AN INDIAN SCRAP-BOOK.*
WE speak of Mr. Malcolm's book in our beading as a scrap- book because it is in fact made up of a great number of serape. All the subjects are touched upon with a butterfly lightness. We do not mention this as a grievance, nor is it to be understood that the book is not serious. The work of a butterfly, no doubt, is as serious as that of any other animal. But to see it flit from flower to flower, you would think that it satisfied the conditions of its work by never staying too long in one place. At all events, what it does it does gracefully, and the observer cannot but feel more cheerful for having watched it. All this is true of Mr. Malcolm. His book is thoroughly pleasant, graceful, and good-tempered. Most men going to India with all his official and unofficial passports would have simply laid themselves out to have" a good time" ; but Mr. Malcolm obviously laid himself out, though we do not say he did not also have a good time, to acquire information, to improve his political knowledge, to add to his reverence for the Empire, and—to write a book. We may pay him the compliment, indeed, of saying that he has a good deal in common with those young Englishmen who command his respect by reason of their high sense of the duty they owe to the Empire, and by the resource and confidence with which they discharge it. The book is dedicated to the members of the Indian Civil Service. It is not written (to take only books with which it is reasonable to compare it) with so much literary cunning as Mr. Scott O'Connor's The Silken East, or with the exceptional grasp and the power of concealing the weightiest of problems in the lightest of narratives which distinguish Mr. Sidney Low's recent book ; but it has a "note"
of its own, and that note is the success of the British character in relation to the native mind. Since most of the papers in this book were written the unrest in Bengal and elsewhere has made a continuously louder rumbling. New circumstances may detract from the precise value of Mr. Malcolm's tribute ; in another generation the young Englishman of the public schools may no longer be able to deal in quite the same way as now with what we may call the new rationalising spirit of Indian natives. Mr. Malcolm, we may be sure, believes that the English mind will adapt itself to all changes. He once published, we remember, a Calendar of Empire in which an appropriate verse or saying was provided for every day. If that was all assertion of the strength of the Empire, this book is rather an explanation of it.
The first chapter is a clue to the spirit of the book. It describes the character of several of Mr. Malcolm's fellow• passengers on the voyage to India. There is the coffee- planter who is also "a light-weight and a well-known gentleman rider "—the reduplication of parts by the actors on Mr. Malcolm's stage is, of course, good evidence of their resource—whose narrative of shipwreck in the Red Sea contains too much of a bathos. We hope we are not morbid or callous, but just when we thought the thrilling hardships were about to begin we found him safely landed at Snakim, where there was "very little water and no ice." The other narratives, however, give satisfactory examples of devotion to an exalted standard of duty.
The discussion of what we have already called the new rationalising spirit in India is excellent. Not only is the native mind advancing to thoughts of self-government without misgiving, but the young generation of English administrators, which is more democratic than the last, aids those aspirations unconsciously by merely coming in contact with the natives, A superstitious conception of the Viceroy's position has dis- appeared in many parts of India. The Viceroy is no longer the successor in apostolic line of the great Emperors of Delhi, "the inaccessible omnipotent maker and breaker of men." He must step down into the arena when thwarted, and argue not merely with a Bing-Emperor, but with the population of English streets. From this point of view the unhappy dispute between Lord Curzon and the late Government gave more hostages to Bengali thought than perhaps we have yet reckoned. In the relations between the natives and the Indian Civil Service, the wondering childlike gratitude for gracious protec- tion and inexplicable beneficence has similarly gone by the board. The young Civil servant is known to act in obedience to a circular, and circulars command no fealty. These are all
• Indian Piatitras and ?rag a's's. By Ian Malcolm, London: F. Grant Diehards: UM. 6d. ust.J - • -
grave difficulties, but we can only say that the problem is more than ever worth solving. Our difficulties only increase in proportion to our strength and experience. Some people have seen a " way out" by the appointment of a Viceroy of Royal blood. But unless the Royal Viceroy were allowed all the attributes of Royalty, as the Indian mind conceives them, despotism (however kindly) and colossal munificence, the proposed plan would probably be worse than a mere failure.
The surprises which await the traveller in India, who after traversing a desert comes upon a green capital where the ruler is English in all but appearance, talks English perfectly, and plays English games with his subjects, have almost ceased to be surprises to the reader of books on India. We must, however, say a word in hearty praise of Mr. Alalcol nee description of the "Eton of the East," Mayo College, which turns out young native potentates on the English public-school plan. This matter is treated more fully than any in the book. How a striking counterpart of the English public-school esprit de corps and the old Arnoldian scheme of the government of boys by boys has been produced in the circumstances is astonishing. Many of the boys have a body of retainers required by their rank ; some are married; others shun the messes and always eat alone; others have been kept safely at home by jealous and cloistered mothers when they returned for their first holidays, and it needed all the wiles of a paternal Government to get their persons surrendered again. Yet in spite of all, tie boys are really "public-school boys" ; they compete fiercely for their " colours " at cricket, and never in life do they lose their affection for their Alma Mater,—a phrase as well understood at Mayo College as in England. We must quote a passage from a paper in the Mayo College Magazine, written by the Maharawal of Dungarpur after learning English for only six years
The Bhil is a great hunter, but his methods are generally far from sportsmanlike. To kill pig he digs a long deep ditch, which he covers over with thin bamboos and grass. Leading out from both ends of this he builds two long fences, sometimes half-a-mile each in length. The pig are driven into the enclosure, and, rushing on, fall into the pit, where they are soon despatched with arrows or big rocks hurled from above. Their manner of killing black buck is rank poaching, but very ingenious."
The acquired English point of view in this passage, together with the recurrent phrases which are so familiar to the English boy, explain more of the character of Mayo College than could chapters of exposition. The frontier incidents with which Mr. Malcolm illustrates his thesis that in the administration of those distant outposts the man is everything and measures but little are extremely entertain- ing. The Pathan to extraordinary turbulence adds a strain of genuine amenability :-- .‘ The General was riding through the village of Butkhela on tie way to inspect the Fort of Chakdara, and was not a little astonished to notice every evidence of civil war in progress; barricaded houses, bullets flying, bloodshed, and so on. On his return from inspection, a few hours later, he observed that all was peace ; and on inquiry he was informed that, learning of his presence, the engagement had been postponed, since the combatants had been advised that it was not respectful to fight whilst the Commander-in-Chief was in the neighbourhood!"
Most resourceful of all was the action of the Englishman who, having invited a fat and breathless old headman to dismount from his horse to talk things over, walked him off his legs under a hot sun, allowing him neither to sit down nor to remount, till he had made him yield through exhaustion on every point in dispute between his tribe and the Indian Government. The last example of what we have taken to be Mr. Malcolm's main theme is the bold policy of making advances to the troublesome Kachins introduced by Sir Hugh Barnes. The library of Mr. W. A. Hertz, his Deputy Com- missioner, is decorated with the broadswords of thirty chiefs, who handed them in as a pledge of good behaviour after being impressed by a march-past, and, above all, by a gramo-
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