Lord Minto by John Buchan

THE positive achievements of Minto's Viceroyalty may be read by those who seek them in the many volumes of the departmental reports of the Government of India. They include a thousand matters which can only be mentioned in such a memoir as this -- matters of administrative and financial reform, such as the reorganization of the railway and education departments; policies of great social import, like the new and vigorous attempt to grapple with the scourge of malaria and the plague; questions of India's foreign relations, such as the effort to obtain just treatment for Indians in South Africa, the controversy with the home Government over the Convention with Russia, and Minto's far-sighted representations as to the Bagdad railway, Mesopotamia, and southern Persia. Like all Viceroys, he had a frontier problem to grapple with, and a little frontier war. On the vexed matter of the "open" and the "closed" frontier, he took up, as we have seen, the attitude of a practical soldier, and his contribution to a discussion which is still unconcluded has not been excelled in wisdom; for, while he was as averse as Lord Morley to territorial extension, he held that the strip of border no-man's-land instead of being a security was a constant peril, unless British influence was brought to bear on it and it was within reason opened up to civilizing and pacifying influences. The strategy of frontier defence could only be complicated by a terra incognita in which unknown mischief might at any moment blow up like a sandstorm in the desert. One temporary safeguard he provided, for he made of the Amir of Afghanistan an attached friend. In military affairs generally, his technical knowledge rendered him an efficient coadjutor to Lord Kitchener in carrying out the changes of machinery made at the beginning of his term of office. For the Indian army he had a deep admiration and care; he laboured, as we have seen, to give Indian gentlemen the right of serving the British Crown on equal terms with the British-born, and the last dispatch he sent home was on this matter.

But it is customary to judge a Viceroy by those parts of his work which constitute a new departure in policy, which are not merely "carrying-on" but initiation. On this view Minto had to his credit two notable achievements. The first was that into a fevered and disturbed India he introduced by the sheer force of his personality a new harmony and confidence. The official hierarchy, the educated classes, the ruling chiefs, were all, in 1905, in a state of discomfort and discontent. Their nerves had been frayed by startling changes; often their feelings had been wounded by blunders in tact, by a dictatorial tone insulting to their pride, by the left-handedness of an able man whose delicacy of perception was not equal to his earnestness of purpose. On this side Minto was able to realize the hope which he had expressed before leaving England of "giving the horse a rest in its gallops. " His personality alone, apart from his acts, was soothing and engaging. He was both trusted and liked by his officials, for they realized that he asked only for candour and honest service, and had no vanity to be offended by plain dealing; that he was loyalty itself, and would never leave a colleague in the lurch. The educated Indian recognized in him one who believed in the fundamental good sense of the Indian people, and who was warmly sympathetic towards all that was honourable and reasonable in Indian arms. Though he passed more repressive laws and acted more absolutely than any Viceroy since Canning, he did not lose the confidence even of the classes most opposed to his measures. Lastly, his relations with the ruling chiefs were cordial and straightforward, as of one gentleman to others. They understood him as he understood them. He showed a scrupulous regard for their rights and dignities, and a wise appreciation of their difficulties. By his speech at Udaipur he dispelled the last remnants of their distrust of the Government of India, which had been growing up during the previous regime, and by his personal relations he made of them devoted allies and friends.*