The paradox of service: When imperial subjects fight for an empire that subjugates them

“ Who suggests that in time of peace we can sing God save the King, boast of our British citizenship and send our trade on the seas under protection of the British navy, and do nothing in time of war? There could, however, be no greater mistake than to think that we are in the war at the command of Great Britain or purely to sustain British interests. We are in the war primarily to defend and maintain freedom and self-government in Canada. ”

“ With men and money she has made efforts for the common weal which no self-governing Colony has made, though she has been treated, politically and financially, as not even a Crown Colony has been treated. Just at the point where the self-governing Colonies, thanks to the liberty allowed them, are beginning to contribute indirectly to the defence of the Empire, Ireland, as the ultimate result of a century of coercive government, ceases to contribute. ”

“ And that their money ought not to be given away, without their consent, by persons at a distance, unacquainted with their circumstances and abilities. The granting aids to the crown, is the only means they have of recommending themselves to their sovereign, and they think it extremely hard and unjust, that a body of men, in which they have no representatives, should make a merit to itself of giving and granting what is not its own, but theirs, and deprives them of a right they esteem of the utmost value and importance, as it is the security of all their other rights. ”

“ Seeing that the natives had first given themselves as vassals of Your Highness, and then rebelled and killed the Spaniards, and that they were on the road and pass where the traffic of all the sea-ports had to pass towards the interior, we considered that, if it were left to itself as before, the natives of this country, and also of Culua who were very near, would again try to seduce them into rebellion, from which would follow much harm and impediment to the pacification of these parts, and to the service of Your Highness ”

“ And so these revelations of patriotic feeling and Imperial unity have gone on in increasing volume from day to day. To theorists like Goldwin Smith, political economists like Mr. James Bryce, or philosophical politicians such as Mr. John Morley, such demonstrations of loyalty are incomprehensible. To the man who really understands the history of the Empire and the evolution of its system, who reaches down into the hearts of the people and comprehends the undercurrents of sentiment, it is not so difficult to grasp the reasons. Speaking of Australasia more particularly, Dr. ”

“ Tradition and history reaching down into the hearts and lives of the people may be considered the basic influence; a general belief in the superiority of British institutions over all others may be stated as a powerful conservative force; while personality and character in the Sovereign may be described as the chief constructive element in this process of increasing loyalty to the Crown. Convenience, custom, love of ceremony, belief in stability and aversion to change, are lesser factors which may be mentioned. ”

“ We endorse our assurance with an expression of the wish that, in whatever part of the British Empire your future life may be spent, it may be attended, as in the past, with honour, and, by the blessing of God, with health and happiness for yourself and all those you hold dear.
It is the prerogative of the Crown alone to bestow honours on those who have served their country well, and none have been better merited than those which you enjoy, and to which, we trust, additions may be made. ”

“ To such a discussion we English, as the rulers of India, can bring an experience of government without consent larger than any other that has ever been tried under the conditions of modern civilisation. The Covenanted Civil Service of British India consists of a body of about a thousand trained men. They are selected under a system which ensures that practically all of them will not only possess exceptional mental force, but will also belong to a race, which, in spite of certain intellectual limitations, is strong in the special faculty of government ”

“ Upon the ruins of the old order, a new civilisation has been founded, from which a nation still in the process of formation has developed, in which Spanish and Indian blood are mingled, and which is advancing on the road of human progress to what destiny we know not, but in which the humblest Indian has his place living in a securer present, and moving towards a higher future, than any his own race could have shaped for him. ”

“ The British Government and the Government of India on whom the responsibility lies for the welfare and advancement of the Indian peoples, must be the judges of the time and measure of each advance, and they must be guided by the co-operation received from those upon whom new opportunities of service will thus be conferred and by the extent to which it is found that confidence can be reposed in their sense of responsibility. ”

“ It must be admitted that, if they were faithless in promises of loyalty, the Crown's representatives in Ireland set no good example; and, when they saw the spoliations of property by violence or pretext of law, the sudden executions on alleged treasons, the breaches of treaty, sometimes even the assassinations, by which a despotic policy went onward in its work of subjugation, they did but play the usual game of barbarians in opposing craft and perfidy, rather more gross perhaps and notorious, to the same engines of a dissembling government. ”

“ All through the Queen’s reign these words have been turned into actions; they have inspired her to do her duty faithfully and courageously and with unfailing self-sacrifice of her own inclinations and wishes. By so living she has revived the feeling of personal affection and loyalty to the throne on the part of her subjects which her immediate predecessors had done much to destroy. [Pg 40] When we reflect upon the contrast which the pure-minded, pure-hearted girl presented to them we shall be able to understand something of the keen emotion of joyful loyalty which was evoked at her accession. ”

“ For large groups the definition that Stubbs once gave must certainly apply, viz.: "Loyalty is a habit of strong and faithful attachment to a person, not so much by reason of his personal character as of his official position." By becoming objectified in the deathless office, the princely principle gains a new psychological power for concentration and cohesion within the group, while the old princely principle that rested on the mere personality of the prince necessarily lost power as the size of the group increased. ”

