§ LORD LAMINGTON, on behalf of the EARL of DURHAM, rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether the Army Council, at the instance of the Secretary of State for India, called upon Sir John Hewett for an explanation of his conduct in having delivered in January last at Baghdad a private lecture to an audience of military officers, on the ground that the lecture criticised the Indian reform proposals placed before His Majesty's Government by the Secretary of State and the Governor-General; whether Sir John Hewett did not, in his explanation, show conclusively that the action of the Secretary of State for India in asking the Army Council to take him to task was without justification; what action have the Army Council or the Secretary of State for India taken on receipt of Sir John Hewett's explanation; and to move for Papers.
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The noble Lord said: My Lords, I regret to say that owing to the illness of Lord Durham I have been asked to make the Motion that stands in his name. May I very briefly amplify the Question that has been put down on the Notice Paper for the information of your Lordships who may not be apprised of the facts. Sir John Hewett, at the invitation of the Government, went out on an important mission to Mesopotamia, and on his return from that country in May last received a letter of thanks from the War Office for what he had achieved. In June he had a letter
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from the Army Council which asked for an explanation of a lecture that he had given at Baghdad. Perhaps I may read one or two passages from that letter. It says—
In the course of this lecture you not only passed severe strictures upon the merits of the proposals themselves [the Indian Reform proposals] but also presented in an unfavourable light the future prospects of Government employment in India, whether civil or military.
The letter goes on to argue that particular point, and at the end asks for an explanation.
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Sir John Hewett wrote a very complete and reasoned reply, in which he pointed out that he had been invited to deliver this lecture by the military authorities at Baghdad, and that what he then said was a very abridged form of a Note that had been printed in this country previous to his going out to Mesopotamia, and that he had been asked by the Secretary of State for India to formulate his views on the Indian Reform proposals and did so in that Note. I would wish to emphasise particularly to your Lordships the fact that the lecture in Baghdad was a very abridged form of that Note. Having written that Note he had on July 1st a letter from the Secretary of State for India, which said—
I am very grateful to you for having expressed yourself so fully and frankly. I need hardly say that I gave what you wrote my closest attention.
Yet in spite of this, Sir John received the letter, the salient points of which I have already read, asking for an explanation of his conduct in Mesopotamia.
§ THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (VISCOUNT PEEL)What is the date of the letter you are reading from?
§ LORD LAMINGTONThe letter that I have just read was from Mr. Montagu, and was received before Sir John Hewett went to Mesopotamia, and it conveyed thanks for his Note. That Note was printed, and anybody could buy it in this country. Sir John sent his letter on July 2 containing a reasoned reply, and on August 19 he received a letter from the War Office acknowledging the receipt of the letter, and concluding by saying—
The Army Council have since been informed by the India Office that the Secretary of State for India does not press for any further action in this matter.486 I omitted to mention that in the original letter from the Army Council they disclaimed any knowledge of what the lecture complained of contained. They seemed to know nothing about it, and the reply I have just read was the only one that Sir John Hewett got from the War Office. He then wrote protesting against this cavalier treatment. That was on August 28, and on September 18 there was another letter from the War Office in which again they did not argue or controvert the facts set out in the letter of explanation, but merely concluded—As you have already been informed, the Secretary of State for India does not desire the War Office to pursue the question further, and consequently so far as the Army Council is concerned the matter is ended.That surely is an extraordinary position to take up. It seems to me that the War Office were acting merely as the stalking horse for the India Office all through. Why should not the India Office have written direct to Sir John Hewett? He is not in the Army, and had no military rank in Mesopotamia. That country was under military government, and it might be said that to that extent he was under the orders of the War Office, but only to that very limited extent.This seems to me, an extraordinary position to take up in regard to a gentleman like Sir John Hewett, who has such a great reputation as an eminent Indian administrator. The noble Earl the Leader of the House (Earl Curzon of Kedleston) has described him, in this House I think, as an administrator of first-class ability, great experience, and of very balanced judgment. He might have left the whole matter alone and have rested content with a complete vindication of his action, but the Army Council could not apparently give him a decent reply. The action that has been taken on this question seems to be on a par with the treatment meted out to anybody who has ventured severely to criticise the Indian Reform proposals. Lord Sydenham was the object of a fierce attack on one occasion in the House of Commons, and Dr. Nair, an Indian who came over here to voice the alarm of the millions of the sub-castes of India against Brahmin power, was prevented by the Government—or at least they attempted to prevent him—from speaking in this country. There has always been fierce objection whenever any one has attempted to speak out in opposition to the Reform proposals. And 487 that has been done in spite of the fact that in the Report upon the Reform proposals criticism was invited. In that Report it is stated—
Our proposals can only benefit by reasoned criticism both in England and India, official and non-official alike.Yet notwithstanding that statement in the Report the sort of treatment that I have just indicated is meted out to one of the most eminent administrators. I would like to ask the noble Lord who is going to answer me whether the War Office had ever seen the lecture that they complained of, and can he say whether the lecture was ever before the Secretary of State for India himself?
