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Extracts from
The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma
by
Charles Haswell Campagnac, M.B.E., Bar-at-law
The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma
by
Charles Haswell Campagnac, M.B.E., Bar-at-law
The Arnold Case
This case arose out of a prosecution for abduction and rape of a little Malay Mohammedan girl named Ainah by an Australian planter, McCormick who lived at Victoria Point, the southern-most part of Burma. McCormick was a rubber planter. He was very friendly with the European Superintendent of Police, Capt. Finney, and the European Deputy Commissioner of Mergui, Mr Andrew. The Sub-divisional officer at Victoria Point was an Anglo-Burman, Mr A.W. Buchanan. He was informed that McCormick was keeping Ainah, who was the daughter of one of his employees, in his house forcibly and that her parents could not get access to her. Mr Buchanan issued a warrant for McCormick’s arrest and directed the police to remove the girl from McCormick’s house. When the girl was medically examined it was found that an attempt had been made to ravish her. As McCormick was a European British subject, as defined by the Criminal Procedure Code, he had to be tried by a European and so the case was sent for trial to the Court of Mr G.P. Andrew at Mergui.
McCormick’s defence was that he had been informed that Ainah had been prostituted to coolies at a rupee a time and that he had heard that she was suffering from a venereal disease. He had therefore taken her into his house and treated her medically. The Civil Surgeon reported that as a result of his examination of the girl, it was impossible that Ainah had had intercourse with a number of men. Mr Andrew discharged McCormick and in doing so described his action in taking Ainah to his house and treating her medically as “pure and philanthropic.”
The case happened in a remote part of Burma and in the ordinary course of events nothing would have been heard about it outside the small town of Mergui. However, Mrs Buchanan, the wife of the Sub-divisional Magistrate, reported the case to Mr Channing Arnold the son of Sir Edwin Arnold who was at that time the editor of one of the two leading English papers in Rangoon, The Rangoon Times. Mr Arnold submitted the facts to the Lt.-Governor, Sir Harvey Adamson. He received a communication from the Chief Secretary of the Govt. of Burma as follows:-
The Lt.-Governor has caused an enquiry to be made into the allegations made against certain officials in the Tenasserim District and has satisfied himself that there is no truth in the allegations made against them.
Arnold had now severed connection with The Rangoon Times and started his own biweekly paper The Burma Critic. On receipt of this reply Arnold published two articles entitled, “A Mockery of British Justice” in which he passed severe strictures on the conduct of Capt. Finney, the Dist. Superintendent of Police and Mr G.A. Andrew, the Dist. Magistrate of Mergui, for their conduct of this case. In the article, among other things, Mr Arnold described Andrew and Finney as being companions of McCormick and concluded his article by declaiming, “By the Criminal law against which he has offended the planter McCormick will be punished, but what about those who have condoned his misdeeds? They have offended, not only against the criminal law, but against the Empire itself.”
Before publishing these articles in The Burma Critic, Mr Arnold had submitted them to A.W. Buchanan, asking him to verify the facts, Mr Buchanan wrote at the bottom of the articles, “Quite true” and put his initials “AWB.” This fact was never brought out at the trial, as Arnold, acting according to the etiquette of journalists, was not prepared to give away his informer, especially, as if he had done so, it would have meant that Mr Buchanan would probably have been dismissed from the service of the Government.
The Government’s reaction to the publication of these articles in The Burma Critic was to order Mr Andrew to take Criminal Proceedings for defamation of character against Mr Arnold. Mr Arnold’s legal adviser was a Mr Clarence Hamlyn, who was one of the contributors to his paper. Mr Hamlyn was a very senior advocate, but he had had little experience of conducting criminal cases. He was also very pompous in his manner and very often lost the sympathy of the Court by his bombastic language. The Mohammedan community felt it to be their duty to assist Mr Arnold, as he had taken up the cudgels on behalf of a Mohammedan girl and they wanted him to brief me and offered to pay my fee. Mr Arnold felt, however, that he could not throw Mr Hamlyn over-board but, as the Mohammedan community said they would not finance the case unless I was also briefed, Mr Arnold with some difficulty got Mr Hamlyn to agree to my acting as his Junior.
The preliminary enquiry was held by the then Deputy Magistrate, Mr Cook, who seemed to be so overcome at the sensation the case was arousing that he made number of blunders and was described in an article written in The Burma Critic as “Our Mugh Cook.” (The best cooks in Burma were Mughs.” During the course of enquiry before Mr Cook, all the officers concerned in the case had been examined as witnesses and all of them had said that no enquiry had been made from them about the case since Mr Andrew had passed his order discharging McCormick. For this reason the Defence thought it necessary to apply for a summons to examine Sir Harvey Adamson, the Lt.-Governor, to explain his communication to Arnold that he had caused an enquiry to be made and satisfied himself that there was no truth in the allegations made against the officers concerned. The case was committed by Mr Cook to be tried at the Sessions of the Rangoon High Court.
At that time Sir Charles Fox was the Chief Justice of Burma and he decided to preside over the Sessions. Sir Charles Fox was an old friend of Sir Harvey Adamson’s, as Adamson had been Chief Justice before being appointed Lt.-Governor. At the commencement of the trial Sir Charles Fox, without hearing Counsel, delivered a preliminary order, in which he said that this was not to be a trial of McCormick, nor was it to be a trial of the Lt.-Governor, Sir Harvey Adamson. The result was that the Defence was excluded from calling Sir Harvey Adamson as a witness. It was realised that if the Jury were told that the Lt.-Governor had made an enquiry and had informed Mr Arnold that he was satisfied that there was no truth into the allegations made against Messrs. Andrew and Finney, it would have a profound effect on the Jury.
Sir Guy Rutledge, who was afterwards Chief Justice of Burma, and was at that time Government Advocate, appeared with Mr Arthur Eggar for the Crown. In his opening speech to the Jury, Sir Guy started to tell them that Mr Arnold knew, before he published the articles complained of, that the Lt.-Governor had held an enquiry. He was cut short by Sir Charles Fox, who said, “I have already ruled that this is not to be an enquiry into the conduct of the Lt.-Governor.” Sir Guy submitted that surely it was relevant, when again he was pulled up by the Chief Justice.
The case caused considerable public interest and the Court was crowded with spectators. It was said that the Sergeant Usher made a small fortune during the case, by only admitting members of the public who gave him a tip and that if he had not been sufficiently tipped by anyone, he would drag that person out of the Court after a little while and push another person in, who had given him what he considered to be a sufficient charge for being admitted to hear the case.
Poor Mr Hamlyn was overcome by the magnitude of the case and he started his cross-examination of Mr Andrew by saying, “Now Mr Arnold, do you say that these articles are a tissue of lies and a farrago of nonsense?” Mr Andrew did not attempt to answer that question, but remained silent.
Mr Hamlyn became very excited and in spite of my tugging at his gown and whispering to him that the witness’ name was Andrew and not Arnold, he again repeated, “Now Mr Arnold, will you answer my question?” The Court rocked with laughter and it was quite some time before Mr Hamlyn realised his mistake.
I must say that if the trial had been by the spectators of the Court, Mr Arnold would undoubtedly have been acquitted because there were frequent shouts of “Shame” at some of the answers given by Mr Andrew.
