After they come out the difference of life and work is still greater. In the old days, for instance, they picked up the language quickly and well. The time to learn a language is when you are young—the younger the better. We learn our own language as children. The older we grow the harder it is, because it means not merely learning by heart a great many words, not merely training the palate and tongue to produce different sounds, but adopting a new attitude of mind. Nothing definite has been discovered as to the localisation of faculties1 in the brain, therefore nothing certain is known; but it has always seemed to me and to others whom I have consulted that when you learn a new language you are exercising and developing a new piece of brain. When you know several languages and change from one to another you seem definitely to change the piece of brain which actuates your tongue. You switch off one centre and switch on to another. You will always notice in yourself and others that there is a definite pause when the change of language is made. Now it becomes every year more difficult to awaken3 an unused part of the brain and bring it into active use, and to begin at twenty-three is late. True, languages are taught them at Oxford4 before they come out, but the result seems nil5. You must learn a language where it is spoken. Moreover, the way they have been taught Latin and Greek is a hindrance6, for living languages are not learnt that way. A child, for instance, learns to talk perfectly7 without ever learning grammar. I never heard that any great English writer had a grounding in English grammar. There is no real grammar of a living language, because it grows and changes. You can only have a fixed8 grammar of a dead language.
The fact is that correct talking is the outcome of correct thinking, not of any mechanical rules. You must think in a language before you can speak it well.
But at twenty-three it is far too late for the ordinary man to learn to think in Hindustani or Burmese or Tamil. Of course there are occasional exceptions, but the way these languages are usually spoken is dreadful. I could tell tales about myself as well as others, for though I worked very hard for years I never knew Burmese well, nor yet Canarese, nor yet Hindustani. Yet who will doubt that it is very important, the most important acquisition, in fact, that you can make? Without it you can never really get near the people. So that in this way the old civilian9 had again a great advantage.
Here is one story. Once upon a time there was a District Officer and there was his district, and for some reason they did not seem to agree. At least the district did not like its Head. It felt uneasy, and it became restive10, and at last it complained. It took up many grievances11, and amongst them was this: "There is a good deal of building wanted in various parts, and there is timber and there are sawyers, but no licences can be obtained. When the Head comes round on tour we ask him, but he always refuses. So all building work is stopped."
An Inspecting Officer went to inquire, and he began with this complaint: "Why do you refuse them sawpit licences when on tour?" he asked.
"I don't," the Head replied.
"They say you do."
"But they never even applied12; so how could I refuse?" he answered.
"Very well," said the Inspecting Officer, "let's see the file of your petitions received."
A clerk brought it out, and there—written in Burmese, of course—were many sawpit applications, and below each, written by the Head, was his endorsement13:
"I cannot allow more guns to be issued."
Then the machine of government was far less perfected than it is now. There were, of course, laws and rules and there was supervision14, but to nothing like the present extent. The district officer then had a personality. He was required to have one, for local conditions differed more than they do now and he had far more latitude15. Moreover, the machine being less effective he depended a great deal upon his personal influence to keep the place quiet and get things done. He could not ask for orders because there was no telegraph, and he could not get help quickly because there were no railways. Therefore he was obliged to acquire a personal knowledge of people and peoples, of individuals and castes and races, which, he thinks, is not so necessary now. The result was that all laws and orders passed through his personality before reaching the people, thus acquiring a humanity and reasonableness that is now impossible. He studied his district and he used his powers, legal and otherwise, as he found best. If he found a law harsh—and in the last resort all laws are so—he would ameliorate its action. Nowadays he cannot do that. In the old days he administered, as best he could, justice; now he administers law—a very wide difference. Thus he was forced by circumstances to acquire a knowledge and a sympathy which are unattainable to-day; for you only learn things by doing them.
The old district officers were known personally by name and by reputation all through their districts. The people looked to them for help and understanding, and protection as much against the rigidity16 and injustice18 of the laws as against other ills.