§ VISCOUNT PEELI cannot answer that.
§ LORD LAMINGTONWell, will somebody on behalf of the Government give a reply? I beg to move.
§ VISCOUNT PEELIn this case my noble friend who has introduced the subject seems to have measured out blame rather impartially both to the War Office and to the India Office, and I was not quite sure for the moment on which of those Offices his animadversion rested most severely.
§ LORD LAMINGTONThe India Office.
§ VISCOUNT PEELI only rose to deal with the part—rather a small part—played in this by the War Office. My noble friend has accused the War Office of acting in the capacity of a stalking horse for the India Office. I think that I had better state briefly what did happen, more especially as the Question on the Paper does not give a very accurate account of it. The War Office received an intimation from the India Office that a lecture of an undesirable kind had been given by Sir John Hewett in Mesopotamia, and that this lecture had had certain results. One was that a certain number of pensionable officers in India—a rather larger number than usual—had been applying for posts outside India, showing that the lecture had a rather wider result than might have been expected, it having been delivered only to a certain number of officers and warrant officers in Mesopotamia.
My noble friend asked why the War Office took any action. The answer is 488 perfectly simple—because Sir John Hewett had gone out at the request of the War Office and was on War Office business when he was there, and this lecture was delivered, though it was not connected with War Office business, at a time when he was acting for the War Office.
§ LORD LAMINGTONWas it not the business of the War Office to find out exactly what the lecturer had said?
§ VISCOUNT PEELIf my noble friend will restrain his impatience I will proceed to say why the War Office acted in the way they did. This request was accordingly brought to the War Office, and the War Office had this decision to come to—whether they should intervene at all and ask him for an explanation, or whether they should not. Sir John Hewett was acting for the War Office and, having considered the matter, they felt—and I think your Lordships will agree—that it would have been in the highest degree discourteous for the War Office to have sent an absolutely point-blank refusal to the India Office, and to say they would not even agree to ask this gentleman for an explanation of what he had said. My noble friend dwells very much on Sir John Hewett's being a distinguished official. That is quite so, but surely you must admit that even a distinguished official may be sometimes asked for an explanation.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEYou might ask him civilly.
§ VISCOUNT PEELAnd the mere fact whether he is distinguished or undistinguished is not really relevant to the question of whether the War Office should have acted on this occasion. The War Office were requested to telegraph out to Sir John Hewett and ask him for an explanation of what he had said, but, after considering the matter carefully, they thought that it was not necessary to telegraph out, but that they would ask him for an explanation when he came home. Accordingly they did ask him for an explanation when he came home, and he wrote a full letter of explanation to the War Office. This letter was sent on by the War Office to the India Office, and a reply was received from the India Office to the general effect that the Secretary of State for India did not press for any further action. That reply was com- 489 municated to Sir John Hewett, and there, as far as the War Office is concerned, the whole matter is closed.
It will be seen, therefore, that there is only one question affecting the War Office —namely, as to whether or not the War Office should have asked Sir John Hewett for an explanation; and I submit to your Lordships that, after receiving such a communication as they did from the India Office, it was really only reasonable that they should act in this way. And there the matter would really have been felt, buried in the files of the War Office, if the noble Lord opposite had not desired to bring the matter up. As to the question of merits or anything of that kind, of course, with that I have nothing to do, because the War Office really only acted as agents or—if you like to call it so—the "post office" for the India Office, and felt that, in courtesy to the India Office, they had so to act.
§ THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (LORD SINHA)My Lords, perhaps, as the gravamen of the charge made by the noble Lord is with respect to the India Office, I may be permitted to make a brief statement as to how and why the action came to be taken that was taken in this case. Some time after Sir John Hewett had gone out to Mesopotamia on Government business, in January this year, there was a complaint and a protest made by the Civil Commissioner at Baghdad to the Secretary of State for India, under whom he acts, with regard to the lecture delivered by Sir John Hewett, and with regard to the immediate result of that lecture in Mesopotamia, namely, that there was an increased number of applications for employment in Mesopotamia from permanent officials holding pensionable service in India.
§ LORD LAMINGTONWhat was the date of that complaint?
§ LORD SINHAThat was January 16.
§ LORD LAMINGTONWas the complaint telegraphed home here?
§ LORD SINHAYes, he cabled home. On that the Secretary of State asked the War Office to call upon Sir John Hewett for an explanation. The reason why they had to go to the War Office was simply this. Sir John Hewett was then acting 490 as an agent of the War Office in Mesopotamia, and the Secretary of State for India had no right whatever to call for an explanation from Sir John Hewett or to do it through any other channel than the War Office. I submit to your Lordships that, having regard to the complaint received from the Civil Commissioner in Mesopotamia, it was incumbent on the Secretary of State for India, to send on the complaint, or the substance of it, to the War Office, and to ask for an explanation from Sir John Hewett.
As I understand it, Sir John Hewett's explanation is that he said nothing more nor less than what he had published in his Note, and that, if the result that was mentioned had happened, it was due not to what he said in Mesopotamia but to what he had written before. I confess that I cannot myself believe that the spoken word had not a greater effect than the written word. The Note had been published some time ago. It had not resulted in officials in the Indian Service in Mesopotamia sending in applications for retirement from the Indian Service for employment outside, but the immediate result of the lecture in Baghdad was to bring in an increased number of applications from those officials at a time when the Government of India knew that there was great difficulty in recruiting for the Indian Civil Service by reason of the five years war that had taken place.
In those circumstances I submit that the Secretary of State was right in thinking that it would have been more correct, and certainly wiser, if Sir John Hewett had not delivered the lecture on the occasion, and in the circumstances, and to the audience that he did. On receipt of Sir John's explanation, after he had arrived here, the Secretary of State said, "Well, I do not want to press the matter any further." He did not complain of the tenour and substance of the lecture itself—he made that clear—but what he did complain of was the occasion and the circumstances under which the lecture had been delivered, and the results that had followed from it. I submit that in these circumstances it was incumbent on the Secretary of State for India to take the action that he did.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEMy Lords, I must confess that I do not think this story reflects great credit either on the common sense or the courtesy of the India 491 Office or the War Office. Sir John Hewett is one of our most distinguished public servants, a man who ought to be treated on all occasions with the utmost possible courtesy and consideration. He is sent out to Mesopotamia at great personal inconvenience to do war service for His Majesty's Government. When he is in Baghdad he is asked by the military authorities to deliver a lecture on this subject, and he gives in a lecture the substance of a publication he had already made in this country. The Secretary of State, we now hear—I hear for the first time—received a complaint about that lecture from the representative of the India Office in Baghdad. I confess I think it would have been much more sensible of the India Office if it had taken no notice of that communication at all. But they wrote to the War Office and requested them to ask Sir John Hewett for an explanation. I do not think the War Office could refuse to do what the India Office asked them to do; but there are two ways of doing the thing. I have seen that letter, and I say quite deliberately that it is not such a letter as ought ever to have been written to a man like Sir John Hewett.
§ VISCOUNT PEELThis is a letter which has not been published.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNENo; not that I know.
§ VISCOUNT PEELYou are describing a letter with which it is rather difficult to deal if no one has seen it.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEYou have seen it.
§ VISCOUNT PEELI shall deal with it if necessary.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEThis is the whole point of the matter: the letter is such a letter as naturally a man like Sir John Hewett does not like to receive; and I would submit it to the judgment of any of my friends whether they think it was the kind of letter which ought to have been written in those circumstances to Sir John Hewett. Sir John Hewett answers this letter so completely that the Secretary of State for India says, "Let the matter drop. I will not press the matter any further." I do not know what he could have done: but that is the position. You 492 would have thought that the War Office, having written such a letter, would have sent a courteous reply to Sir John Hewett closing the matter as between gentlemen; instead of which they dropped the thing in the curtest and abruptest official manner, and I do not wonder that Sir John Hewett feels the way in which he has been treated.