One amusing incident I recollect was when Mr Eggar rose to examine Capt. Finney. It was the first case in which Eggar had appeared and he started by firing a number of questions at Capt. Finney in rapid succession – “What is your name?” “Where do you live?” “What is your occupation?” “What is your religion?” Eggar did not realise that the answers to all these questions had to be recorded by the Registrar and did not understand why there was a burst of laughter from everyone in court.
In this case I made the opening speech for the Defence and in doing so said that I claimed no special privilege for Mr Arnold on the ground that he was a journalist and the editor of a paper. My speech was punctuated by applause and cries of, “Shame” from the spectators, so much so, that Sir Charles threatened to have the Court cleared if there was any more disturbance.
The child Ainah was called as a witness for the Defence. She was a very pretty little girl and looked a pathetic figure in the witness box. She answered questions put to her clearly and was not shaken in cross-examination. She said that her father, Malassa, had died since the institution of these Proceedings.
Mr Hamlyn, when he addressed the Jury, exclaimed in a voice full of pathos and with tears in his eyes, “Gentlemen, Malassa, the father of Ainah is dead and we shall never see him again.” Of course no one in the Court had ever seen Malassa, or was in any way affected by his death. The Jury and everyone in Court burst out into loud laughter at this extraordinary opening by Mr Hamlyn. In the course of his address, said that his learned Junior had been wrong in not claiming special privilege for Mr Arnold who was the Editor of a paper.
When Sir Charles Fox came to sum up the case, he said that there was a divergence of opinion as to the law between the Junior and Senior Counsel for the Defence. In this case he said the Junior Counsel was right and the Senior Council wrong.
In the summing up to the Jury Sir Charles Fox said, “Some people are very headstrong. This man, this Editor of a paper, had taken upon himself to pit his judgment against the judgment of a man like Sir Harvey Adamson, a man of great judicial experience who was once the Chief Justice of this Court. Well gentlemen, he must take the consequences.” The summing up was in favour of the prosecution and the only word uttered by Sir Charles Fox, which might be construed as favourable to the Defence was that this was not a trial of McCormick, but that his action in keeping this young girl in custody and examining her was highly improper. It is not surprising that the all European Jury, who were all members of the upper circle of Europeans in Rangoon, brought in a unanimous verdict of guilty, whereupon Sir Charles Fox sentenced Mr Arnold to one year’s imprisonment.
This sentence was afterwards described in the leading article of The Burma Critic as savage, but in any event it was a very severe sentence to pass on a European of Mr Arnold’s age (he was then over fifty years of age) in a tropical climate and for an offence which was more of a civil than a criminal nature.
I accompanied Arnold to the Rangoon Central Gaol and discussed with him what action we should take. We were both agreed that the object of the Burma Government in prosecuting him and the severity of the sentence passed on him, was to close The Burma Critic which was the only independent English newspaper in Burma and was fearless in denouncing anything it considered to be wrong, whether the evil-doer was a highly placed official or anybody else. The motto of the paper was “We court no man’s favour and fear no man’s frown.”
At the time of this conviction, residing with Mr Arnold was a young Englishman by the name of Ernest Charles Temple Minet. Later on in this book, I shall have something more to say about Minet, but it will be sufficient for the present to say that he was a rather wild young man and absolutely fearless of anything that might happen to him, by reason of his association with Arnold!
He had been present sitting next to Mr Arnold throughout the proceedings in the Magistrate’s Court and in the Sessions Court and had made audible remarks about the witnesses for the prosecution. He was seen more than once putting his hand over his mouth and saying “Bloody liar.” Arnold asked me whether I would help to run the paper while he was in prison under the editorship of Minet. I agreed to this and told him that I would arrange or a public meeting to be held to sympathise with him and to raise funds to enable him to appeal to the Privy Council against his conviction.
A largely attended public meeting was held at which a Committee was appointed for the purpose of opening a defence fund and arranging for an Appeal to the Privy Council. The subscription met with a generous response from the public and the Committee wanted me to go to England to instruct solicitors there. Mr Hamlyn, however, had in the meantime interviewed Arnold in prison, accompanied by a solicitor and made Arnold believe that it was necessary for him to give a Power of Attorney to Hamlyn, authorising him to engage solicitors for him in London. The Committee then had no option but to pay Hamlyn’s passage to England with instructions that he should place the case in the hands of Bramwall & White, a well known firm of solicitors who dealt in Privy Council matters. The solicitors engaged Sir Robert Finlay, who afterwards became Lord Chancellor, as Senior in the case. They also informed the Committee that it would be necessary to engage a Junior, who had had experience of Privy Council procedure and suggested the name of Arthur Page, who afterwards became Sir Arthur and Chief Judge of the Burma High Court. In order to have a Criminal Appeal decided by the Privy Council, it was necessary in the first place to apply to the Court for Special Leave to Appeal. Special Leave was only granted when it was made out to the satisfaction of the Board that there had been a denial of justice in the Lower Court. Special leave was very rarely granted.
In Mr Arnold’s case, special Leave to Appeal was granted and during the hearing of the Application, their Lordships passed several remarks, which indicated that in their opinion, there had been a denial of justice in this case. One member remarked, “What puzzles me in this case is that the Learned Chief Judge of Burma, after passing a preliminary order shutting out all evidence relating to the Lt.-Governor’s conduct of the case, when he came to charge the Jury at the end of the case, laid great emphasis on the fact that the Appellant was aware before publishing the articles that an enquiry had been made by the Lt.-Governor.”
This was only one of several remarks passed by the Board indicating what their opinion of the case was. When the Appeal came to be heard, all the Judges who had formed the Board which had granted Special Leave to Appeal, were excluded from the Board and an entirely new set of Judges appointed.
In his concluding remarks at the Hearing of the Appeal, Sir Robert Finlay used these memorable words: “If my Lords, throughout the Empire every subject, no matter how poor or in what part of His Majesty’s Dominions, is deprived of that which is his birthright, namely a fair trial, then the integrity of the Empire cannot be maintained.”
Sir Robert Finlay was followed by David Alec Wilson, who by this time had retired and had had himself briefed as a Junior in the case. Mr Wilson made an extraordinary speech to the Board, in the course of which he said that if the procedure adopted by the Magistrate, who tried McCormick could be matched in any other case, he was prepared on behalf of Mr Arnold to withdraw the Appeal.
The Privy Council dismissed the Appeal in a most remarkable judgement. They started by saying that as the Appellant had pleaded he had acted in good faith, this was an admission that the facts in his article were not true. They then went on to say that the Appellant had made out a fair and stateable case in support of the Statutory Defence and that the prosecution had given a fair and stateable answer. Having arrived at this conclusion, they dismissed the Appeal.
David Alec Wilson was in Court when the Judgement was passed and the immediately rose to tell their Lordships that neither his Learned Senior nor he nor any of Mr Arnold’s advocates at Rangoon had ever admitted that the facts in the article were untrue. The presiding Judge said that if Mr Wilson wished to raise that point at this stage he was at liberty to do so, at which Mr Wilson remarked “All I can say, my Lords is that it makes Printer’s Pie of your judgement.”
The offence of defamation is defined in the Indian Penal Code. Then there are certain exceptions:
Exception 1 - Is that it is not defamation if the facts in the publication are true and made for the public good.
Exception 2 - Says it is not defamation if the publication was made in good faith and for the public good.
