Comrade Haldane Is Too Busy to Go on Holiday

by Gavan Tredoux

  In June I went to Simla, the summer capital, where I stayed till December, first in a convalescent home and then in Army Headquarters. The white society there had altered very little since Kipling described it in “Plain Tales from the Hills.” Noone but the Viceroy was allowed a motor car. Others walked, rode, or went in rickshaws drawn by men whose hearts are said to give out in a few years.

  The key to social life in India was snobbery. The Hindu caste system is the greatest glorification of snobbery that the world has ever known. If I am a Brahmin I not only enjoy privileges in this world and probably the next but I deserve to do so for having been good in past lives. Besides the Hindu classification there is the official hierarchy, headed by the Viceroy, and based on military and civil rank. And there is the classification based on wealth. A rich British merchant is looked down upon as a “box-wallah” and is not eligible for certain clubs, although he is the historical raison d’être for British rule. But he will naturally be able to afford a higher scale of living than a colonel. Finally the educated Indians attach an exaggerated importance to university degrees.

  The official hierarchy includes Indians. For some time the senior officer in Simla was General Sir Shemshere Jung Bahadur Rana,6 the hereditary premier of Nepal, and all British officers saluted him as a superior. The ideal position in India would seem to be that of a wealthy Brahmin with an Oxford degree, and a high rank in the civil service.

  Each hierarchy asserts its own claims, and much can be done by exploiting them. Thus a British Officer travelling first-class was joined by a very holy Hindu whose asceticism forbade him certain ablutions which are usual (for the average Indian is much cleaner than the average European). At the next halt the British officer bought a first-class ticket for a servant of his who happened to be an untouchable, and installed him beside the holy man, who departed in horror and disgust.

  I had very little personal contact with Indians in Simla. Indeed I have never yet been intimate with an Indian, though I hope to be so in future, as I greatly respect the intellectual achievements of some Indians. I can only become intimate with anyone on a basis of equality. So long as I am a member of a “ruling race” such equality is impossible. When an Indian and I are both genuinely trying to be polite to one another he probably suspects that I am being servile. The Indians with whom I got on best were Indian army officers holding King’s (as opposed to viceroy’s) commissions, with some of whom I used to play chess.

  At Army Headquarters I was set down to revise various guidebooks to areas where military operations were likely, for example the Kurram valley on the Afghan frontier where fighting took place in 1919. I also wrote a most illuminating history, with graphs, of the transport of men, animals, food and munitions during a recent campaign against the tribesmen in Waziristan. The communications were continually interrupted by floods which cut both roads and the railway.

  I continued this epoch-making work when I came down to Delhi for the winter. But I was not overworked. I was able, for example, to watch meetings of the Legislative Council, a body containing a majority of government representatives and a minority of Indians elected on a very restricted franchise. Among these was Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who had developed the Oxford manner to perfection. His questions to ministers were a model for undergraduates wishing to raise a laugh in the Oxford Union by interrogating its officers. He had completely mastered the art of scoring verbal points, and was well aware that his words would have little or no effect on actual policy. He was thus educated in irresponsibility. So completely was the futility of the proceedings realised that I was sometimes the only occupant of the public gallery during a debate.

  This divorce of theory from practice is perhaps congenial to the Indian temperament, as witness the numerous philosophical systems, several of which include a fascinating physics completely divorced from fact (I think of the Nigodas of the Jains and the ___ of the Samkhya). But if I was ever tempted to despise the practical powers of the Indians, the buildings of Delhi soon corrected my error.

  A whole cycle of architectural development, beginning with cumbrous but impressive buildings such as Tughlak’s tomb in the Early Pathan style, roughly corresponds to our Norman, lay before me, mostly in cities now abandoned. It culminated in the Jama Masjid, a mosque now in use. This building is (in my opinion) such a masterpiece of design that, until one realises that one can see its detail quite well from three miles away, one does not notice that it happens to be the largest mosque in the world.