“ I thought that the labour of my youth would have procured me repose in my old age, and thus for forty years I have given myself to God's service, deprived of sleep, eating poorly, and even at times not eating at all, with my arms always at my side, myself exposed to dangers and my fortune sacrificed to bring into His fold the sheep of a distant and unknown hemisphere, of which we even had no record, and to magnify the name, and extend the patrimony of my King by conquering and bringing under his royal yoke and sceptre the great kingdoms and dominions of barbarous peoples. ”

“ England is far from India and knows little about the eminent services performed by her servants there, for it is the newspaper correspondent who makes fame, and he is not sent to India but to the continent, to report the doings of the princelets and the dukelets, and where they are visiting and whom they are marrying. Often a British official spends thirty or forty years in India, climbing from grade to grade by services which would make him celebrated anywhere else, and finishes as a vice-sovereign, governing a great realm and millions of subjects ”

“ Though a country be subdued by military force, calamities will soon overtake it unless it be virtuously governed. From time immemorial in both Japan and China sway founded on force has never been permanent. In this country, since the Age of Deities down to the present reign, the Imperial line has been unbroken through ninety generations. No prince of alien blood has ascended the throne. Everything in the realm is the property of the Crown. Whatever the Throne may appropriate, the subject must acquiesce. Even life must be sacrificed if the cause of good government demands it. ”

“ Far from having flooded India, as is often alleged, with a horde of overpaid officials, we may justly claim that no Western nation has ever attempted to govern an alien dependency with a smaller staff of its own race, or has admitted the subject races to so large a participation in its public services. The whole vast machinery of executive and judicial administration in British India employs over 1,250,000 Indians, and only a little more than 5,000 Englishmen altogether, of whom about one-sixth constitute what is called par excellence the Civil Service of India. ”

“ One of the happy qualities of youth—and there is no pleasure greater than to see you in that blissful stage, for one who has passed beyond, long beyond it—is not to be, I think I am right, in a hurry, not to be too anxious either for the present or future measure of the responsibilities of life and a career. You will forgive me if I remind you of what I am sure you all know—that the civil government of 230,000,000 persons in British India is in the hands of some 1,200 men who belong to the Indian Civil Service. ”

“ Our allies handled the enemy most cruelly, for they would in no wise spare any life, although they were reproved and punished by us.
We returned next day to the city, and I ordered that no fighting should take place nor any harm be done to the enemy, who, when they saw such a multitude of people, and their own vassals and subjects, arrayed against them, and saw their extreme necessity, which left them not even a place to stand, save upon the bodies of their own dead, moved by the desire to escape such a great misfortune, asked us why we did not put an end to them ”

“ But there is nothing even in British annals so wonderful as the voluntary enlistment of an army of four millions. If only as a measure of the danger which threatened the Empire the figures are impressive. Men would not have recruited in hundreds of thousands if they had not felt that the institutions they cherished, even their very households, stood in the shadow of death. No doubt a flame of wrath swept over England as the revolting story of German brutality in Belgium was unfolded, but a living, conscious sense of actual danger to the Empire was the moving impulse to British action. ”

“ While time lasts the betrayal of Belgium will have shameful pre-eminence in what John Morley calls “The sombre tragedy of human history.” Nor would Great Britain have escaped lasting dishonor if she had failed in fidelity to France and Belgium at any cost of life and treasure. It is not necessary to argue that the violation of Belgian neutrality alone explains the British declaration of war upon Germany. That cause was adequate, if there were no other, but there were other considerations of direct and tremendous consequence to the British Empire. ”

“ If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: ‘To fight against Fascism,’ and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: ‘Common decency.’ I had accepted the News Chronicle-New Statesman version of the war as the defence of civilization against a maniacal outbreak by an army of Colonel Blimps in the pay of Hitler. ”

“ And even should it be necessary to give the whole kingdom, instead of the mere duchy of Brittany, to Philip of Spain, still there were mighty guerdons to be bestowed on his supporters before the foreign monarch could seat himself on the throne of Henry's ancestors.
As to the people who were fighting, starving, dying by thousands in this great cause, there were eternal rewards in another world profusely promised for their heroism instead of the more substantial bread and beef, for lack of which they were laying down their lives. ”

“ That levying of money for or to the use of the Crown, by pretence of prerogative without grant of parliament, for longer time or in any other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal; That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and that all commitments or prosecutions for such petitions are illegal; That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of parliament, is illegal; That the subjects which are protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their condition, and as allowed by law ”

“ ‘It is nonsense to talk of opposing Fascism by bourgeois "democracy". Bourgeois "democracy" is only another name for capitalism, and so is Fascism; to fight against Fascism on behalf of "democracy" is to fight against one form of capitalism on behalf of a second which is liable to turn into the first at any moment. The only real alternative to Fascism is workers’ control. If you set up any less goal than this, you will either hand the victory to Franco, or, at best, let in Fascism by the back door. ”