When Lillian reached her teens, the golden angsena trees on the main Esplanade of Singapore became diseased, and were felled and replaced by flame of the forest. It was a symbolic change in a scene that for decades had seemed immutable. For the Chinese community there was one hugely significant break with the past, as the Newtons became aware in 1911 when their Chinese houseboys gave up wearing their hair in pigtails, as the Manchu dynasty had previously decreed all its subjects should: ‘there was a fearful noise in the servants’ quarters and suddenly one after another appeared with short hair. A barber was busy in their quarters. They told us this was to show that they had thrown off the oppression of the Manchu dynasty for ever.’44
Change had both benefits and drawbacks. The Tanglin Club altered its rules so that ladies could become members. Electricity did away with oil lamps and hand-pulled punkahs; motor cars drove horses and traps from the streets, but created a new hazard – the red dust rising from newly built laterite roads, which could ruin clothes within five minutes. ‘The roads were pleasanter without their ungainly hulks and smelly exhausts,’ Marjorie Binnie insisted.45 The expansion of the tin and rubber industries and the commercial agencies brought a steady influx of male Europeans.
In small, disjointed ways, too, Lillian noticed that things were evolving and a degree of social alienation had set in. ‘In the early days I realized the [Ladies’ Lawn Tennis] club was a very friendly place, where everyone knew everyone else, but during those two decades times changed … New people were arriving from Europe every week … To the newcomers we were just a widow keeping a boarding house and her daughters.’ She now observed examples of a distasteful chauvinism in the attitudes of their young British paying guests to their non-British boarders. One of their Chinese boarders, Dr Chadwick Kew, had a dental practice in Singapore, and the Kew brothers had practices in Hong Kong and Shanghai besides. He was a very good dentist, Lillian maintained – and a good family friend – but he was effectively ostracized by the British boarders. When Hans Valois, ‘a most charming Belgian, a wonderful cello player, came to board’ at Orange Grove, ‘immediately five of the Englishmen gave notice to leave … I relate this as an example of the snobbery and prejudice of those days.’ There were other disturbing instances of the emerging white, male, British macho culture in Edwardian Singapore. Mrs Newton used to take Lillian to the home of the Young Women’s Christian Association, where there was a choir of Chinese girls. She was struck by their evangelical fervour and was fascinated
by the lusty way the girls sang [the Sankey and Moody] hymns, with their gay choruses, so unlike the hymns at the services at the Cathedral. Once again my two worlds appeared. I was puzzled and shocked when the [British boarding] men at Orange Grove made fun of our ‘banana’ meetings and the hymn, which I think was their own invention, ‘Oh, for a man … a mansion in the sky!’46
In the Christian European community there were people who deplored the boorishness and intolerance of the young male xenophobes of the British Empire. But insensitivity towards other races was not unique to the colonial mentality: it was ingrained in European civilization. On New Year’s Day 1914 Lillian Newton excitedly proclaimed she was going home to England for the first time in her adult life. It was an adventure for a twenty-year-old woman, so she travelled with friends of her mother who would be unofficial chaperones. In March she sailed on the P. & O. SS Nore with high expectations. She could not know that European xenophobia was about to burst forth in an appalling orgy of self-destruction and that, before the summer was out, England would be plunged into the First World War.
4
Pyrotechnics in Penang
Pyrotechnics in Penang
In the middle of June 1914 the men of the German cruiser Emden entertained the crew of HMS Minotaur, flagship of Britain’s China Command, at the port of Tsingtao, Germany’s new show-piece city of the East. The two sides played a friendly football match, and it was a 2:2 draw until the British sailors sneaked three more goals in extra time. Happily, the Germans won the gymnastics contest, and the whole occasion was judged a success. Two weeks later, tensions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire erupted when on 28 June the imperial heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb.
At first it was hoped that the fallout would be localized in the Balkans, for, despite the sometimes strident rivalries between the nation states and the scramble for colonies in the 1880s and 1890s, Europe had enjoyed a century free from general conflict. To the people in Malaya this incident seemed a distant, unimportant event, until the dismal repercussions began to unfold. Exactly a month later Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and German troops invaded Luxembourg and Belgium. Within a month Europe had divided into two armed camps: France, Britain and Russia, joined by Japan, facing the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. An unfortunate minor incident had unleashed an international conflict, the first ‘world war’ in history.