  The Taj Mahal, which I saw later, is perhaps a better building. It has a more universal appeal, but I detect in it a sentimentality which is foreign to the spirit of Islam. One can no more appreciate a mosque until one has read the Koran and seen Muslims worshipping, than one can understand a Christian cathedral if one has never read the Bible or attended some services. Nor, incidentally, are those great and noble temples of Mammon, the sky-scrapers of New York and Chicago which dwarf their cathedrals and would dwarf the great pyramid, intelligible unless one understands enough of the nature of capitalism to realise its greatness while observing its decline and expecting its fall.

  None of these buildings however, nor the great mosques of Cairo and Kiarouan,7 impressed me so much as the Muslim architecture of Northern India. I have never been to Greece, and may have to revise my opinion. But until I do so I shall continue to assert that India has produced the world’s greatest architecture. It would be ludicrous to despise a people with such an achievement, and uncivilized not to deplore their present sterility in the creative arts. One can only hope that the new India which is growing up will be as creative as the old, and that communism, like Islam, will be a source of vitality to the Indian genius.

  I could sympathize less with Hinduism amongst other reasons because I am a potential Muslim but not a potential Hindu. An act of faith admits one to Islam. Hindus are born, not made. And Islam is a religion of universal brotherhood, whilst Hinduism perpetuates a complex hierarchy of classes. Further I am sufficiently prudish to find the human sexual organs unsuitable as religious symbols.

  The Hindu temples which I saw, particularly at Benares, did not greatly impress me, but I was deeply moved by the popular religion which finds its expression in Pilgrimages. I went on one such, the Magh Mela which occurs at Prayag, just outside Allahabad, a holy spot where the Ganges, the Jumna, and an invisible river called the Sarasvati, meet. It takes place every twelve years or so, in January, when Jupiter is in the constellation Pisces. I could not get leave to go on the biggest day, so when I went there were only about a million and a half people gathered on a piece of open ground covering perhaps two square miles.

  The processions were beyond the dreams of Hollywood. Some thirty elephants carried solid golden idols (non-Christian images are called idols) in solid silver howdahs. A few gorgeously clothed holy fat men were carried in litters. Thousands of even holier stark naked men, their skin covered in ashes, and their hair matted with cows’ hair, walked down to the holy rivers. A few policemen separated rival sects who might have quarreled.

  The people were fantastically gentle and orderly. There was no pushing or horseplay. Waves of religious emotion crept over them like gusts of wind over ripe wheat. “Sri Ram, Sita Ram,” they chanted. Everywhere I was welcomed. Noone suggested, as temple priests had often done, that I was out of place. On the contrary I was told that everyone in the world must attend this Mela once. So, if Hinduism is true, I shall almost certainly be born a low-caste Hindu in my next life, especially as I sprinkled some of the water of the Ganges on my forehead. Though of course I have eaten a lot of beef, a sin which is not easily atoned.

  Apart from policemen on duty, I was the only Englishman, perhaps the only non-Hindu, at the Mela that day, or so I was told. True, there was a war on. But officers, at any rate, could readily get leave for such Purposes as a day’s shooting. And there were thousands of unemployed white women. As a show, the Mela was certainly unique. A hundred and fifty thousand is reckoned a big crowd at Lourdes
. And no-one will suggest that the British in India are such good Christians that they would not attend a heathen ceremony. As a matter of fact things are the other way round. The better missionaries are certainly interested in Hinduism, and some of the Anglo-Catholics are very sympathetic to it.

  On the purely intellectual plane a case might be made out for British rule in India if the rulers were passionately interested in the country and its people. If the lead given by the great Jones, whose studies on Sanskrit in the late 18th century inaugurated modern philology, had been followed up on a vast scale, a professor like myself might be tempted to justify British Imperialism. But at the present moment we cannot spare the money for a thorough investigation of the extremely interesting prehistoric culture of the Indus valley. At least one site is being excavated by Americans.

