MESOPOTAMIA AND INDIA.
LORD HARDINGE'S personal statement in the House of Lords on Tuesday did not, indeed, dispose of the Mesopotamian Report, for it produced scarcely more than a few contrary ripples on the surface of that series of damning charges, but it did, we think, help to discharge some of the superfluous electricity in the atmosphere. If we expressed the effect of the statement i,n a sentence, we should say that it left the charges of bad administration still to be met, but made it impossible for any rational person to talk wildly in future about the civil administrators of India as " criminals who must be convicted and punished for their " crimes." As to the obvious personal failures disclosed in the Report, we can add little to what we wrote last week because in a sens-i the whole subject is still sub judice. Lord Curzon postponed further discussion with a few grave words, and hinted at disciplinary measures which the Government may think it necessary to take. Probably the Law Officers of the Crown have disciplinary precedents under consideration, and till it is settled what can be done to satisfy both wisdom and justice— let us never forget that wisdom is quite as important as what might be technically proved to be justice—there is no advantage in discussion.
But it is at all events something gained in the meantime that the' demands for lamp-posts and plenty of rope are becoming less frenzied. Being optimists, we venture even to hope that some of the more intemperate accusers and demanders of blood are already reflecting that they have made themselves a little ridiculous. The Mesopotamian Report, terrible in its honesty and impartiality, will be wasted and will utterly fail of its proper effects unless it is used with a cool and scientific precision. The value of such a Report is to be judged entirely by the extent to which it enables us to remove the sources of error. No careful onlooker can say that the character of the first outburst of anger from the Press, with the pursuit of this or that official or politician who happened to be a particular object of dislike, promised the conditions of calmness and ordered procedure under which alone justice can be properly dispensed. To some writers it does not seem to have even occurred that it is absurd to ask the Govern- ment to inflict the severest punishment on individuals when several members of that Government, including the Prime Minister himself, are themselves involved in the condemnations of the Report. For political reasons the late Government pressed on the first disastrous advance on Baghdad, and this political motive (perfectly sound in itself) was the main influence that overcame the military objections raised in India. If Mr. Asquith is to be impeached—so runs the demand—he cannot be singled out from those who were members of his War Committee, and are now members of the present Government. What has been proposed by some of the least responsible newspapers is really that the Govern- ment, though themselves in the dock (in respect of some of the most important Ministers), should proceed to impose sentences as though they were on the Bench. As though that were not a sufficiently inane suggestion, some of the very newspapers which have been condemning Ministers for not being guided by their military experts are now denouncing Lord Hardinge because he surrendered himself to the advice of his Commander-in-Chief, Sir Beauchamp Duff. Personally, we have never accepted the doctrine that Ministers ought to be the mere mouthpiece of military experts as an absolute rule of life, and we therefore hold ourselves free to say that Lord Hardinge was very unwise to trust Sir Beauchamp Duff so implicitly. He had plenty of oppor- tunities of finding out on lesser occasions whether Sir Beauchamp Duff would, or would not, be likely to give sound advice, and act energetically, in a great crisis. If he thought that Sir Beauchamp Duff was likely to act with energy and judgment, he misjudged his capacities, and it is one of the first duties of a Governor-General to judge correctly the capacities of his agents ; if he did not think that Sir Beauchamp Duff was a safe man in his post, he should have sanctioned no vital decision without the closest scrutiny. But here we are dealing with matters of judgment, not with such charges of criminal carelessness as have been bandied about in the Press. We cannot help feeling all the time that a much more vigorous and less bigoted man than Sir Beauchamp Duff might have failed under the over-centralized system of military administration in India which dates back to 1905. Under that system the Commander-in-Chief works in absolute seclusion, being deprived of the co-operation of the former Military Member of the Council—who corresponded roughly to the Secretary for War here—and no officer, however able, could possibly support the burden of that office. This system cries out for reform. It is true that the old system when the Military Member still existed was very cumbrous, and many of Lord Kitchener's complaints against it were just and timely ; but the cure was not more centralization. This cure was much worse than the original disease. Reform of the present system is only one of several administrative reforms in India which the Report indicates as necessary. We earnestly hope that Parliament, and the public, and the Press too before long, will concentrate their efforts on removing the causes of such a harrowing disaster as that of the first Mesopotamian campaign, and not on exacting the utmost penalty from individuals. Granted that dis- ciplinary measures, after calm and adequate discussion, may be very properly inflicted, that, after all, will not bring us any nearer to winning the war. Even if all the heads of the accused persons should roll in the dust, we should still be no nearer to victory. Indeed, we should be further off, because the simple truth is that some of them cannot be spared. In this imperfect world failure in one direction can never be safely taken as a proof of incompetence in another, or, for the matter of that, as a disproof of the very highest ability in another direction.
