CIVIL AND MILITARY WORKS
Nothing has been said as yet about roads and communications, the most
powerful of all aids in pacifying a disturbed country. The plains of
India in most provinces lend themselves to military operations, and
for the greater part of the year an army can move about at will. In
Burma the long and heavy rains, the numerous streams, and the extensive
and dense forests and jungles, make campaigning very difficult. The
country, in Sir George White's words, quoted before, "is one huge
military obstacle."
Sir Charles Bernard had not lost sight of this part of his work. With
the aid of Mr. Richard, of the Public Works Department, a most able
superintending engineer, as much as possible had been done. No time had
been lost.
In Mandalay itself, in 1886, fifteen miles of road had been re-formed,
the bridges renewed and metal consolidated, and in the country
generally more than two hundred miles of roads had been taken in hand
and partially finished. Tracks one hundred feet in width had been
cleared of forest and jungle between many of the military posts, a work
in which the military officers took a large part. As our occupation
of the country became closer, more roads and more tracks were called
for. These forest tracks can hardly be called engineering works, but
they were of first importance for the free movement of troops. The time
during which road-making can be carried on is short in Burma, owing to
the great rainfall. The dry zone in the centre of the province, where
the climate is no impediment, is precisely the country where roads are
least necessary.
Eastern Governments as a rule trouble themselves very little about
roads and public buildings of a useful kind. In Burma there were
pagodas and monasteries innumerable. But roads and prosaic buildings,
such as court-houses and jails, received little attention. Such a thing
as a trunk road did not exist.
Controlling the engineering establishment in Lower Burma there was a
chief engineer, who was also Public Works secretary. His hands were
full. To ask him to supervise the work in the new province as well was
to lay on him an impossible task and to ensure the waste of much money.
A chief engineer for Upper Burma was appointed at my request, and Major
Gracey, R.E., who was selected for the post, had arrived in Burma. I
have met with few men who had more power of work and of getting their
subordinates to work, or who took greater care of the public money,
than Major Gracey.
On his arrival, in consultation with Colonel Cumming, the expenditure
was examined and the whole situation discussed in Rangoon, and
afterwards both officers met me in Mandalay. There was much difficulty
in obtaining a sufficient number of engineers and a competent
engineering establishment. The Indian Public Works service in the
higher grades is recruited in England, and the subordinates are
appointed in India. Service in Burma was for many reasons unpopular
with men trained in India. The other provinces were not anxious to part
with their best men. Hence the men who came to Burma were frequently
unwilling and sometimes not very efficient.
The difficulty was to apportion the existing establishment as fairly as
possible between the two provinces, so as to give Major Gracey a fair
number of men with Burman experience.
With Major Gracey's help everything went on well, and as fast as
possible. A list of the work done in 1887 would fill a page. The grant
for military works in that year was £317,500. Permanent barracks at
Mandalay and Bhamo, and a great number of temporary buildings to
accommodate troops, were erected all over Burma in the first year of
Major Gracey's tenure. Many of the temporary buildings were put up by
military and civil officers; but after a time, all military buildings
were carried out by the Public Works Department.
The Civil Works grant was nearly £350,000.
The provinces had no court-houses, no jails, no places of detention at
the police stations, and no barracks or accommodation for the military
police. Two larger jails, one at Mandalay for eight hundred prisoners
and one at Myingyan for one thousand, although not yet completed, were
already occupied. Of three smaller prisons at Monywa, Pagan, and Minbu,
one was finished and two partially, but enough to be of use. At ten
stations small lock-ups were being built for persons arrested by the
police. The jails and lock-ups were pressed on, because the existing
arrangements for confining prisoners inherited from the Burmese
Government were insufferable, and in some cases inhuman.
Provision had to be made for housing some thousands of military police.
At the headquarters of eighteen districts accommodation had to be
provided for about half a battalion, with hospitals, guard-rooms,
magazines, and cook-houses. These buildings, especially the hospitals
with accommodation for 8 per cent. of the strength, were constructed
of good permanent material. The barracks, officers' quarters, stables,
and the like were built in the cheapest way consistent with comfort and
health. The condition of the country in a year or two would permit, it
was expected, of a reduction of the military police force, or at least
of a change in its disposition; the barrack accommodation would not
be permanently wanted, but the hospitals could be used for the civil
population.
