Pay has something to do with the poorness of the material, but in Burma at least it is not the principal cause. That cause is that the police are disliked, and they are disliked because they are part of a legal system which is disliked and disapproved of. The police are considered almost as enemies of the people. To rehabilitate the police and get really good men into it the whole criminal system requires amendment. When the people like and admire the Courts they will like and will enter the service of those Courts. Now they will do neither. A popular Government may be a good Government; an unpopular Government cannot possibly be so.
Further, it is said that the Burman takes badly to discipline and will never, therefore, make a good policeman nor soldier.
That he takes badly to discipline is true, but what is the reason? That he is essentially different from other people? That is absurd. The reason of it lies in his past history, his environment and education.
When we took Upper Burma it was hardly an organised nation at all. It was only a mass of villagers which acknowledged a king over all. There was no national army—because no need for one—and no large industries. The Burman has been a free man and he has the religion—or want of religion—of a free man. He has never had priests to rule him, to force on him reverence and obedience as virtues, to destroy his individuality. Therefore he has lived free. And nowadays, although he is lectured enough on his want of discipline, the advice is given in the wrong way and apropos of the wrong subject.
He ought in the opinion of his critics to be a good policeman or a good soldier, or a good employé for the rice merchants in Rangoon, and he is not. Therefore he is lectured on his want of discipline. "That is to say," thinks the Burman, "I am lectured and abused in order that I may be a more useful tool in the hands of a foreign Government, or a more profitable servant to a foreign merchant—who will reap the benefit."
That is what he thinks and rightly thinks, for the advice is so prompted and so meant.
He has yet to learn that discipline in act is necessary to enable him to attain his own ideals, to create and maintain his own self-government, and to establish industries that will compete with the foreigner's. He must himself establish organisms in order to succeed.
The Burman is afraid of discipline, partly because it is new to him, and partly because he is afraid that by surrendering independence of act he will surrender independence of spirit.
This can only be got over by a true education, by making the boy see for himself that only in union is strength, and that he must learn to act with others, and therefore under leaders. He will see this fast enough if it is carefully shown him when young. He will accept it also if it is clearly demonstrated to him that obedience in act does not infer surrender of his soul. It is the latter he is afraid of, and wisely. Tell him that not only may he think for himself, but that he is bound to do so, while at the same time subordinating private opinions to a common end, and you will get discipline as much as you like. It is a matter of common sense, and he has plenty of that.
The mechanical obedience to masters and spiritual or material pastors because they have been "set in authority" over us should never be taught. They have not been set in authority. They may deserve obedience if they are leaders in the right way, and we should co-operate with them there by serving them towards an end good for both. Get the boy to understand that. Then you get that willing and intelligent obedience which is worth all the mechanical obedience in the world. This is true in all walks of life. If you wish to read of a startling example, read of how the Revolutionary troops of France, as soon as they had gained a little experience, met and overthrew the wooden and lifeless battalions of Prussia, which had been drilled to death.