But nowadays, except the Government officials and headmen, I don't believe anyone in a district knows who the head is. At all events, it makes practically no difference, because the application of the laws is supervised and enforced, and the district officer must "fall into line." If any personality has survived his schooling19 it must now be killed.
Few men, I think, learn anything except from two motives—a natural driving desire or necessity. But a natural desire to study the people round you is scarce, and the necessity of other days has passed away. A district officer can now do his work quite to the satisfaction of Government and know next to nothing of the people. In fact, sometimes knowledge leads to remonstrance20 with Government, and it doesn't like that.
Again, there has crept into secretariats a cult2 of "energy" and "efficiency," and a definition of these words, which acts disastrously21 upon the district officer, both when he is under training and subsequently.
Now, the proper meaning of an "efficient officer" is, I take it, one who sees the right thing to do and does it quickly and effectively; and probably Government really has this in its mind when it uses the word. This is what it wants; but very often what it gets is almost the opposite, and it is as pleased with this as if it got what it expected. In fact, it does not seem to know the difference. An example will explain what I mean.
There is, we will say, in a district a good deal of cattle theft going on, and the thieves cannot be detected. Cattle graze in Burma in the fields, and in the jungle on their outskirts23; they roam about a good deal, and it is easy enough to steal them; detection is difficult.
But there is in Burma, as in parts of India, a provision of the Village Regulation which is called the Track Law, and it is substantially as follows:
If cattle are missing their tracks can be followed. When they pass out of the area under the jurisdiction24 of the village wherein the owner lives and enter another village lands, that village becomes responsible. The tracker calls the headman of that village and shows him the tracks, which he must follow up and demonstrate that they have not stopped in his jurisdiction but gone on. In this way the tracks can be followed till they are lost, when the village in whose land they are lost is considered as being the village of the thief, and is therefore responsible for the lost cattle. It can be fined, and the owner of the lost bullock indemnified.
This Act is taken from a very old custom common once in most of India, and also, I believe, in places of Europe. For several hundred years ago, when villages were widely separated by jungle, it had some sense.
There was then a presumption25 either that the stolen bullock had been taken to that village, or that some of the villagers had seen it pass. The thief would probably have stopped there for food or rest, as it was a long way on. But nowadays, in most of the country, village fields are conterminous, with little or no jungle between; there are many roads, and except where the tracks actually go into the village gate the presumption does not arise. Cattle are common, and the villagers are not expert trackers. Moreover, there is a very strong premium26 on dishonesty, or at least carelessness in keeping to the right tracks. Suppose the right track lost in a wet place, or a dry bare place, why not pick up some other? Most cattle tracks are very similar. The owner wants his compensation.
Yet the "energetic" officer will be expected to work this Act à pied de la lettre.
I saw a good deal of the actual working of this Act at one time, when I was a subordinate officer. Every time a beast was lost it had to be tracked, and the village where the tracks were lost had to pay. It made no difference if there was any reasonable presumption against the village, there the law was. The tracks might be lost two miles from the actual village, simply crossing its boundary; the law was there.
I remember one village had a bad time because it was near a frequented road, and when the tracks got on this road they were always lost, as the surface was hard. So the village had to pay. Yet what evidence was there against the village? None. I had the curiosity for some time, whenever a case wherein a village was fined was subsequently detected, to find out what village had been fined, and see if that village had been in any way cognisant of the theft. It never had. The fine was purely27 gratuitous28, was worse than useless, for it was wrong.
Yet it is a Government rule—not, I think, actually laid down, but understood—that whenever an offence occurs, unless the culprit is arrested a village must be held responsible.
I always disliked the Track Law and its subsidiary sections, not because I have any objection to holding a village, in certain cases, responsible for its members—I think it is a sound principle—but because it always hit innocent people, as far as I could see. I used it as little as I could, yet there were difficulties. I will mention a case in point.
There was a broker29 who lived not in my district but near its boundary, and one day he rode to a village in my district to collect some debts. He didn't collect them, and left the village in a rage, saying he would complain to the police-station six or seven miles away that he had been cheated. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when he left, and he rode off across the plain in the direction of the police-station.