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)My Lords, I was not anxious to intervene in this discussion, for the reason that I have a personal feeling of regard and admiration for Sir John Hewett, which perhaps does not render me an absolutely impartial judge in a case of this sort. At the same time I think that my noble friend who has just addressed your Lordships has dealt out rather hard measure to both the Offices that are concerned, and more particularly to the War Office. I had rather expected that his chief shafts would have been directed at my noble friend the Under-Secretary for India with regard to the conduct (or the presumed conduct) of the Secretary of State for India; but, on the contrary, the principal object of his attack has been the War Office.
With all respect I cannot think that this attack has been justified; because, after all, what did the War Office do? I do not suppose that they had any idea of what had passed until they received the communication from the India Office. We now know upon what information the Secretary of State was acting. I myself have not read the telegram that he received from the Civil Commissioner at Baghdad, but we are told to-day—and I have heard before—that a telegram did come from the Civil Commissioner at Baghdad complaining to the Secretary of State for India of the fact that the lecture had been delivered, of the nature of the lecture itself, and of the effect it is alleged to have produced. It was in those circumstances that the Secretary of State for India asked the War Office, under whom Sir John Hewett was serving, to make an inquiry.
I may say, with regard to what my noble friend Lord Lamington said, that I cannot believe for a moment that in asking the War Office to make that inquiry the Secretary of State for India was actuated by the personal feelings of hostility or revengefulness which my noble friend attributed to him. That would be to believe the Secretary of State guilty of 493 conduct and of motives which no one who knows him would attribute to him; and I have no doubt that his inquiry addressed to the War Office was a perfectly bona fide and legitimate one. Then what was the War Office to do? Invited to seek an explanation from a very distinguished official in their employ, they took steps to inquire. As my noble friend said, they did not regard the matter as one of such extreme urgency as to require them to telegraph; they waited until Sir John Hewett came home, which was, I think, a matter of six months.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEYes, six months.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONNow, the letter to which my noble friend refers as having been derogatory—
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYCurt.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON—discourteous in tone, I have now before me. I do not know whether it is open to me to read the paragraph to which the noble Earl refers, because I may be called upon to lay the whole correspondence. I should be rather reluctant to do that, because I hardly think it is worth while troubling Parliament with so small a matter. But if your Lordships wish me to read it, without exacting the penalty of my indiscretion, I will do so.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONThe paragraph is as follows—
The Army Council have not had before them the text of the lecture that you gave at Baghdad, but they cannot disclaim responsibility for the conduct of a pensioned Government servant when engaged at the public expense upon War Office business, even though the action which forms the ground of official complaint lay altogether outside the scope of the duties which you were discharging under the War Office.That is the passage to which my noble friend refers.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEOne of them.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONBut it is the only passage to which in this letter he conceivably can refer. Now, I am not an admirer of official phraseology; a good deal of my time is spent in correcting it.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONAnd I am not here to say that this is a model of the kind of language that we speak at the dinner table or in the drawing-room; but I do say that it did not cover any desire to be discourteous, much less to be offensive. I go further, and I say that I think it indicates a rather fevered imagination to read into it any affront to Sir John Hewett. It is a not unfamiliar form of official expression, and I am quite certain, as the Army Council said later, that they did not intend to convey the smallest imputation; that they were not interested in the matter to a great extent, and in so far as they were interested they would like a man whom they had appointed to vindicate himself. I really think that to charge my noble friend as the representative of the War Office—