In this connexion Lord Hardin..e's appeal to his record in India, and generally as an old servant of the State, is relevant, though it had little enough to do with the immediate charges in the Report. We do say emphatically that a Viceroy who guided the fortunes of India herself with complete success through the perilous days earlier in the war, When one group of tribesmen after another attempted revolt, when Germany was plotting upheavals in every corner of the country, and when only the prestige of the European stood between us and the likelihood of another Mutiny greater than that of 1857, is entitled to be treated with ample respect and consideration. Lord Hardinge prolonged his term of office at the request of the Government, and it would be entirely unjust not to associate the happy results in India during that term with the reputation for sympathy, courage, and enlightenment which. he had undoubtedly earned among the peoples of India. This point of view could not be adopted by the writers of the Report, who had no business to look outside their terms of reference, but it should distinctly enter into the judgments of people who not only can survey the whole field, but must survey it all if they are to be just. In our opinion, however, it was the very habit of placing the concerns of India before all others that betrayed the Govern- ment of India under Lord Hardinge into seeing the Mesopo- tamian campaign in too dim a light, It is an ungracious task to criticize those who act most honourably as trustees—that Lord Hardinge unquestionably has done in India, and he should have full credit for a very great merit—but we believe that more imagination and a wider mental grasp of the Imperial problem as a whole would have prevented the rulers of India from forgetting that in a great war India can be only one piece on the board. She must survive or fall with her fellows. At first the Government of India were extremely zealous to help ; they proposed of their own accord, as we learn from Lord Hardinge, the despatch of the Indian divisions to France, and accepted large risks of insecurity in India in consequence ; but later they became too careful for the Indian Exchequer. At that point they seemed to cease to see the position of India
in relation to the whole Empire. We find Sir William Meyer claiming credit-for the modesty of his military Budget at a time when modesty was grotesquely misplaced. This self-regarding habit also accounts for the false dignity of the Indian Government when protests or appeals reached them. They were more ruffled by the tone than by the substance of genuine military grievances in Mesopotamia. To men in this temper political introspection, continually practised, becomes almost morbid. Everything seems good that ministers to it, and everything seems of lesser importance that does not. The beneficent care of the native population redounds to the prestige of Government, but bearing a financial burden in a campaign outside the country does not. Thus even a zealous and single-minded trusteeship may become unregardful of interests that do not appeal in immediate senses to persons who are in the frame of mind which held the Government of India. But once again we must beg the public to distinguish. There was want of imagination and political discrimination ; there was a failure to reach the high levels of statesmanship ; but these things do not constitute crimes. If after due and anxious consideration wilful pro- fessional neglect is proved against officials or soldiers, disci- plinary measures may well be justified. But we should always bear in mind that the removal of the source of blunders is much more important than penalizing persons, and that it is not the part of wise citizens to say to their civil and military leaders as a general principle : " If you make a mistake you shall be shot." That is the surest way to paralyse action, and to reduce men of boldness and independence to a mean and craven habit of caution.
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