To protect the interests of the Empire, Britain had already signed a treaty with Japan in 1902, and, confident of her ally, British battleships had been virtually withdrawn from Far Eastern seas after 1905. ‘Nowadays’, it was observed in 1908, ‘it is only occasionally that Singapore is visited by a warship of the squadron.’ On the other hand, ‘The approaches to the harbour are laid with mines and are commanded by heavily-armed forts on the outlying islands of Blakang Mati and Pulo Brani.’1 This was as well, because, with the British Grand Fleet based in European waters, Britain had to rely in South-East Asia on the assistance of Japanese, French and Russian ships and the new navies of Australia and New Zealand. Vice-Admiral Jerram, in charge of China Command, had one old battleship, four cruisers and eight destroyers to cover the coasts of Asia from Weihaiwei on the Yellow Sea to Socotra and the Gulf of Aden. However, unlike Penang, which was defended only by Volunteers, Singapore was a garrison town with regular infantry troops and units of artillery and engineers as well as a Volunteer corps. In the Federated States some initiatives had been taken in 1902 to form the Malay States Volunteer Rifles (MSVR), in view of the growth of the country and the inadequate protection in the event of an emergency.
But no emergency was seriously expected in the Far East. With hindsight, however, a Singapore resident recalled a strange incident at the German community’s Teutonia Club in Scotts Road:
Shortly before the War crashed upon us some of the Members gave a fancy dress dance at which a guest appeared as the Tricolour, draped in the flag that usually waved from the Messageries Maritimes. ‘So soon we shall trample upon that,’ said Hans [Becker?], but even with the clouds all about us we only laughed and swore that War could never be.2
A Civil Service administrator, T. P. Coe, a member of the Malay States Volunteer Rifles, remembered the atmosphere in Kuala Lumpur at the outbreak of war:
August Bank holiday, 1914, found us winding up a weekend rifle meeting on the range. The atmosphere was less electric there than in the town (the clubs were terrible) but single galley-proof sheets found their way out from time to time from the Malay Mail office with the latest news, which became more and more disquieting. The principal local fear was that with business at a standstill and the market for tin and rubber closed there would be riots among the entire cooly [sic] population … the fear was a very real one. We were semi-mobilized of course from the outset – with some wonderful orders. I received a postcard from my sergeant ordering me to be prepared to parade at any time at very short notice, ‘with haversack packed with spare boots, puttees, shirts, socks, breeches, shaving material etc.’! Not much room for iron rations after that! We did some semi-intensive training, with route marches … and one or two demonstration marches through the town. Contingents were also taken to Singapore for special training.3
The Volunteers were willing amateurs. While, in Coe’s words, ‘there was interest in rifle-shooting’ and some civilians became quite competent marksmen, the ‘general standard of drill, discipline and turn-out … was modest in the extreme’. ‘D’ Company
, to which he belonged, ‘was a mixed crowd – Government Officers of all Departments, ages and grades; planters, miners and merchants of equal diversity; and a fair sprinkling of the type of “tough” that was numerous in Malaya when it was a get-rich-quick country’.4 A rubber planter from another company admitted frankly, ‘On parade we were a queer bunch. The soaks had to be held up in line by their neighbours; the rest might be described as “the halt, the lame and the blind”.’5
The Malay States Volunteer Rifles had had their first taste of military police-keeping at Chinese New Year 1912, quelling striking rioters in Kuala Lumpur. Coe felt the experience was beneficial in preparing the British for trouble. ‘The riots did us a lot of good and gave a fillip to recruiting. Young men of military age who had rather sneered at volunteering joined up on tasting for the first time the experience of not having been “in” a local show.’6 Now, as the news of German successes on the Western Front percolated to the Far East, patriotic pride was aroused and keen colonials felt a moral pressure to return home to enlist. In the first six months of ‘the Kaiser’s War’, as it was then called, 1,000 Britons left Malaya to fight – gratifying proof of national solidarity. Among the first contingent of forty Volunteers who left in November 1914 was William Price, an assistant at the Kuala Lumpur branch of Whiteaway Laidlaw. In 1917 a further 338 men returned home to join up, and in 1918 yet another 143. But, as it became more difficult to get passages home to Europe, men were encouraged to join the Indian Army Reserve of Officers. Once home, experienced Volunteers with the appropriate middle-class background could expect a commission in Kitchener’s Army. Coe himself left Malaya in 1915 and won the Military Cross as a serving officer. So too did Captain William Price, for leading a reconnaissance party to destroy a couple of German machine-gun posts in northern France. The commandant of the MSVR, Lieutenant-Colonel Hubback – the Government Architect in Selangor in more peaceful days – rose to command a brigade in France.