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEI never charged my noble friend.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON—or to charge the Army Council, for whom he is speaking to-day, with having treated Sir John Hewett in an unfair way, can hardly be sustained. Then we come to the action of the India Office. What happened there? I have already explained that the Secretary of State, acting upon this telegram from Baghdad, asked the War Office to make an inquiry. The inquiry was made. It was answered by Sir John Hewett when he returned to this country. I am familiar with Sir John Hewett's style in India, and I was delighted to see that even a sojourn in the sultry plains of Mesopotamia had not in the least degree diminished its old point and force. And a very effective reply it was.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONThen the Secretary of State had to decide what to do. He decided to take no further action. I should have thought Sir John Hewett would have been satisfied with that. I am not certain that Sir John Hewett would have expected at that moment—while fully anticipating that the Secretary of State would have disappeared from the scene—any compliments from the Secretary of State. There was no reason, perhaps, why they should be offered; and the Secretary of State retired with dignity, 495 evidently thinking that the controversy was one not worth pursuing. In these circumstances I should have thought that Sir John Hewett ought to have offered a vote of thanks to the Secretary of State and to the War Office for having been the means of putting him in this position. To sum up, I think this a field of combat from which every one retires with credit, and I hope that nothing more will be said about it.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYMy Lords, I am afraid my noble friend does not appreciate the position of Sir John Hewett in this matter. Sir John Hewett was not an officer; he went out at very great personal inconvenience to serve his country. When he got there the representative of His Majesty's Government, or at any rate the representative of the War Office part of His Majesty's Government, asked him to deliver a lecture on this subject. He does it, and then he is reproved and gets the kind of letter that a General might write to his subaltern. I am familiar with the style of the War Office—
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONYou have been a General.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYYes; and I have also been a soldier. I say deliberately that this is not an appropriate way in which to address a great public servant; and when it turned out upon Sir John Hewett's return that he had only done what the Government themselves, by their representative, had asked him to do, and had only repeated what the Government knew were his opinions, then I do not share the humorous view which my noble friend takes of the situation, that every one might be silent and that the thing might be dropped without discredit to any one. If you have done an injury to a man, the proper thing is to express your regret to him; and what Sir John Hewett expected was that the Government would have written a civil letter saying that the letter which the War Office wrote to him was not conceived in the best possible style, that it had been written under a misapprehension, that they hoped Sir John Hewett would think no more about it, that they recognised the great services he had conferred by going to Mesopotamia, and hoped he would not feel any more on the subject. That is the kind of letter that should have been sent.
496 The idea that when the India Office found they had not a case, they should not say another word seems to me the most over-strained method of justifying a Government Department of which I have ever heard. The proper thing was to express regret, and I am certain that is the view of my noble friend who leads the House. He has told your Lordships what respect he has for Sir John Hewett and that he is his personal friend. I am sure no man more than my noble friend the noble Earl, regrets that Sir John Hewett's feelings should have been injured in this way by the mistakes of the two Departments which are the subject of the Question. I cannot help hoping even now that my noble friend will say a word of regret as to the inconvenience and distress of mind to which Sir John Hewett has been subjected.
§ LORD LAMINGTONMy Lords, may I say a word in conclusion? I think Sir John Hewett ought to be well satisfied with the very graceful way in which the noble Earl concluded his remarks, practically vindicating his action. There is one point, however, which was glossed over by the noble Earl. When the Civil Commissioner on January 10 thought it worth while to telegraph with regard to the recruiting for the Indian Civil Service and to state that these pensioned officers were reluctant to take duty in India, why was no action taken whatsoever to telegraph to Mesopotamia informing Sir John Hewett of the unfortunate effect of his lecture? Why wait till Sir John Hewett came home to tell him of the dire consequences of his address to a private meeting of officers? The noble Earl glossed over that. It seems to me the crux of the matter. The matter was so urgent that Sir John Hewett ought to have been warned at the time, or the question should not have been raised at all. That point has not been answered.
§ VISCOUNT PEELI think I may be allowed to say one word as to that. My noble friend makes it really a charge against the War Office that they did not immediately telegraph, as they were asked to do—
§ LORD LAMINGTONThe India Office.
§ VISCOUNT PEELWe were acting for them. He complains that we did not immediately telegraph, as we were asked to do by the India Office. It was merely 497 out of courtesy to Sir John Hewett. It was thought that it would be sufficient when he arrived home, when he had more leisure than he had out there, to ask him for an explanation of the whole thing. What was intended as courtesy and kindness appears to be twisted by the noble Lord into discourtesy.
§ LORD LAMINGTONMeanwhile, the Indian Civil Service had been considerably damaged by Sir John Hewett's speech. I beg to withdraw the Motion.
§ Motion, by leave, withdrawn.