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From Subaltern to Commanber-in-Chief by
Field-Marshall Lord Roberts of Kandahar, V.C.. K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I..
G.C.I.E. (1898)
Preface
I would never have
ventured to intrude upon the public with my personal reminiscences had I
not been urged to do so by friends who, being interested themselves in
what I was able to tell them of India as my father knew it, and as I
found it and left it, persuaded me that my experiences of the many and
various aspects under which I have known the wonderful land of my
adoption and its interesting peoples would be useful to my countrymen.
It was thought that I might thus contribute towards a more intimate
knowledge of the glorious heritage our forefathers have bequeathed to
us, than the greater number of them possess and towards helping them to
understand the characteristics and requirements of the numerous and
widely different races by whom India is inhabited.
It is difficult for people who know nothing of Natives to understand and
appreciate the value they set on cherished customs, peculiar
idiosyncrasies, and fixed prejudices, all of which must be carefully
studied by those who are placed in the position of their Rulers, if the
suzerain Power is to keep their respect and gain their gratitude and
affection.
The Natives of India are particularly observant of character, and intelligent in gauging the capabilities of those who govern
them; and it is because the English Government is trusted that a mere
handful of Englishmen are able to direct the administration of a country
with nearly three hundred millions of inhabitants, differing in race,
religion, and manners of life. Throughout all the changes which India
has undergone, political and social, during the present century, this
feeling has been maintained, and it will last so long as the services
are filled by honourable men who sympathize with the Natives, respect
their prejudices, and do not interfere unnecessarily with their habits
and customs.
My father and I spent between us nearly ninety years in India. The most
wonderful of the many changes that took place during that time may be
said to date from the Mutiny. I have endeavoured in the following pages
to explain the causes which, I believe, brought about that terrible
event—an event which for a while produced a much-to-be-regretted feeling
of racial antagonism. Happily, this feeling did not last long; even when
things looked blackest for us, it was softened by acts of kindness shown
to Europeans in distress, and by the knowledge that, but for the
assistance afforded by the Natives themselves, the restoration of order,
and the suppression of a fierce military insurrection, would have been a
far more arduous task. Delhi could not have been taken without Sikhs and
Gurkhas; Lucknow could not have been defended without the Hindustani
soldiers who so nobly responded to Sir Henry Lawrence’s call; and
nothing that Sir John Lawrence might have done could have prevented our
losing, for a time, the whole of the country north of Calcutta, had not
the men of the Punjab and the Derajat remained true to our cause.
It has been suggested that all outward signs of the Mutiny should be
obliterated, that the monument on the Ridge at Delhi should be levelled,
and the picturesque Residency at Lucknow allowed to fall into decay.
This view does not commend itself to me. These relics of that tremendous
struggle are memorials of heroic services performed by Her Majesty’s
soldiers, Native as well us British; and by the civilians who shared the
duties and dangers of the army. They are valuable as reminders that we
must never again allow ourselves to be bulled into fancied security; and
above all, they stand as warnings that we should never do anything that
can possibly be interpreted by the Natives into disregard for their
various forms of religion.
The Mutiny was not an unmitigated evil, for to it we owe the
consolidation of our power in India, as it hastened the construction
of the roads, railways, and telegraphs, so wisely and thoughtfully
planned by the Marquis of Dalhousie, and which have done more than
anything to increase the prosperity of the people and preserve order
throughout the country. It was the Mutiny which brought Lord Canning
into closer communication with the Princes of India, and paved the way
for Lord Lytton’s brilliant conception of the Imperial Assemblage—a
great political success, which laid the foundation of that feeling of
confidence which now, happily, exists between the Ruling Chiefs and the
Queen-Empress. And it was the Mutiny which compelled us to reorganize
our Indian Army and make it the admirable fighting machine it now is.
In the account I have given of our relations with Afghanistan and the
border tribes, I have endeavoured to bring before my readers the change
of our position in India that has been the inevitable consequence of the
propinquity upon our North-West Frontier of a first-class European
Power. The change has come about so gradually, and has been so
repeatedly pronounced to be chimerical by authorities in whom the people
of Great Britain had every reason to feel confidence, that until
recently it had attracted little public attention, and even now a great
majority of my countrymen may scarcely have realized the probability of
England and Russia ever being near enough to each other in Asia to come
into actual conflict. I impute no blame to the Russians for their
advance towards India. The force of circumstances—the inevitable result
of the contact of civilization with barbarism— impelled them to cross
the Jaxartes and extend their territories to the Khanates of Turkestan
and the banks of the Oxus, just as the same uncontrollable force
carried us across the Sutlej and extended our territories to the valley
of the Indus. The object I have at heart is to make my fellow-subjects
recognize that, under these altered conditions, Great Britain now
occupies in Asia the position of a Continental Power, and that her
interests in that part of the globe must be protected by Continental
means of defence.
The few who have carefully and steadily watched the course of events,
entertained no doubt from the first as to the soundness of these views;
and their aim has always been, as mine is now, not to sound an alarm,
but to give a warning, and to show the danger of shutting our eyes to
plain facts and their probable consequences.
Whatever may be the future course of events, I have no fear of the
result if we are only true to ourselves and to India. Thinking Natives
thoroughly understand the situation; they believe that the time must
come when the territories of Great Britain and Russia in their part of
Asia will be separated only by a common boundary line, and they would
consider that we were wanting in the most essential attributes of Rulers
if we did not take all possible precautions, and make every possible
preparation to meet such an eventuality.
I send out this book in the earnest hope that the friendly anticipations
of those who advised me to write it may not be seriously disappointed;
and that those who care to read a plain, unvarnished tale of Indian life
and adventure, wilt bear in mind that the writer is a soldier, not a man
of letters, and will therefore forgive all faults of style or language.
ROBERTS.
11th September, 1896
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