He was sighted at dusk near the river, going along a road which half a mile farther on passed through a village, and no more was seen of him. He never arrived at the police-station, and next morning his pony30 was found roaming the plain about the village near which he had last been seen.
There was no sign of him or his body.
He was a well-known man, reputed to be wealthy, and a great fuss was made. His wife declared he must have been murdered. The magistrate31 of the broker's district was indignant that "his" broker should have been murdered in my district and I do nothing. My police could get no clue at all, nor could I. A subordinate magistrate held a proceeding32 under the Track Law against the village where the broker disappeared, and recommended it be fined. I, however, held my hand.
Then a body was found floating in the river some miles lower down, and identified as the broker's body, and his wife gave it a funeral. Still I held my hand.
My neighbour was indignant; my Superintendent33 of Police was distressed34 at me; my Commissioner35 evidently thought me slack—"no energy." The fact is I was puzzled, and would do nothing till I saw clearly. So six months went on.
What would have happened eventually had nothing more come out I can't say, but something more did come out—the broker came out. He was recognised in Mandalay and immediately arrested—for pretending to be alive when he was really dead, I suppose—and sent to me. I asked him what had occurred, and he confessed that he was deeply in debt to money-lenders and had made up this scheme to defeat them. He had left his pony, gone down to the river, crossed in a canoe, and gone into hiding. While he was "dead" his wife had compounded with his creditors36.
I sent him back to my neighbour with the emphatic37 warning that if his broker ever came up my way again he would certainly be done for in good earnest. The whole district had been turned upside down for him, and he was not popular.
Now the points that I wish all this to illustrate38 are these: Men at the head-quarters of Government, out of touch with real life, read the Track Law, think it most useful and just, and insist on its being enforced. Officers on the spot, accustomed to accept all law as the epitome39 of justice, follow the Act without thinking. The responsibility is really on them, as Government tells them to judge each case on its merits, but they fear that if they reported that no case under the Track Law ever had any merits they would be written down as "wanting in energy." As they have not been trained to think for themselves, they do not do so. They fulfil all the requirements of the Act, and are satisfied. Moreover, subsequently, to justify40 their own action they must praise the Act. Therefore a vicious circle is created. Government says: "District officers praise the Act, therefore have it stringently41 enforced, for they know its actual value." And district officers say: "Government declares this to be an admirable Act, therefore I must enforce it." No one ever investigates the facts. If a district officer have doubts, he discreetly42 smothers43 them as babies, lest they grow.
And this is but one instance. I mention in a later chapter a still more striking case of this sort of action; and even many examples would not expose its whole evil. It is the spirit that renders such things possible that is disastrous22. So are officers trained to believe that when anything untoward44 happens they must do something—they must punish somebody. The idea that if they act without full knowledge the something they do will be wrong and the persons they punish will be innocent is not allowed to intrude45. They will, of course, always act by law, but then, "summum jus, summa injuria." In the old days this could not have happened. In the first place, Government trusted its officers, and its trust was not misplaced; now it trusts its laws; yet there is nothing so unintelligent, nothing so fatal as rigid17 laws—except those who believe in them. In the second place, officers with the personality and knowledge of the men of former days would have insisted on seeing for themselves and judging for themselves. They would have cared nothing that they might be supposed not to have "energy." They would know they had something better than that—they had understanding.
The possibility of making our laws and our government generally endurable to the people depends on the personality of the district officer.
Nowadays he is sent out with his personality crushed, and it gets still more crushed out there. He becomes in time not a living soul but a motor-engine to drive a machine. Whatever knowledge he acquires is of the people's faults and not their virtues46. When you hear an official praised as "knowing the Indian" or "the Burman," you know that it means that he knows his faults. He knows the criminal trying to escape, the villager trying to evade47 revenue. It doesn't mean that he knows more than this. Some do, especially among the police and the forest officers, but then they have no influence.