The position that I had taken in Burma at the trial and the submission made by Sir Robert Finlay before the Privy Council were that most of the allegations of fact contained in the articles complained of were true, that some allegations had not been proved to be true and that one or two of the allegations had turned out to be incorrect. We submitted that the fact that the majority of the allegations in the articles were true, proved that Mr Arnold had acted in good faith, which is defined as having acted “With due care and attention.”
Sir Robert was so upset at the judgement of the Privy Council that he had copies of it submitted to two or three leading King’s Counsel, who all gave it as their opinion that the Judgement of the Privy Council was wrong in Law. There was a proposal that the case should be debated in the House of Commons on the strength of these opinion but the First Word War broke out which put an end to all further agitation in the matter – in fact, a gentleman’s agreement had been reached between Mr Arnold and the Secretary of State for India, that the whole matter should be dropped. While the case was pending before the Privy Council, the Burma Government had got Capt. Finney to bring a Civil action against Mr Arnold in respect of the articles, claiming fifteen thousand rupees (one thousand pounds) as damage The case was withdrawn and Mr Arnold was paid his costs.
It is necessary for me to go back a little on my narrative. While Mr Arnold was in prison he was visited by Ramsay MacDonald, afterwards Prime Minister of Britain. Ramsey MacDonald was at that time a guest of Sir Harvey Adamson and he came to tell Arnold that if Arnold were to apologise, Sir Harvey would release him from prison. This made Arnold go up in the air and he called Ramsey MacDonald some very rude names and told him that he did not think the Labour party would be pleased if they knew how MacDonald was toadying to his friend the Lt.-Governor by trying to get Arnold to admit that he was wrong in publishing the articles.
I happened to visit Arnold during this interview and was present during most of it. I had difficulty in quietening Arnold and told MacDonald that he should not pay any great attention to what Arnold was saying as he ought to be able to understand his feelings in being asked to sacrifice a principle in which he believed and that was in British Justice.
Many years afterwards in 1931 or 1932, when I came to England as a delegate from Burma to the Burma Round Table Conference, I had lunch with Ramsay MacDonald, the then Prime Minister, at no. 10 Downing Street, I asked him whether he remembered ever having met me, He said “No.” I said “Well you have met me before and that was in Rangoon Central Gaol.” He looked somewhat puzzled and I quickly assured him that I had not been a prisoner in the gaol at the time when I met him but that I had come to interview my client, Mr Channing Arnold. Ramsay then said “A minute ago, if anyone had asked me if I had been in the Rangoon Central Gaol, I would have denied it but I now have a very vivid recollection of being there.”
Arnold had been in prison for four months before he obtained Special Leave to Appeal to the Privy Council. The moment the Application was filed Sir Harvey Adamson commuted the remained of Arnold’s sentence of twelve months and released him. We thought that this was done because the local Government feared that an Application for Bail would be made to the Privy Council and that the chances of getting the Appeal admitted would be prejudiced if their Lordships were informed that the prisoner was no longer in prison. When the order releasing Arnold was communicated to him he refused to leave the gaol and said that they would have to forcible eject him as he considered it a ruse by the Government to prejudice the Hearing of his Appeal. The Superintendent of the gaol sent for me and I had some difficulty in persuading Arnold that he had no option but to leave the gaol and that if he didn’t do so he would be forcibly thrown out.
During the four months Arnold was in gaol the “Critic” continued its publication and many articles and headlines much more pungent that those for which Arnold had been convicted appeared in its columns. The day after Arnold was sent to prison I took Minet with me to the District Magistrate’s Court to have him registered as Editor of the paper. Mr Cook asked Minet whether he took full responsibility for the articles which had been published or might be published in future in The Burma Critic. Minet answered in a loud voice, “absolute responsibility.” It was just before this that the article I referred to before, criticising Mr Cook with the heading “Our Mugh Cook” had appeared in the paper. I really think Mr Cook, who was a quiet inoffensive man, was quite unnerved at all that had taken place during the hearing of the Arnold case in his Court. One day, when Minet was driving me in a racing car, which made as much noise as a steam engine, we saw Mr Cook riding a horse in front is us. Mr Cook gave one glance at the car and then took his horse into a ditch at the side of the road.
This case undoubtedly put an end to any chances I may have had of being appointed to the Bench. Years afterwards when Sir Guy Rutledge was Chief Justice and Sir Harcourt Butler Governor of Burma, I was recommended by both these gentlemen for a Judgeship in the High Court. Sir Guy Rutledge told me at the time that the Chief Secretary of the government had sent for the record of the Arnold case and said “I don’t know what that case [has] to do with your being appointed a Judge. I know more about the case than anyone else, as I appeared in it.”
What Sir Guy did not know or realise was that the Government resented the fact that I had helped Arnold to continue with the publication of his paper while he was in gaol. Two attempts were made to trap me during this period. On one occasion, a clerk in the Secretariat brought me a Memorial which had been submitted by the Karen community to the local Government and said that he wanted to help the Memorialists and would appreciate it if I could write a leader in The Burma Critic about the Memorial. He offered to leave the file with me. I told him that what I should really do was to send for a policeman and have him arrested under “The Official Secrets Act” and that he was lucky that I did not do so. I said that the sooner he got out of my office and took the Memorial with him the better it would be for him. I have not the slightest doubt that if I had allowed him to leave the papers with me my office would have been search and that I should have been prosecuted.
On another occasion, a Burman came to me and said that he had complaints against Sir Harvey Adamson and that he would like these to be ventilated in the paper. I told him that I would not listen to him unless he agreed to my having my shorthand typist present, who would record what he said and obtain his signature to the statement. My friend would not agree to this and quickly made his way out of my office.
In fact, the office of The Burma Critic was searched after copies of certain letters which had passed between the Accountant General and the Local Government, over the fees paid to the Government Advocate who appeared in the Arnold case, had been published in the London Daily Chronicle and reproduced in The Burma Critic. No trace of the letters was found in The Burma Critic office but action was taken against a clerk in the Accountant General’s Office, who was dismissed from the service of the Government.
The Burma Critic immediately published an article saying that this clerk was unknown to them and was in no way responsible for the disclosure of the letters. The letters showed that the Accountant General had refused to sanction bills for fees claimed by Guy Rutledge and Eggar for appearing to prosecute Mr Arnold. He claimed that the Government Advocate received a salary for doing this work and could not claim any additional fees.
Arnold had committed the unpardonable sin of attacking a member of the Civil Service, (Establishment.) Anyone who did that was regarded as a social outcast. It was the policy of officials in the East to uphold the members of the Civil Service at all cost. Any attack on the Civil Service would lower British prestige in the East. It is for this reason that the Indian Civil Servants were dubbed as “The Heaven Born” – they were in the same category as Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. I was a marked man for having associated myself so closely with Mr Arnold. On the other hand, I had become a popular figure. Whatever I attended a cinema, people would get up and cheer me and I am sure that the publicity which I obtained in this case helped my practise at the Bar.
WW1 (and other incidents during that period.)
... On my return to Rangoon, I found that there was a proposal to send a contingent from Burma to England to fight in the war. I wrote to The Rangoon Times which had sponsored the suggestion of the contingent and offered to pay my own passage to England if I was accepted as a volunteer but when I went to be medically examined I was told that my eyesight was defective and that I could not be passed for military service. The volunteer forces were conscripted for the defence of Burma and I joined the Port Defence Volunteers which later was known as the Fifth Field Brigade (Artillery.) ... In the Port Defence we had 4.5 guns used by cadets and fifteen pounder field guns and five inch B.L.C. heavy guns. The heavy guns were stationed on an island in the river known as “Choki Point.” They were mounted on steel platforms and fired hundred pound shells. Artillery practice with these guns consisted of firing at a matting target held in position by ropes attached to boats and the range was anything from five to seven miles.