Added to all this building work, roads to the extent of five hundred
miles, of which one hundred and fifty were hill roads, were laid out
and made passable, raised and bridged in most cases, and in some places
metalled. These works were scattered over the province from Bhamo
to the old frontier of British Burma. In designing the roads it was
remembered that the great trunk lines of communication were the great
rivers in the centre and west of the province, and the railway in the
east. All the main roads were designed to be feeders to the rivers or
the rails. In addition to the larger roads, many hundreds of miles
of tracks and rough district roads were cut through the forest and
jungles, and a survey was begun, to open up the difficult Yaw country,
through which we had afterwards to push troops. (_vide_ Chapter XXI.).
I think it may be claimed that our engineers did their duty.
The middle of Upper Burma, the dry zone, as it is called, differs in
climatic conditions from the country to the south and north of it. The
rainfall is deficient, and droughts, sometimes severe, are not unknown.
The Burmese rulers were capable of large conceptions, but they lacked
skill; and their great irrigation schemes, attempted without sufficient
science, were foredoomed to failure. The largest works of this class
existing, when we took the country, were the Mandalay and Shwèbo
Canals, which were of little use, as even where the construction was
not faulty they had been allowed to go to ruin. In Kyauksè Salin
(Minbu district) and elsewhere there were extensive canals of a
less ambitious nature, which although neglected were still of much
service. Even in the turmoil of 1886 and the pressure of what was in
fact a state of war, Sir Charles Bernard found time to attend to the
irrigation systems; and as soon as a skilled engineer could be obtained
from India, and funds allotted, the work of irrigation was tackled in
earnest. The first business was to examine the existing systems and see
whether they could be made use of. Before I left Burma in December,
1890, I had the pleasure of knowing that this work was in hand, and
that further deterioration from neglect had been stopped, and also that
new schemes were under consideration.
The expenditure in Upper Burma at this time was very great. An army
of fourteen thousand men cannot be kept in the field for nothing.
The military police force was a second army, and there was besides
all the cost of the civil administration. The incoming revenue was
in comparison insignificant. In 1886-7 it had been £250,000 in round
numbers, in 1887-8 it rose to £500,000--not enough to cover the public
works expenditure alone.
It was not wonderful, therefore, that the Government of India, whose
finances at the time were by no means happy, should be nervous about
the expenditure. They were most gentle and considerate in the matter;
and although it was evident that our success in Burma would be measured
in England mainly by the financial results, no pressure was put upon
me to get in revenue, and I felt the pinch chiefly in the difficulty
of getting an adequate and competent engineering establishment and
immediate funds for works, the urgency of which was less apparent to
the Government of India than to me on the spot. With Lord Dufferin's
backing I obtained what I wanted, and I hope I did not exhibit an
indecent importunity.
I had considered and reported to the Finance Department all possible
means of raising the revenue. On the whole, my conclusion was that we
had to look rather to existing sources than to new taxation, which in
a country not yet completely subdued and of which we had imperfect
knowledge would have been inexpedient. The excise revenue might have
been made profitable, but we were debarred from interfering for the
time with the regulations made and sanctioned (somewhat hastily,
perhaps) by the Government of India, immediately after the annexation.
Under the circumstance, the best and quickest method of improving the
financial conditions was clearly the reduction of the field force.
This was already under discussion. The initial step had been taken
and one regiment of Native Infantry had been sent back to India. The
military police had begun to relieve the troops in the outposts. The
Major-General, Sir George White (who in addition to his merits as
a gallant leader and good strategist, was an able administrator),
was careful always of public money, and in perfect accord with the
civil administration. He desired his men to be relieved as quickly as
possible.
It was a matter, however, in which it was unsafe to rush, and in which
a heavy responsibility rested on me. Events were happening from time
to time which warned us that we were not yet out of the wood. On the
3rd of June, for example, the troops at Pyinulwin, forty miles from
Mandalay, led by Colonel May, had attacked a stockade held on behalf
of the Setkya Mintha, a pretender. Darrah, Assistant Commissioner, was
killed, an officer named Cuppage badly wounded, and several men lost.
