CO885-11 — Page 323

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O.882/11

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

|ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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1925, I have devoted much labour to the task of bringing such knowledge as I then possessed as nearly as possible up to date, it is conceivable that the statement of my opinions may be of some value to my successor.

9. To return to the issue immediately under discussion, I need not reiterate the contention that differentiation in the matter of their ordinary emoluments between European and Ceylonese officials would, in the peculiar circumstances of Ceylon, be a disastrous measure to approve; but I must now deal, as shortly as I can, with the question of the payment of passages by the Government to certain of its servants.

10. I submit that differentiation between European and Ceylonese officials in this regard rests upon a wholly different basis from that of differentiation in the matter of their ordinary remuneration for the work discharged by them. It is a proven fact, beyond the range of argument or dispute, that it is essentially necessary for Europeans working and living in the Tropics to revisit a temperate climate at sufficiently frequent intervals, if their energies are not to be suffered to deteriorate and their health to become impaired. In this matter Nature, not the Government, has established a difference, which nothing can alter, between European officials in Ceylon and their Ceylonese colleagues; and that this is the case is a fact which it is impossible for the Government of the Island justly to ignore. Consequently, unless the European officials serving in this Island are to be, in actual practice, less well remunerated for their services than are their Ceylonese brother officers of equal rank and standing in the Public Service, the Government must charge itself with the expenditure-which in the case of its European servants is not optional, but compulsory-incurred by them on account of the periodical repatriation and return to the Island of themselves and of their wives and families. Lacking such financial assistance from Government upon this account, the European officer serving in Ceylon will have to save from his salary sufficient money to meet the expenditure aforesaid; and I have no hesitation in declaring that this is not possible, in the circumstances of to-day, if the European members of the Civil and Public Services are to live in a manner befitting their station and con-

nant with the dignity of the Government whch they serve and represent.

11. I therefore consider that Government should definitely charge itself with the cost of repatriating its non-Ceylonese officers and their wives and families, and of bringing them back to Ceylon once at least in every period of three years; that special concessions, the details of which I need not enter into now, should be granted in case of the illness of an officer or of any of the members of his family, of a kind that necessi- tates a return to the country of his birth or domicile of himself and/or them, before the expiration of the set period of three years; and that this should be insisted upon paramount importance in the, as I am and, if necessary, treated as a matter of “ disposed to think, unlikely event of objection being raised to it by the Salaries' Com- mittee now sitting or by the Legislative Council.

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12. As regards the contention that this privilege should be extended to Ceylonese officers also, I strongly feel that this is a matter which should be dealt with in a very liberal spirit. The culture of the educated classes of this Island is essentially English. Many of our most prominent politicians, for example, experience difficulty in addressing audiences composed of their countrymen in either of the local vernaculars. The spirit that animates our large secondary schools is as nearly as possible a reproduction of the English public school spirit. All Ceylonese who can afford it, with the exception of some well-to-do Tamils-whose aversion to the avoidable disbursement of money is more than Armenian in its intensity-send their boys, and if possible, their girls also, to England to be educated; and though too many of our young men return to the land of their birth primed to the muzzle with explosive political and socialistic theories, which are for the most part about as applicable to the conditions subsisting in Ceylon as would be the laws of Rugby football to a dancing-class at a young ladies' seminary, the connection with England, which the more wealthy and ambitious of the Ceylonese have now maintained for several generations, is so close and so intimate, that it is not possible to ignore the fact that a periodical visit by them to Europe has become well nigh essential, if not to their physical, at any rate to their intellectual contentment.