At that time the German destroyer “Emden” as playing havoc with shipping in the Bay of Bengal and it was feared that she might try and come down the Rangoon river and destroy ships which were in the port. The volunteers were very efficient as gunners and we had a layer (labourer) who could knock the target over nine times out of ten. ...
The field gunners were taken to Aungban near Kalaw in the Southern Shan States. There they had to drag their guns with drag ropes over the hills before getting them ready for action. ... The Adjutant of the Fifth Field Brigade was a Capt. Casson, an Irishman and a member of the Indian Civil Service. He was a friend of mine and I had often appeared before him when he was a Sessions Judge. ... With the Volunteers was an Engineer Company composed entirely of Europeans, many of whom were shop assistants un civil life and had no experience of engineering ...
At the camp there was a volunteer by the name of Grant who had been on active service in Mesopotamia where he had been shot in the arm. One of the Engineers asked Grant to pick up a box and Grant told him he could not do so because of his injured arm. The Engineer then shouted “Another black bastard shirking.” This was said in the hearing of the Volunteers who were lined up with rifles ready to march to the station. Grant turned to these men and called them to attention and ordered them to fix bayonets. I was sitting on a bullock cart when this happened but hobbled out of it at once and gave the order to “unfix bayonets.” Capt. Casson came galloping up on a horse and I explained to him what had happened. I told him that there was very bad feeling between the Engineers and the Anglo-Burmese gunners. The Gunners resented the fact that the Engineers were better treated then they were, in the way of food and in other respects. ... I impressed on Capt. Casson that it would be dangerous to let the Engineers travel to Rangoon on the same train with the Gunners ... The Engineers then had to remain for another day at Aungban.
On the return to Rangoon the Engineer Company was reformed and the only qualification for a man to belong to the Company was that he was an Engineer and there were more Anglo-Burmans in the Corps than Europeans.
During the war in Mesopotamia there was a shortage of British Artillery Regiments there and Volunteers were called for from Burma. A Mobile Battery afterwards called The Volunteer Artillery battery, set up in the Fifth Field Brigade. To obtain recruits for this Battery I travelled all over Burma at my own expense and held recruiting meetings in every town. In Rangoon I started a Recruits and Comfort Fund so that when men came to Rangoon from out stations they could be housed and fed and provided with necessities until such time as they were required to embark for Mesopotamia.
Dances were also organised for these men at which they were given a rousing send off. It was an opportunity, which the Anglo-Burmans had not had since the days of the Mutiny, of demonstrating their loyalty to the British Crown and refuting their calumniators that they were a decadent race.
I also started The Burma Fighting Men’s Dependents’ Fund which was to provide maintenance for the mothers, wives and children of the fighting men. These funds were liberally subscribed to by the leading Europeans and Indian firms in Rangoon ...
Many of the Volunteer Artillery Battery were in Kut during the siege. In fact they were the only Battery in the besieged city. Three of their guns were put out of action by direct hits from the Turkish batteries. After a Volunteer was called for to operate the remaining gun single handed every member of the Battery took a step forward and the choice fell on the senior member of the Battery, Sergeant Heales, who continued to load and fire the gun himself until it too received a direct hit. For this act of gallantry Sergeant Heales received the award of M.C.
While the Turks had occupied the front line of trenches and threatened to break into the city the Volunteer Artillery Battery was asked whether they would be prepared to go into action with bayonets against the Turks. They all agreed to do so, although they had little instruction in bayonet fighting. Led by a Major Anderson they charged into the trench and drove the Turks out.
When the city was eventually surrendered to the Turks by General Townsend the men of the Battery were taken prisoners and commenced the long march over deserts into Turkey, during which they were constantly beaten and whipped by the Turks if they showed any signs of fatigue – in fact one man told me afterwards that he would never have been able to complete the journey if it had not been for a severe blow he had from one of the Turkish escorts – he said that the whip hurt him so much that he thought he could have run to the other end of the world rather than to suffer a repetition of the pain he had suffered.
These men were kept in captivity for over three years and were not released till the termination of the war in 1918. They received very harsh treatment in Turkey at the hands of the Turks. Their main diet was soup made from the boiling of onions and chapatti (unleavened bread) which they had to make themselves out of very course flour. The only respite they had was when one of them died and they were allowed to carry his body to a cemetery and dig a grave to bury him. For three years they had no news of the outside world and did not know how the war was proceeding. It was only when they were marched to a port and put on board a steamer that they knew the war had been won by the Allies.
I met these men at the mouth of the Rangoon river in their return. They were all in very bad shape and had long beards as during the whole of their captivity they had never been given an opportunity to shave. It was pathetic to hear them asking questions about their relatives and friends in Rangoon, of whom they had not heard for so many years. It speaks very highly for the virility of these men that some of them sought against the Japanese in Burma and marched out of Burma with the British and Indian troops under General Alexander (WWII.) Every year after their return the Fifth Field Brigade held a Kut reunion Dinner.
... Hearing that the standard of eyesight required had been lowered I volunteered to go to Mesopotamia as a gunner. ... At this juncture I was sent for by Col. Evans, commanding the Fifth Field Brigade, who told me he knew how anxious I was to get to the front but he assured me I was doing much more useful service by remaining in Burma and securing a constant flow of recruits for the Volunteer Artillery Battery in Mesopotamia.
WWII Burma After the Re-Occupation
In 1946, as soon as I obtained permission to return to Burma I went to Madras by train and from there caught a steamer to Rangoon. For the first time in my life I travelled as a deck passenger and experienced the great hardships which Indian labourers coming to Indian to Burma had to put up with.
... During the Japanese occupation my house had been taken possession of by an Anglo-Burmese lady who had run a restaurant for Japanese officers in the house. When I visited the house I found it to be in a very dilapidated condition. ... I had considerable difficulty in getting the lady who was in occupation of my house to vacate it and I was not able to occupy it for about three or four months after my return to Burma. ... and when the house was fairly habitable I brought my wife and daughter over from India.
Rangoon had been very badly bombed by the British. Whole blocks of streets in which there had formerly been dwelling houses were now vacant spaces. There were great potholes in the roads and the roadside drains and the roads had not been cleaned and the stench in the streets was unbearable. Many thousands of Burmese villagers whose villages had either been destroyed during the fighting or by insurgents had flocked into Rangoon. They built huts on the pavements in the city along the royal lakes. The whole country was seething with unrest. ...
British Judges Return to Burma
When British Judges of the High Court returned to Burma after the war there was a celebration dinner of the Bench and Bar, at which I was the Chairman, as I had been appointed Chairman of the Bar Council. At that dinner no one realised what chaos there was in the country and I think that most of us fondly imagined that things would go on very much as before but we were sadly disillusioned. ...
Sad Plight of the Anglo-Burmese Community
... The husbands, fathers and elder brothers of these people were either in the Army or doing work in the essential services ... Women and girls remained at their posts in the War Office and telephone exchange up to D-day. Some of the girls lost their lives while travelling in the last train to Mandalay when they alighted at Toungoo station to buy something at roadside eating stalls. As they stepped on the platform Japanese planes flew low and killed them with shots from machine guns. Among these girls was a great friend of ours, Freda Ford, and I heard of her death almost immediately as I was driving through Toungoo in an Army lorry at that time. ...
