Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

There was a great deal of planning to launch such a scheme. We did not want to be involved financially. We did want to lay a good foundation of evangelism and to establish schools. The plan finally adopted was that we were to aid the Burmans in their dealings with the Government, and in selling their rice. We were to furnish schools for their children and to preach to them. But we were not to become financially involved, either for the running expenses of the colony, or for the tax due the Government. The plan was one of mutual helpfulness. To this plan all parties cheerfully agreed.

It was nearly time for the rains to begin when the papers were secured allowing us to move upon the land. Meantime a good many of the people who would have gone with us a month earlier dropped out during the delay in getting the land. But we succeeded in gathering one hundred and twenty people, and moved on to the land about the first of May. We still had time to build a village out of the bamboo poles and thatch, out of which these cultivators’ houses are always made. This was rather a hopeful beginning, and we had assurance of twice as many people to follow.

Just at this time we met with an example of the careless disregard of a financial obligation often found in the Burman. His cool indifference to a promise, however well secured, is frequently refreshing in its audacity. The Burmans were to furnish all the cattle to work the land. We were to lay out no money whatever on the business features of the colony. Four head men of the colony had been recognized by the deputy commissioner. They had pledged two hundred cattle security for the tax due on the land. Their cattle would have been entirely sufficient to cultivate at least a thousand acres the first year. But when the houses were built and the colony began business, it became clear that only a small number of these cattle were really in the hands of the colonists. Their explanation was that many of the men having most cattle dropped out, as the uncertainties of getting the land for the crop remained over the venture. This we learned later was true in part. More of them had dropped out because they did not want to put in all their cattle, while some of the colonists had none, or only a few, and they were heavily mortgaged.

But these men had pledged to the Government, officially, cattle which they did not possess. In this they deceived us, a not very difficult matter, as we were new to the country and unacquainted with the characteristics of the Burmese people. But if we were deceived, the deputy commissioner had more reason to regret having been duped, as he was an officer in the province for many years, and supposed he knew the Burman. He also drew up the revenue bond which they signed. He indeed planned and extended this bond, entirely apart from the revenue regulations, I believe. Therefore, when we reproached ourselves in not being as farsighted as we should have been, we still could shield our humiliation behind the much greater defeat of the pet measure of this official.

If we had been willing simply to save the mission from all financial obligations, and retreat from the enterprise without any dishonor, we could have done so when we learned that these Burmans were unable to carry out their part of the contract. But it would have been equivalent to the utter collapse of the enterprise. While we were in no way financially obligated to meet what they had failed to meet under our general agreement, yet in my mind I have never been convinced that it would have been the wisest thing to do, even if we could have foreseen the final outcome, which we did not at that time even suspect. Then every honorable man must give his character to the enterprise he launches.

Our second surprise came only a few weeks later. I had secured money outside of mission funds, for we had none of the latter, and bought sufficient cattle for the colony. This was beyond all our agreement. The men began work well enough, and soon had a promising beginning of cultivation. As the young rice began to show in the fields, the water which had been slowly rising over the plain during the increasing rains suddenly covered all the fields to a dangerous depth. A foot of extra water will not hurt much if it goes down within two or three days. But this flooding of our land covered a score of square miles of the country. Then it slowly dawned on us that the Government engineers’ drainage system was a failure, and with it our colony was doomed. We had depended upon the work of the engineers, and their canals could not carry off the water, and we were the sufferers. The colony slowly melted away while the water remained.

Let it be noted that though the Burmans failed us, and some of our acutely sympathetic friends have assured us all these years that this failure of the Burmese character was inevitable, yet it was the failure of the work of the Government engineers that destroyed our colony. The Burmans were at work until the floods came, and they remained weeks after all ordinary hope of making a crop was gone; while the failure of the drainage scheme developed early, and the whole plain remained flooded for six years until supplementary canals were dug. If we failed by overconfidence in the adroit Burman, we failed with double effect when we trusted to the skill of the Government engineers.

A very unpleasant incident occurred about the time the colony was drowned out. The deputy commissioner, who had gone out of his way to induce us officially to enter upon this colony scheme, turned against us in a very unaccountable way. He misrepresented our undertaking to his superiors. He accused us of exacting oppressive terms of the Burmans, when the exact opposite was true. We had gone far beyond all our agreement with them, and gave them better terms than any other people ever gave to any cultivator in Burma. In the end it was easy enough to show wherein this unwise official was wholly in error. But it was not until his official opposition had wrought its work on scattering the colony, and had made success in recognition impossible. This episode is an unpleasant matter to record. I would omit it entirely if it did not bear a vital relation to the defeat of a missionary enterprise. But I am glad to be able to say that he is the only official of British blood who ever gave our mission or missionaries in Burma during my experience there any annoyance or ungenerous treatment in a business way. The officials have been courteous gentlemen always, and I have been much in business transactions with all classes of them for a decade. Our missionaries of long experience in other parts of the empire have been delighted in making much the same report.

While the colony was broken up and scattered in a way that forebade us to hope for any good to result from our undertaking, it was not really so bad as we believed at the time. We had not baptized any of the colonists, though a number of them had indicated that they wished baptism in the early beginnings of the colony. When they scattered abroad in the country doubtless they made reports very discouraging. But we have much reason to know that there came to be quite a general feeling that we had sought the good of the people. There have been many evidences of this, but that which is clearest proof, is that every year since Burmans in the same neighborhood have urged us to undertake some such enterprise again. But there were other evidences.

The colony was begun in April, 1893, and was abandoned entirely by the end of the year. Just at this time Rev. G. J. Schilling and wife came to us to take up the Burmese work. I had been the only man among our small band of missionaries for nearly three years. My assistants were supplies picked up in the country. I got very weary often with the heat and much work. But I was often worn greatly for lack of counsel in the responsibilities of the mission. There have always been some of the truest friends among the laymen in Rangoon, but naturally they can not take the responsible care of the mission. The coming of Mr. and Mrs. Schilling was a great joy to me and all our lady missionaries.