girl.
In Burma, U Ba Thein said, robbery and violence had always been the problem. He was inclined to trace some of it back to the deliberate policy of the Burmese kings, who encouraged delinquency in a certain restricted area in Upper Burma in order to provide themselves with a reserve of suitable recruits for their armies. The old Burmese kings were, above all, well intentioned. They had none of the cynical disregard for human rights displayed by recent European aggressors. All men were brothers and equally entitled to the salvation which the Burmese kings – who had seen the light – knew that only they could bring. They wanted nothing better than to extend their enlightened benevolence to all humanity; to govern according to the five fundamental precepts, and the four kingly laws, which ordained that the king should content himself with the tithe, that he should pay his servants regularly, lend money without interest tothe necessitous, and use courteous and fitting language according to the age and the degree of the person addressed.
It was unfortunate that only by totally non-Buddhistic measures could those nations which continued in ignorance of the Law be gathered into the fold of Buddhist felicity, so that the kingdom of Heaven on Earth might become a reality. But since all the king’s subjects had received a monastic training in the course of which it had been emphasised that of the five precepts, the most important was to take no life at all, how could they be persuaded – even in pursuit of a sanctified end – to enslave, to ravish and to slaughter all those who persisted in their error. The solution was the delimitation of the area within which, for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, the five precepts were ignored. From this the king’s janissaries were obtained, and from this still come a disproportionate number of the students at this strange public school of Rangoon.
* * *
It was reasonable to expect, I thought, that the Director General would have organised this visit with a little window-dressing in mind. We passed, for instance, a block of solitary confinement cells, which, although ‘the inheritance of inhumanity was rapidly being wiped out’, were obviously still in use. There were three or four prisoners there who couldn’t be put with the rest, but no offer was made to show me them. However, when, with a wave of dismissal, U Ba Thein indicated the women’s block, saying that he didn’t suppose I wanted to see it, I made it clear, as tactfully as I could, that I did. This seemed a good opportunity to visit a part of the prison where probably no preparations had been made. Before going any further we had to await the escort of the head wardress. This lady, a most chic custodian, arrived swinging her symbolical bunch of keys, her face larded with cosmetic. Bracing myself for a vision of screaming harridans in the manner of the women’s prison at Naples, I was surprised to find an atmosphere of gentle domesticity.
With a trace of embarrassment, U Ba Thein excused the presence of the women’s babies which, he said, while not in keeping with European practice, they tolerated here for the babies’ sake. There were toys that hadbeen made in the prison workshop strewn about the floor: wooden horses, lobsters, elephants. Each mother had a prison pushcart. This building was built of airfield metal landing-strip, and the kittens, which the children had been allowed to keep, wandered in and out of the perforations. The women were spruce in their ordinary clothes. They were importunate, too, and ignoring the wardress, came up to U Ba Thein to ask favours. Most of them were serving sentences for carrying firearms, and one, a delicate, almost ethereal creature, with the face of an Eastern madonna, had organised a huge diamond swindle.
There was one other class of prisoner. We came on a rather tall man, with an unusually gentle expression. He seemed more reflective and less animated than the average
In Burma, U Ba Thein said, robbery and violence had always been the problem. He was inclined to trace some of it back to the deliberate policy of the Burmese kings, who encouraged delinquency in a certain restricted area in Upper Burma in order to provide themselves with a reserve of suitable recruits for their armies. The old Burmese kings were, above all, well intentioned. They had none of the cynical disregard for human rights displayed by recent European aggressors. All men were brothers and equally entitled to the salvation which the Burmese kings – who had seen the light – knew that only they could bring. They wanted nothing better than to extend their enlightened benevolence to all humanity; to govern according to the five fundamental precepts, and the four kingly laws, which ordained that the king should content himself with the tithe, that he should pay his servants regularly, lend money without interest tothe necessitous, and use courteous and fitting language according to the age and the degree of the person addressed.
It was unfortunate that only by totally non-Buddhistic measures could those nations which continued in ignorance of the Law be gathered into the fold of Buddhist felicity, so that the kingdom of Heaven on Earth might become a reality. But since all the king’s subjects had received a monastic training in the course of which it had been emphasised that of the five precepts, the most important was to take no life at all, how could they be persuaded – even in pursuit of a sanctified end – to enslave, to ravish and to slaughter all those who persisted in their error. The solution was the delimitation of the area within which, for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, the five precepts were ignored. From this the king’s janissaries were obtained, and from this still come a disproportionate number of the students at this strange public school of Rangoon.
* * *
It was reasonable to expect, I thought, that the Director General would have organised this visit with a little window-dressing in mind. We passed, for instance, a block of solitary confinement cells, which, although ‘the inheritance of inhumanity was rapidly being wiped out’, were obviously still in use. There were three or four prisoners there who couldn’t be put with the rest, but no offer was made to show me them. However, when, with a wave of dismissal, U Ba Thein indicated the women’s block, saying that he didn’t suppose I wanted to see it, I made it clear, as tactfully as I could, that I did. This seemed a good opportunity to visit a part of the prison where probably no preparations had been made. Before going any further we had to await the escort of the head wardress. This lady, a most chic custodian, arrived swinging her symbolical bunch of keys, her face larded with cosmetic. Bracing myself for a vision of screaming harridans in the manner of the women’s prison at Naples, I was surprised to find an atmosphere of gentle domesticity.
With a trace of embarrassment, U Ba Thein excused the presence of the women’s babies which, he said, while not in keeping with European practice, they tolerated here for the babies’ sake. There were toys that hadbeen made in the prison workshop strewn about the floor: wooden horses, lobsters, elephants. Each mother had a prison pushcart. This building was built of airfield metal landing-strip, and the kittens, which the children had been allowed to keep, wandered in and out of the perforations. The women were spruce in their ordinary clothes. They were importunate, too, and ignoring the wardress, came up to U Ba Thein to ask favours. Most of them were serving sentences for carrying firearms, and one, a delicate, almost ethereal creature, with the face of an Eastern madonna, had organised a huge diamond swindle.
There was one other class of prisoner. We came on a rather tall man, with an unusually gentle expression. He seemed more reflective and less animated than the average
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