This case arose out of a prosecution for abduction and rape of a little Malay Mohammedan girl named Ainah by an Australian planter, McCormick who lived at Victoria Point, the southern-most part of Burma. McCormick was a rubber planter. He was very friendly with the European Superintendent of Police, Capt. Finney, and the European Deputy Commissioner of Mergui, Mr Andrew. The Sub-divisional officer at Victoria Point was an Anglo-Burman, Mr A.W. Buchanan. He was informed that McCormick was keeping Ainah, who was the daughter of one of his employees, in his house forcibly and that her parents could not get access to her. Mr Buchanan issued a warrant for McCormick’s arrest and directed the police to remove the girl from McCormick’s house. When the girl was medically examined it was found that an attempt had been made to ravish her. As McCormick was a European British subject, as defined by the Criminal Procedure Code, he had to be tried by a European and so the case was sent for trial to the Court of Mr G.P. Andrew at Mergui.
McCormick’s defence was that he had been informed that Ainah had been prostituted to coolies at a rupee a time and that he had heard that she was suffering from a venereal disease. He had therefore taken her into his house and treated her medically. The Civil Surgeon reported that as a result of his examination of the girl, it was impossible that Ainah had had intercourse with a number of men. Mr Andrew discharged McCormick and in doing so described his action in taking Ainah to his house and treating her medically as “pure and philanthropic.”
The case happened in a remote part of Burma and in the ordinary course of events nothing would have been heard about it outside the small town of Mergui. However, Mrs Buchanan, the wife of the Sub-divisional Magistrate, reported the case to Mr Channing Arnold the son of Sir Edwin Arnold who was at that time the editor of one of the two leading English papers in Rangoon, The Rangoon Times. Mr Arnold submitted the facts to the Lt.-Governor, Sir Harvey Adamson. He received a communication from the Chief Secretary of the Govt. of Burma as follows:-
The Lt.-Governor has caused an enquiry to be made into the allegations made against certain officials in the Tenasserim District and has satisfied himself that there is no truth in the allegations made against them.
Arnold had now severed connection with The Rangoon Times and started his own biweekly paper The Burma Critic. On receipt of this reply Arnold published two articles entitled, “A Mockery of British Justice” in which he passed severe strictures on the conduct of Capt. Finney, the Dist. Superintendent of Police and Mr G.A. Andrew, the Dist. Magistrate of Mergui, for their conduct of this case. In the article, among other things, Mr Arnold described Andrew and Finney as being companions of McCormick and concluded his article by declaiming, “By the Criminal law against which he has offended the planter McCormick will be punished, but what about those who have condoned his misdeeds? They have offended, not only against the criminal law, but against the Empire itself.”
Before publishing these articles in The Burma Critic, Mr Arnold had submitted them to A.W. Buchanan, asking him to verify the facts, Mr Buchanan wrote at the bottom of the articles, “Quite true” and put his initials “AWB.” This fact was never brought out at the trial, as Arnold, acting according to the etiquette of journalists, was not prepared to give away his informer, especially, as if he had done so, it would have meant that Mr Buchanan would probably have been dismissed from the service of the Government.
The Government’s reaction to the publication of these articles in The Burma Critic was to order Mr Andrew to take Criminal Proceedings for defamation of character against Mr Arnold. Mr Arnold’s legal adviser was a Mr Clarence Hamlyn, who was one of the contributors to his paper. Mr Hamlyn was a very senior advocate, but he had had little experience of conducting criminal cases. He was also very pompous in his manner and very often lost the sympathy of the Court by his bombastic language. The Mohammedan community felt it to be their duty to assist Mr Arnold, as he had taken up the cudgels on behalf of a Mohammedan girl and they wanted him to brief me and offered to pay my fee. Mr Arnold felt, however, that he could not throw Mr Hamlyn over-board but, as the Mohammedan community said they would not finance the case unless I was also briefed, Mr Arnold with some difficulty got Mr Hamlyn to agree to my acting as his Junior.
The preliminary enquiry was held by the then Deputy Magistrate, Mr Cook, who seemed to be so overcome at the sensation the case was arousing that he made number of blunders and was described in an article written in The Burma Critic as “Our Mugh Cook.” (The best cooks in Burma were Mughs.” During the course of enquiry before Mr Cook, all the officers concerned in the case had been examined as witnesses and all of them had said that no enquiry had been made from them about the case since Mr Andrew had passed his order discharging McCormick. For this reason the Defence thought it necessary to apply for a summons to examine Sir Harvey Adamson, the Lt.-Governor, to explain his communication to Arnold that he had caused an enquiry to be made and satisfied himself that there was no truth in the allegations made against the officers concerned. The case was committed by Mr Cook to be tried at the Sessions of the Rangoon High Court.
At that time Sir Charles Fox was the Chief Justice of Burma and he decided to preside over the Sessions. Sir Charles Fox was an old friend of Sir Harvey Adamson’s, as Adamson had been Chief Justice before being appointed Lt.-Governor. At the commencement of the trial Sir Charles Fox, without hearing Counsel, delivered a preliminary order, in which he said that this was not to be a trial of McCormick, nor was it to be a trial of the Lt.-Governor, Sir Harvey Adamson. The result was that the Defence was excluded from calling Sir Harvey Adamson as a witness. It was realised that if the Jury were told that the Lt.-Governor had made an enquiry and had informed Mr Arnold that he was satisfied that there was no truth into the allegations made against Messrs. Andrew and Finney, it would have a profound effect on the Jury.
Sir Guy Rutledge, who was afterwards Chief Justice of Burma, and was at that time Government Advocate, appeared with Mr Arthur Eggar for the Crown. In his opening speech to the Jury, Sir Guy started to tell them that Mr Arnold knew, before he published the articles complained of, that the Lt.-Governor had held an enquiry. He was cut short by Sir Charles Fox, who said, “I have already ruled that this is not to be an enquiry into the conduct of the Lt.-Governor.” Sir Guy submitted that surely it was relevant, when again he was pulled up by the Chief Justice.
The case caused considerable public interest and the Court was crowded with spectators. It was said that the Sergeant Usher made a small fortune during the case, by only admitting members of the public who gave him a tip and that if he had not been sufficiently tipped by anyone, he would drag that person out of the Court after a little while and push another person in, who had given him what he considered to be a sufficient charge for being admitted to hear the case.
Poor Mr Hamlyn was overcome by the magnitude of the case and he started his cross-examination of Mr Andrew by saying, “Now Mr Arnold, do you say that these articles are a tissue of lies and a farrago of nonsense?” Mr Andrew did not attempt to answer that question, but remained silent.
Mr Hamlyn became very excited and in spite of my tugging at his gown and whispering to him that the witness’ name was Andrew and not Arnold, he again repeated, “Now Mr Arnold, will you answer my question?” The Court rocked with laughter and it was quite some time before Mr Hamlyn realised his mistake.
I must say that if the trial had been by the spectators of the Court, Mr Arnold would undoubtedly have been acquitted because there were frequent shouts of “Shame” at some of the answers given by Mr Andrew.
One amusing incident I recollect was when Mr Eggar rose to examine Capt. Finney. It was the first case in which Eggar had appeared and he started by firing a number of questions at Capt. Finney in rapid succession – “What is your name?” “Where do you live?” “What is your occupation?” “What is your religion?” Eggar did not realise that the answers to all these questions had to be recorded by the Registrar and did not understand why there was a burst of laughter from everyone in court.