As showing the difference between the old officer and the new I make the following extract from A City of Sunshine, by Alexander Allardyce. Few books on the East have been written with a clearer understanding.
"Mr. Eversley, the collector, was an official of a type that has almost passed away. He had been brought up in the strictest traditions of the Haileybury school and had adhered all his life to the conservative principles of the 'old civilianism.' When the 'Competition Wallah' came in, Eversley foresaw certain ruin to the English interests in India. 'Competition Wallahs!' he used to exclaim—'as well put the country under a commission of schoolmasters at once. But we'll lose the country with all this Latin and Greek; take my word for it we'll soon lose the country.' Mr. Eversley had never been able to make a hexameter in the whole course of his life, and there is grave reason to doubt that he was ignorant of even the barest elements of the Greek accidence. But he had acquired a marvellous colloquial48 familiarity with the Eastern vernaculars49, and he knew the habits and feelings of the Bengalee better than any other officer in the Lower Provinces. There was no chance of Eversley falling into such a blunder as that which was laid to the charge of Muffington Prigge, the magistrate of the neighbouring district of Lallkor, who once, in taking the deposition50 of a witness in a criminal case, had expressed his displeasure that evidence of such importance should be given on the authority of a third person, and ordered the police to bring 'Fidwi' before him. The witness gave his evidence in the third person out of respect. Instead of saying 'I saw' he said 'Fidwi (your slave) saw.' Muffington Prigge's judgments51 had been more than once spoken of with encomiums by Mr. Justice Tremer in the Appeal side of the High Court, but Mr. Eversley's law never came before the High Court except to be reprobated. Lawyers complained that he did not know even the rudiments52 of the Codes; but there was no magistrate in the Lower Provinces whose decisions were received with more general satisfaction or from whose judgments there were fewer appeals. His rough-and-ready way of settling cases was better relished53 than the elaborate findings of the Lallkor archon which were generally unintelligible54 to the suitors till they had fee'd their lawyer to tell them which side had won.
"The people knew that Eversley would do what he saw to be right, independent of Act or Code, and they had more confidence in his sense of justice than in the written law."
What is the highest praise a Burman will give to an officer—that he is clever, painstaking55, honest, energetic, kind? No; but that he has "auza." And what is "auza"? It is that influence and power that comes from personality. Who has "auza" nowadays? No one, not even Government. It has become, as Eversley expected, a Commission of Schoolmasters.
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1
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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nil
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| n.无，全无，零 | |
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hindrance
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| n.妨碍，障碍 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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restive
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| adj.不安宁的，不安静的 | |
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grievances
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| n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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endorsement
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| n.背书；赞成，认可，担保；签(注)，批注 | |
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supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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schooling
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| n.教育；正规学校教育 | |
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remonstrance
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| n抗议，抱怨 | |
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disastrously
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| ad.灾难性地 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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premium
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| n.加付款；赠品；adj.高级的；售价高的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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gratuitous
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| adj.无偿的，免费的；无缘无故的，不必要的 | |
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broker
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| n.中间人，经纪人；v.作为中间人来安排 | |
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pony
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| adj.小型的；n.小马 | |
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magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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creditors
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| n.债权人，债主( creditor的名词复数 ) | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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epitome
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| n.典型，梗概 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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stringently
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| adv.严格地，严厉地 | |
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discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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43
smothers
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的第三人称单数 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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untoward
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| adj.不利的，不幸的，困难重重的 | |
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intrude
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| vi.闯入；侵入；打扰，侵扰 | |
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46
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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47
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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colloquial
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| adj.口语的，会话的 | |
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49
vernaculars
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| n.白话( vernacular的名词复数 )；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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50
deposition
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| n.免职，罢官；作证；沉淀；沉淀物 | |
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51
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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52
rudiments
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| n.基础知识，入门 | |
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53
relished
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| v.欣赏( relish的过去式和过去分词 )；从…获得乐趣；渴望 | |
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54
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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