the initial will show through the gum, and you will not be able to rub it off.' I never had any trouble with him again."

The greater part of the book is concerned not with finance or even with Indian politics or Indian social life, but with big game. In the course of his hunting expeditions, the author slipped down a steep bank which led to a precipice and saved himself only by clinging to a tuft of grass which he had the good fortune to pass as he was helplessly tobogganing downwards. He was more than once charged by furious wounded beasts, and he was finally gored and tossed by a buffalo. He is probably the only man who has escaped from such an encounter. The warnings of his friends, many of them experienced men, were always useless when his life was the only thing that lay between him and a coveted trophy. He has the heart, we will not say of a tiger, for he sees no courage in a tiger, but of a leopard or a buffalo. This Finance Minister was the Rupert of the jungle. The descriptions of his sitting hour after hour as still as a mouse in the blazing sun on the light bamboo structure which is called a machdn, not daring to move a muscle for fear of scaring away the expected game, are quite excellent. One recognizes in passage after passage the thoughts of a man who really understands and revels in natural life. He seems never to have shot his animal without, as it were, apologizing to it. He never bore a grudge—not even against the buffalo that tossed him. And for him the scenes of the jungle were pure delight.

" The charm of the real jungle, such as you get in the Central Province, is beyond what any words can describe. A martian is just high enough to prevent one's being seen or smelt ; but it is low enough to enable one to see everything, and to watch even tiny little creatures such as mouse-deer, which are not larger than a pug dog. But one has to sit for hours as immov- able as a heron on one leg in shallow water waiting to strike a fish. The least movement makes everything look up and then vanish. First of all there are the monkeys, the veritable Ban- derlog of Rudyard Kipling. I detest monkeys in captivity, but wild they are a source of perennial joy. I almost forgave the troop which cost me my tiger, they were so diverting : wise-looking old ones, flighty young ones, babies all on the jump, literally, and all hopelessly idiotic. A monkey is a human idiot, only more human. When they turned my tiger, they looked at my glasses and said to each other, What a funny old- monkey this is He has got glass eyes ' ; and they stared and jabbered till one of them missed his hold and had a heavy fall, whereat they all shrieked with terribly human laughter and tore away, leaping from tree to tree. Quite the Banderlog. Then come the peacocks, any number of them, strutting about followed by their peahens. They look superb when flying through the air high above the trees. The smell birds are very beautiful. One finds oneself surrounded by golden orioles, blue jays, black-and-white minas, brilliant king-fishers, and any number of little dots of life and colour."

His regard for the " human idiots " became so deep that in Simla he used to coax them into his garden, no doubt to the despair of his gardeners, for monkeys are fearfully destructive. One monkey bit him, but, as usual, he took that in very good part.

The most dangerous encounter was with the buffalo to which we have already referred. With a friend the author had landed on an island where some buffaloes had been seen :-

" I was mad keen ' to get a buffalo, and in spite of Meyer's protest, I determined to stalk the bulls and shoot. I crept to within 200 yards, took a steady shot at the nearest, and knocked him over ; then I knocked over a second one. Then I loaded, fired, and hit the other two. One moved slowly away, joined the stampeded herd, and I lost him, although I knew he was mortally wounded. The other wounded one at once attacked the two dying ones and gored their bodies, and then stood sentry over them. I waited some time in hopes he would move off, but he kwt on walking from one to the other and refused to go away. Thatide vraabeginning to turn and I knew we should have to leave the island in a short time. Meyer implored me to come away. I realised the folly of approaching a furious wounded buffalo, but I also knew that unless I shot him I should Lose my trophies. I thought the matter well over and I deliberately elected to risk it. I walked up to within NO years of the buffalo, fired, and dropped him on his knees. He sprang up again at once and charged me at a fearful pace. I stood quite still and fired at the nape of his neck. I fired too low and hit him hi the face- Then I knew I was done for. / had no second rifle, and I had hardly time to think. All I could do and did was to stand still, turn sideways, and try to avoid the points of the horns. In this I succeeded, but the buffalo caught me on the right thigh and tossed me 10 feet in the air, right over his back. Meyer says I turned a complete somersault in the air with my rifle in my hand, and came down right on the top of my head. I landed in mud and sent up a small column of mud and water. The buffalo turned to finish me, but in so doing he caught sight of a flying native, one of our men, whose loin- cloth was flapping in the wind, and which no doubt caught the buffalo's eye. He raced after the poor man, overtook him, and drove his horn, low down, into his back. I thought my thigh was broken, as I could not rise, so I just lay still in the mud and looked on. My rifle was choked with mnd. and I could not open it ; besides, my eyes, nose, ears, and mouth were literally full of mud and I was terribly shaken. It was a horriblo sight. The bull rushed about with his tail in the air, roaring and carrying the wretched man upright on his horns. Presently lie caught sight of Meyer's rifle carrier, who had bolted, leaving Meyer without cartridges, raced after him and tossed him, but did him no great harm. Then he came back to finish me, but Meyer most pluckily approached and fired at him, and his and my previous shots told ; blood was pouring from his nostrils, and after getting to within a few yards of me, he lay down and died."

Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson, it is worth remarking, was then not far off sixty years of age. He was afraid that he would never fulfil his ambition of shooting a bison, but by good luck he did get one. Moreover, he had the satisfaction of killing a rogue elephant which had been the pest of a particular neighbourhood, advanc- ing on foot alone into a marsh for the encounter.

All these adventures of his own choosing might have been enough for any man, but it was decreed that he was to haw an adventure for which he had no responsibility. It was when he was in the procession near Lord Hardinge, on whose life an attempt was made by a bomb thrower. When Lord Hardinge was carried away unconscious, Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson had to take his place and preside over the Durban Englishwomen will be proud of the splendid tribute which the author pays to their sex for imperturbability on such an occasion as that. Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson has a pleasing wit, and altogether this book has more value than perhaps the author himself calculated when he cast it in its unambitious and rather disconnected form.