In this case I made the opening speech for the Defence and in doing so said that I claimed no special privilege for Mr Arnold on the ground that he was a journalist and the editor of a paper. My speech was punctuated by applause and cries of, “Shame” from the spectators, so much so, that Sir Charles threatened to have the Court cleared if there was any more disturbance.
The child Ainah was called as a witness for the Defence. She was a very pretty little girl and looked a pathetic figure in the witness box. She answered questions put to her clearly and was not shaken in cross-examination. She said that her father, Malassa, had died since the institution of these Proceedings.
Mr Hamlyn, when he addressed the Jury, exclaimed in a voice full of pathos and with tears in his eyes, “Gentlemen, Malassa, the father of Ainah is dead and we shall never see him again.” Of course no one in the Court had ever seen Malassa, or was in any way affected by his death. The Jury and everyone in Court burst out into loud laughter at this extraordinary opening by Mr Hamlyn. In the course of his address, said that his learned Junior had been wrong in not claiming special privilege for Mr Arnold who was the Editor of a paper.
When Sir Charles Fox came to sum up the case, he said that there was a divergence of opinion as to the law between the Junior and Senior Counsel for the Defence. In this case he said the Junior Counsel was right and the Senior Council wrong.
In the summing up to the Jury Sir Charles Fox said, “Some people are very headstrong. This man, this Editor of a paper, had taken upon himself to pit his judgment against the judgment of a man like Sir Harvey Adamson, a man of great judicial experience who was once the Chief Justice of this Court. Well gentlemen, he must take the consequences.” The summing up was in favour of the prosecution and the only word uttered by Sir Charles Fox, which might be construed as favourable to the Defence was that this was not a trial of McCormick, but that his action in keeping this young girl in custody and examining her was highly improper. It is not surprising that the all European Jury, who were all members of the upper circle of Europeans in Rangoon, brought in a unanimous verdict of guilty, whereupon Sir Charles Fox sentenced Mr Arnold to one year’s imprisonment.
This sentence was afterwards described in the leading article of The Burma Critic as savage, but in any event it was a very severe sentence to pass on a European of Mr Arnold’s age (he was then over fifty years of age) in a tropical climate and for an offence which was more of a civil than a criminal nature.
I accompanied Arnold to the Rangoon Central Gaol and discussed with him what action we should take. We were both agreed that the object of the Burma Government in prosecuting him and the severity of the sentence passed on him, was to close The Burma Critic which was the only independent English newspaper in Burma and was fearless in denouncing anything it considered to be wrong, whether the evil-doer was a highly placed official or anybody else. The motto of the paper was “We court no man’s favour and fear no man’s frown.”
At the time of this conviction, residing with Mr Arnold was a young Englishman by the name of Ernest Charles Temple Minet. Later on in this book, I shall have something more to say about Minet, but it will be sufficient for the present to say that he was a rather wild young man and absolutely fearless of anything that might happen to him, by reason of his association with Arnold!
He had been present sitting next to Mr Arnold throughout the proceedings in the Magistrate’s Court and in the Sessions Court and had made audible remarks about the witnesses for the prosecution. He was seen more than once putting his hand over his mouth and saying “Bloody liar.” Arnold asked me whether I would help to run the paper while he was in prison under the editorship of Minet. I agreed to this and told him that I would arrange or a public meeting to be held to sympathise with him and to raise funds to enable him to appeal to the Privy Council against his conviction.
A largely attended public meeting was held at which a Committee was appointed for the purpose of opening a defence fund and arranging for an Appeal to the Privy Council. The subscription met with a generous response from the public and the Committee wanted me to go to England to instruct solicitors there. Mr Hamlyn, however, had in the meantime interviewed Arnold in prison, accompanied by a solicitor and made Arnold believe that it was necessary for him to give a Power of Attorney to Hamlyn, authorising him to engage solicitors for him in London. The Committee then had no option but to pay Hamlyn’s passage to England with instructions that he should place the case in the hands of Bramwall & White, a well known firm of solicitors who dealt in Privy Council matters. The solicitors engaged Sir Robert Finlay, who afterwards became Lord Chancellor, as Senior in the case. They also informed the Committee that it would be necessary to engage a Junior, who had had experience of Privy Council procedure and suggested the name of Arthur Page, who afterwards became Sir Arthur and Chief Judge of the Burma High Court. In order to have a Criminal Appeal decided by the Privy Council, it was necessary in the first place to apply to the Court for Special Leave to Appeal. Special Leave was only granted when it was made out to the satisfaction of the Board that there had been a denial of justice in the Lower Court. Special leave was very rarely granted.
In Mr Arnold’s case, special Leave to Appeal was granted and during the hearing of the Application, their Lordships passed several remarks, which indicated that in their opinion, there had been a denial of justice in this case. One member remarked, “What puzzles me in this case is that the Learned Chief Judge of Burma, after passing a preliminary order shutting out all evidence relating to the Lt.-Governor’s conduct of the case, when he came to charge the Jury at the end of the case, laid great emphasis on the fact that the Appellant was aware before publishing the articles that an enquiry had been made by the Lt.-Governor.”
This was only one of several remarks passed by the Board indicating what their opinion of the case was. When the Appeal came to be heard, all the Judges who had formed the Board which had granted Special Leave to Appeal, were excluded from the Board and an entirely new set of Judges appointed.
In his concluding remarks at the Hearing of the Appeal, Sir Robert Finlay used these memorable words: “If my Lords, throughout the Empire every subject, no matter how poor or in what part of His Majesty’s Dominions, is deprived of that which is his birthright, namely a fair trial, then the integrity of the Empire cannot be maintained.”
Sir Robert Finlay was followed by David Alec Wilson, who by this time had retired and had had himself briefed as a Junior in the case. Mr Wilson made an extraordinary speech to the Board, in the course of which he said that if the procedure adopted by the Magistrate, who tried McCormick could be matched in any other case, he was prepared on behalf of Mr Arnold to withdraw the Appeal.
The Privy Council dismissed the Appeal in a most remarkable judgement. They started by saying that as the Appellant had pleaded he had acted in good faith, this was an admission that the facts in his article were not true. They then went on to say that the Appellant had made out a fair and stateable case in support of the Statutory Defence and that the prosecution had given a fair and stateable answer. Having arrived at this conclusion, they dismissed the Appeal.
David Alec Wilson was in Court when the Judgement was passed and the immediately rose to tell their Lordships that neither his Learned Senior nor he nor any of Mr Arnold’s advocates at Rangoon had ever admitted that the facts in the article were untrue. The presiding Judge said that if Mr Wilson wished to raise that point at this stage he was at liberty to do so, at which Mr Wilson remarked “All I can say, my Lords is that it makes Printer’s Pie of your judgement.”
The offence of defamation is defined in the Indian Penal Code. Then there are certain exceptions:
Exception 1 - Is that it is not defamation if the facts in the publication are true and made for the public good.
Exception 2 - Says it is not defamation if the publication was made in good faith and for the public good.
The position that I had taken in Burma at the trial and the submission made by Sir Robert Finlay before the Privy Council were that most of the allegations of fact contained in the articles complained of were true, that some allegations had not been proved to be true and that one or two of the allegations had turned out to be incorrect. We submitted that the fact that the majority of the allegations in the articles were true, proved that Mr Arnold had acted in good faith, which is defined as having acted “With due care and attention.”