As Malaya waved goodbye to its virile youth, and married men took their wives and children back to England, the local economy began to suffer. The ‘rush to the Colours by nearly all young and healthy men, many of whom were never to return, became so serious that [rubber] estates were denuded of staff,’ one planter recalled.7 The Civil Service too lost forty-five of its younger officers – some 20 per cent of its strength – and eleven of these were to be killed in action. Over 700 Britons from a variety of occupations – a third of the PMS European male workforce – left the Federated States to serve in the armed forces, and of these over 200 were to lose their lives in the war. Some of the older and married men who remained in Malaya felt frustrated by being away from the field of action. Most did their bit by working longer hours to make up the deficiencies in manpower, and by joining the Volunteer defence forces, never expecting to see active service. However, when Singapore was thrown into crisis in 1915 the Volunteers were called on to help restore order. For Walter Lowther Kemp, who fell in with the Singapore Volunteer Rifles, any opportunity to be a soldier came as a tonic. The newly formed company had had very little training – ‘I had to teach half of them how to put on their bandoliers and load their rifles,’ he declared, but ‘one … feels that we have had at least a little bit of a show ourselves instead of being entirely out of everything’.8
In a country as racially diverse as Malaya, reactions to the war were bound to vary. It was difficult to gauge the attitude of the silent Asian majority – urban workers, domestic servants, coolies in plantations or mines – but a distant war was unlikely to impinge upon them. The business and professional communities, however, were keen to demonstrate their loyalty to the British Crown. The booming revenues of the Federated Malay States had already funded the battleship HMS Malaya for the Royal Navy, and collectively and individually wealthy Chinese residents contributed generously to the war effort.9 The Straits Chinese British Association pledged ‘to render whatever services they were capable of to King and Country “in the hour of sore trial”’, and published a handbook on citizenship, Duty to the British Empire, which was distributed free to workers and to its educated members. At the outbreak of war, Chinese and Malay companies of Volunteers were mobilized and provided guards at key points on Singapore Island; in 1916 additional Chinese companies were raised in Malacca, Penang and Perak. The small Ceylonese community made their own enthusiastic contribution through the all-Ceylon Tamil Fund. In total, fifty-three planes were presented to Britain by Malayan subscribers of all races.10 The Sultan of Johore showed his support for the British cause by presenting a squadron and by investing £1 million in government bonds. The fact that the Malay States repeatedly expressed their loyalty towards the Empire was significant, since as Sunni Muslims under the caliphate of Turkey they might have been tempted into a jihad or holy war out of sympathy for the Turks, Germany’s allies. The same was true of the Indian Muslims. In fact, in March 1915 the Muslim community of Singapore – Arabs, Indians, Javanese and Malays – sent a special message of loyal assurance to King George V.
As the Allied campaigns took shape, the Straits Settlements experienced a friendly invasion which greatly swelled the European population. It was witnessed by Arthur Thompson, a Major in the Royal Engineers:
One of the most interesting events in the early War Days was the arrival in Singapore of 4000 Russian Troops. ‘The Czar’s Own’, specially recruited, every man was exactly 5’10” and not less than 38” Round the Chest. Dressed in White Smocks and Baggy Black Pants and Knee high Soft Boots, they made an impressive sight as they went on a Route March. They had no Band, but the Leading Platoon of each Battalion (or the equivalent) seemed to be a selected Alto Choir; they sang a Line, then the whole of the men thundered a heavy chorus. It sounded simply wonderful. They were en route to France. I met them on the Wharf and took General Lokvitzsky, their G.O.C. up to Head-quarters. With other British Officers I was invited to Lunch. The Russian Officers had been picked from the whole Russian Army and all claimed to be Princes. Lokvitzsky warned me they would try to make me drunk, and advised me to take a sip of Champagne after every sip of Vodka … Thanks to L., I was more than able to hold my own.11
However, in addition to friendly Allies in transit, Singapore’s European community included some nationals who were distinctly personae non gratae. In particular the well-established German colony was now treated as the enemy. Some Britons found this difficult: they had come to admire the German residents for their contribution to the city’s cultural life. Marjorie Binnie remembered an emotional evening not long before the war, ‘one night of singing – a German party whose voices thrilled us into silence, as they sang hour after hour, folks songs, patriotic songs, love songs, unaccompanied by any music as we rested in a fleet of Malay sampans on a phosphorescent sea’.12 On the other hand, it was noticed in commercial circles that Germany’s suave merchants of earlier days had been superseded by a new generation of brash, hard-nosed businessmen, not endearing to their British rivals. On a trip to Borneo in 1904, a Scotswoman witnessed the spread of German influence: ‘all the shipping in the Straits and British Borneo is getting into the hands of the Germans. Formerly at Bangkok it was practically British, now 95% is German and 5% British.’13
Edwin Brown’s arrival in Singapore three years earlier coincided with a public spat. From the harbour ‘I … remember seeing the German flag flying proudly from the top of one of the houses … The residence in question was one occupied by a German “mess” … the Free Press waxed wroth in a leader upon the fact that the visitor to Singapore saw the German flag first, and the mess were prevented from flying it any longer.’14 Another resident was struck by how much the Germans made themselves at home in pre-war Singapore:
There was a large colony of Germans in Singapore at that time. They had their club, the Teutonia Club in Scotts Road, and they always had a Gala night on New Year’s Eve and well into New Year’s Day. On one occasion some bachelors from a mess decided to visit us. They brought with them a small barrel and the gong from th
e furnished house they rented. They piled in, eight of them, into a gharry to drive to our house to first-foot us. Just as they reached the German Club it struck twelve. All piled out and with the Indian driver made a ring round the gharry and pony in the middle of the road and sang Auld Lang Syne.15
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