CHAPTER XIV
OTHER SERVICES
The Indian Civil Service is the principal service in India; it furnishes men for the executive, the magistracy, and judicature, the revenue administration; and its members constitute not only the Local Government, but, excepting for the Law member and one or two others, the Council of the Government of India. Therefore it is in every way the most important service to have in harmony with the people. It is not, however, the only service manned by Englishmen, and it is very necessary that the other services also should be efficient. These are the Forest Department, the Engineer Department, and the Police. Of the first two I have nothing to say. They are technical departments, and although of course I have had a good deal to do with them, only a member of their own department would have the specialist knowledge to criticise them. I believe they are dissatisfied, but how far their grievances can be rectified I don't know.
With the police it is different. Though a separate department, they work in close touch with the District Magistrate, who is, in fact, their legal head. He must be intimately acquainted with their working, and with his Superintendent of Police personally in order that work in the district may go easily.
The first requisite for a good police-officer is a knowledge of the language. It is even more necessary for him than for the civilian. It is an absolute essential. And in the men of my day it was an essential that was fulfilled for the most part. Whether it will be so with the men enlisted under the new system of competitive examination in England is more doubtful. The men of former days entered the service younger, and the receptivity of their minds for acquiring languages had not been destroyed by "education." It is, I think, a pity that a competitive examination has been made the entrance-gate to the police. Such examinations prove nothing good in those who pass them. They may be good men, but preparation for examination has not increased that goodness.
I do not believe in competitive examinations. For instance, take the Indian Police; what qualities are required in a good Superintendent of Police? They are ability to command, facility in two languages at least, tact, a knowledge of human nature. What does an examination select him for? Ability in any of these? No, but for a retentive memory of written words such as Greek or Latin, for dry rules such as grammar, for memory of dry and useless facts such as history as it is taught, for mathematics. Is there any obvious connection between these two sets of qualities? There is none whatever. Has experience shown that ability in the first argues ability in the second? Experience shows the reverse.
Neither is the athletic ability for which marks are given to Rhodes scholars any test whatever of anything but itself. Without wishing for a moment to infer that athletic ability argues a deficiency in mental ability, I would ask how many of the leaders the world has known were great athletes? Nelson, or Lord Roberts, or Napoleon, for instance. Whenever ability of muscle and of brain have occurred together it has been incidental, not causal. Muscular ability is a good thing, but there are better things.
Success in competitive examinations proves one thing only—that the candidate has a good memory for words. It very frequently follows that he is unable to go beneath words, and that he puts his trust in words and papers and formulæ because the habit of mind set up by examinations tends to this.
There is no sense in these examinations for anyone, except perhaps for those about to be tutors of the same things. Men of action and scholars are different in grain and the test for one usually eliminates the other. That there are a few exceptions only demonstrates that human nature cannot be confined within hard and fast rules. But there can be successful generalisation.
Competitive examinations are a fetish which Government worships because it is afraid of taking the responsibility of appointing officers on its own initiative. It is afraid of the charge of nepotism. But it would not be nepotism to give the sons of its officers, Civil and Military, first chance of appointments in the Police. It would be a graceful recognition of the fact that when a man has spent his life in India he has lost touch with England and cannot get his sons placed at home, therefore he deserves consideration for them from the Government he has served. I do not believe in heredity in such matters because there is no evidence in its favour; but I do believe in early associations and traditions. Now the traditions and associations of the sons of officers who have served in India are with India.