July 5, 1917- 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN, LONDON, W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
.THURSDAY, JULY 3. 1917 
CONTENTS 
- .-- PAGE 
A"Good Start. By Louis Raemaekers i 
Mesopotamia. (Leader) 3 
The Russian Effort. By Hilaire Belloc 4 
The A.P.M. By Centurion 7 
The Inn of a Thousand Dreams. (Poem) . Bv Gilbert 
Frankau lo 
Development of Industrial Life. By Jason 1 1 
Mr. Bennett as Critic. By J. C. Squire 13 
Le Gar(^on le plus brave du Village. By Isabel Savory 14 
Music of the Poets. (Review) 14 
Books to Read. By Lucian Oldershaw 1.5 
In the Algean. (Illustrated). By A. C. White 18 
Domestic Economy 20 
Kit and Equipment 23 
MESOPOTAMIA 
IN Mesopotamia was the Garden of Eden, the primal 
Arcady of the human race. We never forget the legend, 
but we do forget that in Mesopotamia was the ground 
first cursed, so that it brought forth thorns also and 
thistles. Evidently, the curse still rests on that ground. The 
report of " the Commission appointed by Act of Parliament to 
enquire into the operations of war in Mesopotamia," is horrible 
reading, but let us also bear in mind that the root of the 
calamity lay in the anxiety of the Government of India to 
do its duty by India, which was rightly empha.sised by Lord 
Hardinge in his speech to the Lords. The offerings in men 
and money freely made by Princes and independent States 
were readily accepted, but when it came to the Englishmen 
responsibly for the resources of the country being equally 
generous and far-sighted, it was another story. The 
parsimony and political myopia of the Viceroy and his Finan- 
cial adviser were unpardonable, judged from an Imperial 
standpoint, but regarded from a purely local, view, one has 
to admit that their fault chiefly lay in placing an exaggerated, 
if wrong, emphasis on the duty they owed to India. They 
placed India before the Empire and used their position 
to keep her there. This would have been impossible under 
any other rule except British. And when the judgment 
came, and a terrible price had to be paid for the sins of 
omission, we have also to bear in mind that no difference 
was made between Briton and Indian in those barges of death 
and agony, floating down the Tigris ; the men had fought 
shoulder to shoulder ; and they suffered and died cheek by 
jowl. It is a fearful story, but through it all there shines 
a spirit of racial unselfishness. 
Considering the immensity of the blunders and errors 
of judgment committed liy those in high position directly 
responsible, it is difficult to see how such persons can be 
usefully employed further in the service of their country ; 
had the faults been smaller or thp position lowlier, there would 
be no two opinions on this point. But when this is said, we 
believe that the good that should come out of this humiliating 
experience will be lost, if the country goes out scapegoat- 
hunting and then is satisfied when it has bagged a big head or 
two. To one acquainted with India and the history of the 
British in India, there rings through all this report the 
ancient and ill-omened echo of autocratic arrogance which has 
always been the besetting sin of Britons in power in the East. 
Years ago Kipling put into the mouth of a retiring Viceroy 
the words : " Here at the top one loses sight ol God." The 
sentence embodies a truth that is as living to-day as in the 
days of Warren Hastings or as when it was written. It was 
the policy of the old East India Company to regard all 
Britons not directly its servants or subservient to its orders 
as " interlopers " to be harrieil from pillar to post. The 
: message which the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Beauchamp B^H, 
sent to Sir Percy Lake, warning General Cowper that if he 
sends any more querulous or petulant demands for shipping 
he shall be at once removed from the force and refused 
any further employment of any kind, is worded in identically 
the same fashion as the reprimands which reached Chatham's 
father, Pitt, when he made himself obnoxious to " John " 
Company's ser^-ants in Bengal at the end of the eighteenth 
century. Read Sir William Meyer's letter on the railway in 
Mesopotamia, which two months' previously had been 
urgently demanded by the General at the Front. It begins 
in this leisurely fashion ii" I confess to being somewhat 
sceptical as to the line being at all so remunerative as is at 
present represented, at any rate for some time to come." 
Do we not catch here the very tone of the Surat factory two 
centuries or more ago ? It is a quill-driver in a counting- 
house who writes, not the Member of an Imperial Government. 
The evil is not confined to India, it extends to WTiitehall. 
We find the Secretary of State, a politician if you please, whose 
ears are always quivering to catch the first whisper of dis- 
approval in his own electorate, assuming all the airs of 
autocracy, ignoring his own Council, permitting and en- 
couraging the Viceroy to do the same at his end, and running 
the Indian Empire as though he were the Grand Mogul. It 
\Tould be comic, if the results were not so tragic. Mr. Austen 
Chamberlain and Lord Hardinge have only acted as their 
predecessors have done (there was no greater autocrat 
than Lord Morley), and as their successors will do, once 
this unsavoury report is forgotten, unless strong action is 
taken that will prevent its occurrence. 
The root of the whole evil is the continxiance of the tradi- 
tions of the trading company which won India for us. The 
depository of these traditions is the Indian Civil Service, as 
at present constituted. Most people' in this country 
imagine the Indian Civil Service to be identical with the 
Home Civil Service ; they do not understand that this 
phrase designates a monopoly of chief appointments enjoyed 
by a small body of Covenanted Civilians who have won 
their right to these prerogatives and privileges not by strength 
of character [or long service, but by the mere possession in 
their youth of what is known as " an examination brain." 
These lineal descendants of the old factors and merchants of 
the 'E.I. Company take good care on arriving at the seats of 
the mighty that they have " about them men that are fat, 
sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights." He, who thinks 
too much, be it Cassius or Major Carter, is sent to Coventry ; 
such men are dangerous to the peace and self-satisfied content 
of exalted mortals ! Much is forgiven because of the good 
work so many do ; but this good work is not confined to their 
service ; engineers, doctors, forest officers, police officers, etc., 
etc., give the same — when they are not prevented— but 
without the emoluments or hopes of preferment and titles which 
the I.C.S enjoys. The radical . trouble is not that the 
Supreme Government spends seven months of the year 
at Simla— you ' might send it to Jacobabad for May and 
June, and it would do no better — but that it spends the 
whole of the year in an eighteenth century atmosphere. 
This is common knowledge to all who have lived and worked 
in India, but it has needed a catastrophe like this Mesopo- 
tamian business in order to reveal this verity. 
The highhandedness of Lord Hardinge and Mr. Chamberlain, 
the higgling of Sir William Meyer, the insulting remarks 
addressed to General Cowper because he fulfilled his duty, 
the still more insulting behaviour towards Major Carter for 
daring to attempt to save our troops from needless death 
and torture are old, old stories to Anglo-Indians ; the sar^e 
sort of thing has been going on decade after decade. New 
and far stronger currents of public opinion have to be created 
in India which can only be done by modernising its public 
services and by destroying the monopoly of the Covenanted 
Civil Service with its old traditions and its hereditary hatred 
of interlopers, be they merchants, journalists, doctors, etc. 
It is to be hoped that this Mesopotamian tragedy will be the 
starting point for a new era of adminstrative efficiency in 
India where all the elements of success are ready at hand, 
only to a large extent nullified by an antiquated and 
. anachronistic adminstrative system. 