  In 1918 I naturally thought mainly in terms of war. And it was gradually borne in on me that, from the military point of view, India was a liability and not an asset to the British Empire. If India were an independent state or group of states, the rest of the Empire would be appreciably stronger. The Indian army is of little use for modern war, for several reasons. The soldiers do not understand the technique. In successive weeks I watched the Scots Guards and some Indian troops (Dogras I think) being bombed by trench mortars in the orchard at Neuve Chapelle. The Guards swore with great fluency, dodged round the traverses, and were rarely hit. The Indians stood and waited to be killed, which they were. They apparently thought that the bombs were devils, and could not be dodged.

  After an Indian unit has had heavy casualties it takes a year or so before the new drafts can be incorporated in it and its fighting value restored. A good British unit can recover in a few weeks. The Indian army would be a good deal better were it not for official snobbery in favour of Punjabis and other “fighting races.” Half the Indian army is recruited in the Punjab. On the basis of my own experience I should prefer Jats, Mahrattas, and Gurkhas as comrades in a battle to any Punjabis that I have ever met. And if I were recruiting an army, especially a revolutionary army, in India, I should remember that Clive won his victories with a force mainly composed of low-caste Hindus from Southern India, including untouchables. In 1918 the British rulers of India were still concentrating on Punjabis. Sir Michael O’ Dwyer, the governor of the Punjab, was pressing the local authorities for more recruits, and thousands of men were bullied into joining each month. They were of no military value, and many of them deserted. The discontent produced by this recruiting led to the insurrection of 1919, and the massacre at Amritsar.

  In order to hold India the Indian army and the British army of occupation have to learn tactical methods quite unsuited to modern war. They have, in fact to be policemen rather than soldiers. From 1914 to 1919 the Wessex territorial division was kept in India, and many other British soldiers, including the whole 13th division, were sent to Mesopotamia to clear up the mess into which the Indian army had got during a side-show which, even if Kut-al-Amara had been a victory instead of a defeat, would not have been decisive. For these reasons, as a British patriot, I desired to see India, if not completely independent, at least enjoying Dominion status, and therefore not requiring a British garrison. Its natural frontiers render it more easily defensible than any other continental area of the same size. In fact, owing to the huge transport requirements of modern armies, an invasion of India through mountain passes would be far harder today than in the past.

  Besides, I do not like the present influence of India on British culture. In the past India gave us one great thing, the daily bath. Even today Indians are far cleaner than most Europeans. An Indian crowd is not smelly. And Indians justifiably regard us as not merely unclean, but dirty. For they invariably wash themselves after going to stool, and are disgusted that we do not. Indeed it is to our failure to wash that they attribute the prevalence in Britain of “that most distressing and almost universal complaint, the piles.” But today India exports retired officers who are accustomed to command rather than to persuade, and emasculated forms of Hinduism such as theosophy. Of the economic side of the Indian connection I will write later.

  I stayed in India for nearly a year and a half, spending some months at a bombing school at Mhow. Here the commanding officer, straight from the Western Front, illegally constituted himself Mess President, and insisted on a meat diet in the hot weather, instead of the vegetarian or nearly vegetarian diet of the country, which sensible Englishmen adopt. In consequence I went down with jaundice, and was again invalided to the Himalayas.

  In July 1918 I was sent back to England to learn certain methods employed by the Intelligence Department. I came back by Aden, where for the first and last time in my life, I won a chess tournament, defeating a number of British and two Indian officers by playing a safe game. I sweat immoderately and could at that time stand heat very well. My opponents could not, and generally presented me with their queens about the twentieth move. I spent three weeks in Egypt and reached England in September 1918.

  My employment in London falls under the Official Secrets Act. Fortunately it did not last long. Intelligence work is dirty work. Somerset Maugham’s “Ashenden” gives a not unfair picture of its high spots, including murder, though of course it is mainly routine snooping into other peoples’ affairs in the hope that something may turn up.