Sir Robert was so upset at the judgement of the Privy Council that he had copies of it submitted to two or three leading King’s Counsel, who all gave it as their opinion that the Judgement of the Privy Council was wrong in Law. There was a proposal that the case should be debated in the House of Commons on the strength of these opinion but the First Word War broke out which put an end to all further agitation in the matter – in fact, a gentleman’s agreement had been reached between Mr Arnold and the Secretary of State for India, that the whole matter should be dropped. While the case was pending before the Privy Council, the Burma Government had got Capt. Finney to bring a Civil action against Mr Arnold in respect of the articles, claiming fifteen thousand rupees (one thousand pounds) as damage The case was withdrawn and Mr Arnold was paid his costs.
It is necessary for me to go back a little on my narrative. While Mr Arnold was in prison he was visited by Ramsay MacDonald, afterwards Prime Minister of Britain. Ramsey MacDonald was at that time a guest of Sir Harvey Adamson and he came to tell Arnold that if Arnold were to apologise, Sir Harvey would release him from prison. This made Arnold go up in the air and he called Ramsey MacDonald some very rude names and told him that he did not think the Labour party would be pleased if they knew how MacDonald was toadying to his friend the Lt.-Governor by trying to get Arnold to admit that he was wrong in publishing the articles.
I happened to visit Arnold during this interview and was present during most of it. I had difficulty in quietening Arnold and told MacDonald that he should not pay any great attention to what Arnold was saying as he ought to be able to understand his feelings in being asked to sacrifice a principle in which he believed and that was in British Justice.
Many years afterwards in 1931 or 1932, when I came to England as a delegate from Burma to the Burma Round Table Conference, I had lunch with Ramsay MacDonald, the then Prime Minister, at no. 10 Downing Street, I asked him whether he remembered ever having met me, He said “No.” I said “Well you have met me before and that was in Rangoon Central Gaol.” He looked somewhat puzzled and I quickly assured him that I had not been a prisoner in the gaol at the time when I met him but that I had come to interview my client, Mr Channing Arnold. Ramsay then said “A minute ago, if anyone had asked me if I had been in the Rangoon Central Gaol, I would have denied it but I now have a very vivid recollection of being there.”
Arnold had been in prison for four months before he obtained Special Leave to Appeal to the Privy Council. The moment the Application was filed Sir Harvey Adamson commuted the remained of Arnold’s sentence of twelve months and released him. We thought that this was done because the local Government feared that an Application for Bail would be made to the Privy Council and that the chances of getting the Appeal admitted would be prejudiced if their Lordships were informed that the prisoner was no longer in prison. When the order releasing Arnold was communicated to him he refused to leave the gaol and said that they would have to forcible eject him as he considered it a ruse by the Government to prejudice the Hearing of his Appeal. The Superintendent of the gaol sent for me and I had some difficulty in persuading Arnold that he had no option but to leave the gaol and that if he didn’t do so he would be forcibly thrown out.
During the four months Arnold was in gaol the “Critic” continued its publication and many articles and headlines much more pungent that those for which Arnold had been convicted appeared in its columns. The day after Arnold was sent to prison I took Minet with me to the District Magistrate’s Court to have him registered as Editor of the paper. Mr Cook asked Minet whether he took full responsibility for the articles which had been published or might be published in future in The Burma Critic. Minet answered in a loud voice, “absolute responsibility.” It was just before this that the article I referred to before, criticising Mr Cook with the heading “Our Mugh Cook” had appeared in the paper. I really think Mr Cook, who was a quiet inoffensive man, was quite unnerved at all that had taken place during the hearing of the Arnold case in his Court. One day, when Minet was driving me in a racing car, which made as much noise as a steam engine, we saw Mr Cook riding a horse in front is us. Mr Cook gave one glance at the car and then took his horse into a ditch at the side of the road.
This case undoubtedly put an end to any chances I may have had of being appointed to the Bench. Years afterwards when Sir Guy Rutledge was Chief Justice and Sir Harcourt Butler Governor of Burma, I was recommended by both these gentlemen for a Judgeship in the High Court. Sir Guy Rutledge told me at the time that the Chief Secretary of the government had sent for the record of the Arnold case and said “I don’t know what that case [has] to do with your being appointed a Judge. I know more about the case than anyone else, as I appeared in it.”
What Sir Guy did not know or realise was that the Government resented the fact that I had helped Arnold to continue with the publication of his paper while he was in gaol. Two attempts were made to trap me during this period. On one occasion, a clerk in the Secretariat brought me a Memorial which had been submitted by the Karen community to the local Government and said that he wanted to help the Memorialists and would appreciate it if I could write a leader in The Burma Critic about the Memorial. He offered to leave the file with me. I told him that what I should really do was to send for a policeman and have him arrested under “The Official Secrets Act” and that he was lucky that I did not do so. I said that the sooner he got out of my office and took the Memorial with him the better it would be for him. I have not the slightest doubt that if I had allowed him to leave the papers with me my office would have been search and that I should have been prosecuted.
On another occasion, a Burman came to me and said that he had complaints against Sir Harvey Adamson and that he would like these to be ventilated in the paper. I told him that I would not listen to him unless he agreed to my having my shorthand typist present, who would record what he said and obtain his signature to the statement. My friend would not agree to this and quickly made his way out of my office.
In fact, the office of The Burma Critic was searched after copies of certain letters which had passed between the Accountant General and the Local Government, over the fees paid to the Government Advocate who appeared in the Arnold case, had been published in the London Daily Chronicle and reproduced in The Burma Critic. No trace of the letters was found in The Burma Critic office but action was taken against a clerk in the Accountant General’s Office, who was dismissed from the service of the Government.
The Burma Critic immediately published an article saying that this clerk was unknown to them and was in no way responsible for the disclosure of the letters. The letters showed that the Accountant General had refused to sanction bills for fees claimed by Guy Rutledge and Eggar for appearing to prosecute Mr Arnold. He claimed that the Government Advocate received a salary for doing this work and could not claim any additional fees.
Arnold had committed the unpardonable sin of attacking a member of the Civil Service, (Establishment.) Anyone who did that was regarded as a social outcast. It was the policy of officials in the East to uphold the members of the Civil Service at all cost. Any attack on the Civil Service would lower British prestige in the East. It is for this reason that the Indian Civil Servants were dubbed as “The Heaven Born” – they were in the same category as Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. I was a marked man for having associated myself so closely with Mr Arnold. On the other hand, I had become a popular figure. Whatever I attended a cinema, people would get up and cheer me and I am sure that the publicity which I obtained in this case helped my practise at the Bar.
WW1 (and other incidents during that period.)
... On my return to Rangoon, I found that there was a proposal to send a contingent from Burma to England to fight in the war. I wrote to The Rangoon Times which had sponsored the suggestion of the contingent and offered to pay my own passage to England if I was accepted as a volunteer but when I went to be medically examined I was told that my eyesight was defective and that I could not be passed for military service. The volunteer forces were conscripted for the defence of Burma and I joined the Port Defence Volunteers which later was known as the Fifth Field Brigade (Artillery.) ... In the Port Defence we had 4.5 guns used by cadets and fifteen pounder field guns and five inch B.L.C. heavy guns. The heavy guns were stationed on an island in the river known as “Choki Point.” They were mounted on steel platforms and fired hundred pound shells. Artillery practice with these guns consisted of firing at a matting target held in position by ropes attached to boats and the range was anything from five to seven miles.