13. This, I submit, is a fact that must be borne in mind in considering how far the Colonial Government can properly devote public funds to the periodical expatriation and repatriation of the more senior of its Ceylonese officials. As regards professional and technical officers, who require periodical visits to Europe or to the United States of America in order to bring their knowledge up to date, this Government already accords them quite liberal treatment in the matter of the expenditure incurred By them on such accounts. It is possible that the system of study-leave already in force may be capable of some expansion, with advantage to the Public Service and to the Colony: but upon this subject I do not propose to enter here and now. The classes of

Ceylonese officers of whom I am thinking, in connection with the granting to them of financial assistance toward the cost of periodical passages for themselves and their wives and families to Europe, are members of the Ceylon Civil Service, an ever- increasing number of whom will, as time goes on, be drawn from the indigenous population of the Island. Many of them, it is probable—indeed, all of them who are in a position to afford it--will send one or more of their children to England to be educated; and their wives will experience in common with their European sisters, the ache of an empty arin -the which does more to sadden the lives of married public servants in Asia (for the man no less than for the mother) than all the other adverse circumstances which affect for the worse the careers upon which we have embarked. This, I submit, is something that the Government of Ceylon sluuld take into account, if it desire the well-being of its Ceylonese officers and expects to extract from them, not only efficient, but enthusiastic public service.

14. There is yet another matter which has a very direct bearing upon this question. The smallness of Ceylon is borne in upon one's apprehension at every turn, for it reflects itself in the narrowness of the outlook and of the intellectual capacity of those who have never left the Island or of those who have remained in it uninter- ruptedly for too prolonged periods of time. The Asiatic propensity to quote, rather than to recast a thought for oneself, in more or less original language, is a peculiarity of the Oriental mind which is forced upon the understanding of anyone who has a really intimate knowledge of any Asiatic vernacular. To use such a medium of speech with art and finish is to string cliché upon cliché in a never-ending string of old wise-saws, proverbial sayings, conventional similes and time-honoured set phrases; and to me it is intensely interesting to observe how exactly this mental habit reproduces itself in the speeches of practically all Ceylonese whose only medium of public expression is English. They are here, however, at a deplorable disadvantage, for the clichés in our language are as one to a hundred compared with those that are available for usė- in any Asiatic vernacular; and our Ceylonese English-speaking orators are thus supplied with a very meagrely equipped tool-bag. What this really means is that the Asiatic, as compared with the European mind, is extraordinarily tolerant of repetition; and that while the latter becomes bruised by too frequent reiteration to a point of unen- durable irritation and distress, the former battens on it with an amazing satisfaction. The point which I desire here to make, however, is that too prolonged a residence in Ceylon inevitably exercises a stunting, benumbing effect upon the mind; and that, though Ceylonese may not themselves be aware of this, it operates in their case no less surely than it does in that of an European. When we get men in the position of Government Agents who are drawn from the indigenous population, I am firmly con- vinced that periodical visits to the more spacious atmosphere of Europe will be essential if they are to preserve, for any length of time, such intellectual energy and vigour as they may happen to possess.

15. Finally, an occasional escape from the social and political atmosphere of Ceylon will, I am convinced, be increasingly necessary, as time goes on, for every Government official, no matter what his nationality, who is called upon to discharge in This Island functions of a character that inevitably bring him and his doings into the limelight of public criticism and discussion. We, in Ceylon, are privileged to read daily no less than five newspapers, of quite a fairly high standard of journalistic achievement, which devote most of their space to the consideration and discussion of local affairs and happenings. We thus take in our own washing and consume fuel of our own production in a fashion and to a degree that I hayo-never seen rivalled, save only in Trinidad when the passions aroused by the incidents that culminated in the Riot in Port of Spain on 23rd March, 1903, were still at the boiling-point. Every public servant, who occupies a position of any prominence or who is entrusted with duties of at all a responsible character, is liable to be "hunted" by one or all of these news- papers in a fashion that would disgrace a schoolboys' rat hunt in a barn. His every act, his every word is apt to be twisted and distorted with the amiable object of disclosing to the public his essential villainy and criminality; and if he chance to be the lead of a Government Department, not only will every available drop of office- scandal and gossip be squeezed out of his subordinates in order publicly to malign, humiliate and embarrass him, but when he finds himself before the Finance Committee (which is composed of all the Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council, with the Colonial Secretary acting as Chairman and the Colonial Treasurer and the Controller of Revenue as members) he may occasionally find himself the victim of insinuations and hectorings of which a hostile witness facing the redoubtable Mr. Jaggers might justly have complained. In this connection I quote hereunder in extenso a letter addressed to the Colonial Secretary as recently as 15th January last by one of the ablest Heads of a Department at present at the disposal of the Government of Ceylon.