  But before I could be sent back to India, as was originally intended, the war was clearly coming to an end. I was on leave on November 11th, and was demobilized in January, after being sent for a week to Ireland, where our reserve battalion was now quartered. Nobody shot me there, and I became a civilian without undue fuss.

  I liked the war, or rather those brief periods of it when I was actually in the front line. I hated army life, behind the line, but my specialist occupation at least saved me from battalion parades, and teaching recruits to form fours. I believe that these sentiments are fairly genuine, for they are borne out by my dreams. In my pleasant war-dreams I am in the trenches, in my unpleasant ones I turn up late on parade, or cannot find my tie or Sam Browne belt. Since I went to Spain I have had dreams of neither of these classes.

  Only a few of my comrades admitted to liking fighting. I remember 2/Lt. Garden remarking, I think on the day before the battle of Neuve Chapelle, that he did so, and giving as his reason “Ye’ve nothing to worry about unless whether ye’ll live till next day’s meat.” The next day I saw him walking back, his usual grin slightly exaggerated by the mild cerebral concussion caused by a bullet wound in his scalp. But Garden’s remark suggests that there may be something wrong with a civilization in which people take refuge in war from the worries of everyday life in peace.

  My own liking for war goes somewhat deeper. I get a definitely enhanced sense of life when my life is in moderate danger. On the other hand I do not get thrills in the sense of autonomic excitation causing goose-flesh and erection of the hairs. I get these from motoring, when I have a “narrow shave.” But during five weeks under fire in Madrid in 1936 and 1937 the only thrill I experienced was from reading Rimbaud’s “Soleil et Chair.” The explanation of these facts (for I think they are facts) I must leave to psycho-analysts.

  I also find happiness in practicing the virtue of courage. I am not a particularly brave man. I have not got the requisite courage to dive head first into water, and I am frightened by flying in bumpy weather, and by several other things. However I was taught courage by my father, and am sufficiently self-conscious not to pretend that I am doing something else on the rare occasions when I am being brave. I believe that this attitude is far commoner in France than in Britain, where the best people do not even admit their virtues.

  Finally I enjoy the comradeship of war. Men like war because it is the only socialized activity in which they have ever taken part. The soldier is working with comrades for a great cause (or so at least he believes). In peace time he is working for his own profit or someone else’s. If I live to see an England in which socialism has made the occupation of a grocer as honourable as tha
t of a soldier, I shall die happy.

  I believe that many more people would admit their liking of war if they could distinguish between liking and approval. I think that war is a monstrous evil, and yet admit that I enjoy it. This is an internal contradiction in my mind. I have found a number of other things enjoyable which I believe to be wrong. But I believe, with Freud, that if we do not admit the existence of these contradictions we shall merely invent rationalizations to cover them up, including the loftiest moral reasons for involving our country in war.

  I am also convinced that temperaments such as my own will be useful to humanity for a long time to come. We have still for example to explore our own insides and that of our planet. And some day we shall have to explore the moon and the other stars. At the present time there is plenty for us to do. Those of us who can sublimate our bellicose tendencies may be useful to our fellows. But those of us who think that we are in any way superior to people who hate war with their whole souls are a nuisance and a danger to mankind.

  CHAPTER II

  Autobiographical

  Science.

  Before the armistice I had already been offered a fellowship at New College, Oxford. Four fellows had been killed in the war, and my academic career justified the offer. Further, my father was himself a fellow, though at that time he drew no salary. This doubtless helped me.

  I was not however to become a fellow till next October, but to live in college as a post-graduate student, helping to revive college and university life. For example I helped to resuscitate the Oxford Union, becoming Junior Librarian (Vice-president), the President being Hore-Belisha, now Secretary of State for War.8 He was then rather to my left in politics. I also revived the New College Essay Society. Having to produce an essay at three days’ notice I rewrote one I had originally written in 1914. It was later published under the title of “Daedalus.”