At that time the German destroyer “Emden” as playing havoc with shipping in the Bay of Bengal and it was feared that she might try and come down the Rangoon river and destroy ships which were in the port. The volunteers were very efficient as gunners and we had a layer (labourer) who could knock the target over nine times out of ten. ...
The field gunners were taken to Aungban near Kalaw in the Southern Shan States. There they had to drag their guns with drag ropes over the hills before getting them ready for action. ... The Adjutant of the Fifth Field Brigade was a Capt. Casson, an Irishman and a member of the Indian Civil Service. He was a friend of mine and I had often appeared before him when he was a Sessions Judge. ... With the Volunteers was an Engineer Company composed entirely of Europeans, many of whom were shop assistants un civil life and had no experience of engineering ...
At the camp there was a volunteer by the name of Grant who had been on active service in Mesopotamia where he had been shot in the arm. One of the Engineers asked Grant to pick up a box and Grant told him he could not do so because of his injured arm. The Engineer then shouted “Another black bastard shirking.” This was said in the hearing of the Volunteers who were lined up with rifles ready to march to the station. Grant turned to these men and called them to attention and ordered them to fix bayonets. I was sitting on a bullock cart when this happened but hobbled out of it at once and gave the order to “unfix bayonets.” Capt. Casson came galloping up on a horse and I explained to him what had happened. I told him that there was very bad feeling between the Engineers and the Anglo-Burmese gunners. The Gunners resented the fact that the Engineers were better treated then they were, in the way of food and in other respects. ... I impressed on Capt. Casson that it would be dangerous to let the Engineers travel to Rangoon on the same train with the Gunners ... The Engineers then had to remain for another day at Aungban.
On the return to Rangoon the Engineer Company was reformed and the only qualification for a man to belong to the Company was that he was an Engineer and there were more Anglo-Burmans in the Corps than Europeans.
During the war in Mesopotamia there was a shortage of British Artillery Regiments there and Volunteers were called for from Burma. A Mobile Battery afterwards called The Volunteer Artillery battery, set up in the Fifth Field Brigade. To obtain recruits for this Battery I travelled all over Burma at my own expense and held recruiting meetings in every town. In Rangoon I started a Recruits and Comfort Fund so that when men came to Rangoon from out stations they could be housed and fed and provided with necessities until such time as they were required to embark for Mesopotamia.
Dances were also organised for these men at which they were given a rousing send off. It was an opportunity, which the Anglo-Burmans had not had since the days of the Mutiny, of demonstrating their loyalty to the British Crown and refuting their calumniators that they were a decadent race.
I also started The Burma Fighting Men’s Dependents’ Fund which was to provide maintenance for the mothers, wives and children of the fighting men. These funds were liberally subscribed to by the leading Europeans and Indian firms in Rangoon ...
Many of the Volunteer Artillery Battery were in Kut during the siege. In fact they were the only Battery in the besieged city. Three of their guns were put out of action by direct hits from the Turkish batteries. After a Volunteer was called for to operate the remaining gun single handed every member of the Battery took a step forward and the choice fell on the senior member of the Battery, Sergeant Heales, who continued to load and fire the gun himself until it too received a direct hit. For this act of gallantry Sergeant Heales received the award of M.C.
While the Turks had occupied the front line of trenches and threatened to break into the city the Volunteer Artillery Battery was asked whether they would be prepared to go into action with bayonets against the Turks. They all agreed to do so, although they had little instruction in bayonet fighting. Led by a Major Anderson they charged into the trench and drove the Turks out.
When the city was eventually surrendered to the Turks by General Townsend the men of the Battery were taken prisoners and commenced the long march over deserts into Turkey, during which they were constantly beaten and whipped by the Turks if they showed any signs of fatigue – in fact one man told me afterwards that he would never have been able to complete the journey if it had not been for a severe blow he had from one of the Turkish escorts – he said that the whip hurt him so much that he thought he could have run to the other end of the world rather than to suffer a repetition of the pain he had suffered.
These men were kept in captivity for over three years and were not released till the termination of the war in 1918. They received very harsh treatment in Turkey at the hands of the Turks. Their main diet was soup made from the boiling of onions and chapatti (unleavened bread) which they had to make themselves out of very course flour. The only respite they had was when one of them died and they were allowed to carry his body to a cemetery and dig a grave to bury him. For three years they had no news of the outside world and did not know how the war was proceeding. It was only when they were marched to a port and put on board a steamer that they knew the war had been won by the Allies.
I met these men at the mouth of the Rangoon river in their return. They were all in very bad shape and had long beards as during the whole of their captivity they had never been given an opportunity to shave. It was pathetic to hear them asking questions about their relatives and friends in Rangoon, of whom they had not heard for so many years. It speaks very highly for the virility of these men that some of them sought against the Japanese in Burma and marched out of Burma with the British and Indian troops under General Alexander (WWII.) Every year after their return the Fifth Field Brigade held a Kut reunion Dinner.
... Hearing that the standard of eyesight required had been lowered I volunteered to go to Mesopotamia as a gunner. ... At this juncture I was sent for by Col. Evans, commanding the Fifth Field Brigade, who told me he knew how anxious I was to get to the front but he assured me I was doing much more useful service by remaining in Burma and securing a constant flow of recruits for the Volunteer Artillery Battery in Mesopotamia.
WWII Burma After the Re-Occupation
In 1946, as soon as I obtained permission to return to Burma I went to Madras by train and from there caught a steamer to Rangoon. For the first time in my life I travelled as a deck passenger and experienced the great hardships which Indian labourers coming to Indian to Burma had to put up with.
... During the Japanese occupation my house had been taken possession of by an Anglo-Burmese lady who had run a restaurant for Japanese officers in the house. When I visited the house I found it to be in a very dilapidated condition. ... I had considerable difficulty in getting the lady who was in occupation of my house to vacate it and I was not able to occupy it for about three or four months after my return to Burma. ... and when the house was fairly habitable I brought my wife and daughter over from India.
Rangoon had been very badly bombed by the British. Whole blocks of streets in which there had formerly been dwelling houses were now vacant spaces. There were great potholes in the roads and the roadside drains and the roads had not been cleaned and the stench in the streets was unbearable. Many thousands of Burmese villagers whose villages had either been destroyed during the fighting or by insurgents had flocked into Rangoon. They built huts on the pavements in the city along the royal lakes. The whole country was seething with unrest. ...
British Judges Return to Burma
When British Judges of the High Court returned to Burma after the war there was a celebration dinner of the Bench and Bar, at which I was the Chairman, as I had been appointed Chairman of the Bar Council. At that dinner no one realised what chaos there was in the country and I think that most of us fondly imagined that things would go on very much as before but we were sadly disillusioned. ...
Sad Plight of the Anglo-Burmese Community
... The husbands, fathers and elder brothers of these people were either in the Army or doing work in the essential services ... Women and girls remained at their posts in the War Office and telephone exchange up to D-day. Some of the girls lost their lives while travelling in the last train to Mandalay when they alighted at Toungoo station to buy something at roadside eating stalls. As they stepped on the platform Japanese planes flew low and killed them with shots from machine guns. Among these girls was a great friend of ours, Freda Ford, and I heard of her death almost immediately as I was driving through Toungoo in an Army lorry at that time. ...