Is the Anglo-Saxon fit to govern any other race?
He sprawls across the earth. He rules hundreds of millions of brown and black and buff peoples; he dominates and “protects” an even larger number than he actually governs. And there are moments when one is struck by a sense of his immense ineptitude. In many respects he is unquestionably a fine figure, but with regard to other races he is overbearing, he is unsympathetic, he is obtuse. Possibly he is exceptionally so. But it is more probable that no race is fit to have the upper hand over any other race; the possession of the upper hand leads at best to an inconsiderate self-righteousness, and at the worst to an extreme contempt, injustice, and cruelty. There are very few instances in the world of an even moderately satisfactory alien rule.
The Jesuits in South America seem to have done well in a kindly unprogressive way; the British rule in Nigeria and some of the West Indies is a comparatively bright spot in the history of racial interaction, the Maoris and the Basutos seem to be well-treated peoples, and the Dutch are credited with a fairly happy and prosperous Java. Until the last few years the British Empire seems to have dealt justly with its old allies, the Six Nations in Canada. These are outstanding exceptions. The general rule for peace between two races seems to be mix or get away; the darkest tragedy comes when, as in the southern United States, they can neither mix nor disentangle.
In the great elaborately educated State of the future towards which human affairs are moving, everyone and every community will be most sedulously educated and trained in inter-racial good manners. Our world at present has scarcely such a thing yet as good manners in anyone or a fully educated man. All the more reason, then, for maintaining the separation of peoples unfit to associate generously and peacefully with each other, and for releasing those who are not already separated.
The recent libel case brought by Sir Michael O’Dwyer against Sir Sankaran Nair has brought out very vividly the tremendous failure of the British Imperial system, after a century of opportunity, to produce any working tradition of interaction between the British people, the British garrison, and the Indian population. It has demonstrated the impossibility of any very long continuation of British rule in the peninsula.
After one has looked into the particulars of the case, one has just the same depressing realisation of a hopeless incompatibility that one has in some matrimonial cases. It is not so much that this or that has been done or not done; it is that the two peoples are unequally yoked in temperament and intelligence; that they do not get on together; that they never will get on together while they are closely associated. The British are not good enough nor wise enough for the job; the Indians are not great enough nor patient enough. It is a case for a separation, as friendly and speedy a separation as possible, if there is not presently to be a tragic divorce.
I must confess that I cannot conjure up any very profound indignation against General Dyer. He was, I think, stupid, spasmodically violent, and unnecessarily bloody. I do not believe that the shooting at Amritsar was inevitable, and he certainly went on shooting too long. But the sort of stupid and spasmodic violence he displayed is very characteristic of many English and many Americans. I find it in myself. I have not, luckily for myself, had General Dyer’s opportunities, but it is not necessary to kill people to discover that one may be harsh and cruel when one is thwarted by mental processes one does not understand.
I had a Dyer phase, for example, as a young, eager, and untrained schoolmaster, whipping-in the difficult stragglers for class work against which they rebelled. The whole story of the Punjab troubles is really a very pitiful story not only for the native population but for the British administrators. It is the story of a conflict of resentments. One begins with an officialdom eager for “volunteers” for the Great War, unable to understand that the Great War meant nothing and should have meant nothing to any reasonable Indian person. How could it matter to them? One goes on to a story of “pressure” increasing in its ugly details until we come to thrashings, deep indignities, and tortures to stimulate the cheerful “volunteer.” Pressure passes from chief to subordinate and degenerates towards cruelty at every transition; it is hard to fix responsibility at any point. It rouses resistance. The pestered and tormented populace begin to hold meetings, make vague gestures of counter violence. The irritable ass in the Anglo-Saxon make-up responds with “firmness.” The firmness loads the rifles and prepares aeroplane bombs to disperse “dangerous assemblies.”
There is a mood of scared obstinacy in which the Anglo-Saxon becomes capable of almost any swift atrocity. He is rarely deliberately cruel, but he is easily clumsily and hotly cruel. In the twilight the highly strung creature will shoot or lynch at very slight provocation indeed. Confronted with the dead body, his self-respect demands an adequate reason for the murder he has done. So soon as the Amritsar gardens were littered with dead and dying people, it became clear to General Dyer that a very dangerous rebellion, a second Indian Mutiny, had been heroically nipped in the bud.
His military superiors did not think so. He was rebuked and punished, very properly, very necessarily. Some amends were made to smitten and outraged India in that treatment of General Dyer, and the wretched incident of Amritsar would have passed into the receding perspectives of history if it had not been for the litigious enterprise of Sir Michael O’Dwyer. Sir C. Sankaran Nair, in a book that was extensively used by the British Government for propaganda purposes in India, wrote phrases that certainly put an unjustifiable blame upon Sir Michael O’Dwyer for the Punjab outrages. Sir Michael brought his action and reopened the question.