Washington and the Riddle of Peace

by H. G. Wells

Washington, December 6.

I do not think my outline sketch of the Washington Conference will be complete if I do not give an account of certain figures and groups in this simmering Washington gathering who have no official standing whatever and who are here in the unpopular role of qualifications and complications of the simpler conception of the Washington issues. They are not conspicuous absentees as are Germany and Russia. They come upon the scene but they come rather like that young woman with the baby who stands reproachfully at the church door watching the wedding in the melodramatic picture. They are full of reproaches—and intimations of troubles yet in store.

The other evening, for example, I found myself dining with a comfortably housed Corean delegation and listening to the tale of a nation overwhelmed.

Corea is as much of a nation as—Ireland. She had so recent an independence that she has treaties with the United States recognizing and promising to respect her independence. Yet she is now gripped, held down and treated as Posen was in the days of Prussian possession. She is being “assimilated” by Japan. “What is to be done about us?” my hosts asked.

One fellow guest thought nothing could be done because the Corean vote in the United States is not strong enough to affect an election.

Amid the tumult of voices here one hears ever and again an appeal for something to be done for Corea. Such appeals are addressed chiefly to American public opinion, but it is also felt to be worth while to let Britain know, at least to the extent of letting me in on this occasion. I was introduced to an editor of a Corean paper which had recently been suppressed, and I listened to an account, an amazing account, of the freedom of the press as it is understood in Corea under Japanese rule.

Yet it sounded very familiar to me. Indeed, I had listened to much the same story of suppressions, rather worse suppressions, the night before. Then I had been the host of two friends of mine, Mr. Houssain and Mr. Sapre, who have had extensive experiences of suppression in India. They are both here in much the same spirit as the Coreans.

Whenever I talk to Mr. Houssain we always get to a sort of polite quarrel in which he treats me more and more like the Indian Government in its defense, and I become more and more like the British ascendancy. I adopt, almost inadvertently, as much as is adoptable of the manner and tone of the late Lord Cromer and say: “Yes, yes. But are you ripe for self-government?” These gentlemen say frankly that the British rule in India has displayed so much stupidity in such cases as the Amritsar massacre, and the recent suffocation of the Moplah prisoners, and that its complete suppression of any frank public discussion of Indian affairs in India is so intolerable, that it is becoming unendurable.

Everybody is talking of insurrection in India now; nobody talked of it three years ago. These have been three years of stupid “firmness.” Now that that dinner party is past and gone, I can confess that I think Mr. Houssain’s argument that under British rule India has no chance of getting politically educated, because she is prevented from airing her ideas, and that if her discontent is incoherent and disorderly it is because of the complete suppression, completer now than ever before, of discussion, is a very strong argument indeed.

India and Britain cannot talk together about their common future if India remains gagged and without ever a chance of learning to talk. If a break comes in India it is likely to be a bad and hopeless one, because of her lack of worked-out political conceptions, due to her long mental restraint, while all the rest of the world from Corea to Peru has been trying over political self-expression.