Hkam Leng (see Chapter XX.) was active in the Möngmit Country.
[Illustration: "THE MOAT," MANDALAY.
And North Wall of Fort Dufferin.]
The Commissioners of the Northern and Central Divisions were urging me
to have the large and numerous islands between Mandalay and Sagaing
cleared of the gangs who held them. They represented the necessity of a
river patrol. The cry from the Southern Division was for launches. The
Commissioner wrote that the only boat in his division fit for service
was that assigned to the military authorities; and this was the day
after Captain Hext's arrival on his mission from India, to persuade me
to reduce my demand for boats.
The Deputy Commissioner for Mandalay reported that there was a dacoit
leader stockaded within forty miles of Mandalay, and that he was unable
to get a force to turn him out of his position.
At the same time (July, 1887) bad news came from the Ye-u district. Two
pretenders had appeared with a considerable following. As a prelude
they had burnt villages, crucified one of the village headmen, and
committed other brutalities. The civil administration was obliged to
ask for help from the soldiers in this case. The weather was fine,
and the country which these men had occupied was a good field for
cavalry. The Hyderabad Cavalry were in the field at once, and the
Inspector-General of Police was able to get together a hundred mounted
military police and send them to help. A force from the Chindwin side
co-operated. The gathering was very soon scattered. One of the leaders
died of fever and the other escaped for a time, but was afterwards
captured in the Lower Chindwin district, where he was attempting to
organize another rising.
I was compelled in Sagaing also to ask Sir George White's assistance.
The Sagaing Police battalion was backward in training and not fit for
outpost work in a bad district. The death of Hla U had been expected
to bring peace. But it now appeared that the district on both sides of
the Mu was in the hands of three or four dacoit leaders who collected a
fixed revenue from each village, which was spared so long as the demand
was paid. Any headman who failed to pay was murdered remorselessly. In
some cases the man's wife and children were killed before his face, to
add to the sting of death.
The system in the Sagaing and other districts much resembled--in its
machinery, not altogether in its methods--the organization of the
Nationalists in Ireland.
At my request Sir George White consented to occupy the district
closely, and although the gangs were not caught or brought to justice,
some protection was given to the peaceful part of the population until
we were ready later on to take the district in hand and destroy the
gangs.
In Sagaing, as in some other cases, the local officers had been
ignorant of what was going on around them. It was believed to be quiet
because we had no touch with the people, and they told us nothing.
The intention in referring to these events is to show why caution was
needed in the matter of relieving the troops. It must be remembered
that a very large proportion of the military police had received
very little training before their arrival. With the exception of
some two thousand men, all were recruits entirely untaught in drill
or discipline. The employment of such raw men on outpost duty under
native officers whom they did not know was not without risk. In many
cases the risk had to be faced, and consequently some disasters were
inevitable. Progress was slow, but under the conditions it was good.
"To instil discipline into so large a body of young soldiers," wrote
the Inspector-General (General Stedman), "was a far more difficult
task than to teach them the rudiments of drill. By discipline must be
understood not only good conduct in quarters and prompt obedience to
the orders of superiors, but the necessity of sticking to one another
in the field and the habit of working together as a welded body."
Before I left Mandalay again for Lower Burma, Sir George White and I
had arrived at an agreement regarding the force which it was necessary
to keep up. We were able to propose the abolition of the field force
and the reduction of the garrison by one regiment of British Infantry,
two regiments of Indian Cavalry, eight regiments of Indian Infantry,
and one British Mountain Battery. The allocation of the troops
and police was reviewed in consultation with the Commissioners of
Divisions and so made that the one force supplemented the other. The
reduction was to take effect from the spring of 1888.
We were now about to enter on a new development of the British
occupation. The civil officers, supported by the military police, were
to take the responsibility of keeping order. The soldiers were there
ready to help if need be, but they were not to be called out except for
operations beyond the power of the police.