CHAPTER 12
HEADQUARTERS OFFICE

For the first time, after twelve years of service in India, I was in the land of electric lights and fans. In all my previous postings I had had to use oil lamps which were somewhat smelly and in the hot weather added to the heat, and pull-punkahs. Pull-punkahs, well pulled, were more cooling than electric fans but the punkah-coolies so frequently went to sleep and when this happened at night one woke in a sweat and had to shout at the collie who burst into furious pulling until he dozed off again. Nights were thus often very disturbed. Calcutta had fine shops, clubs and sports facilities. Hockey and cricket were played in the cold and dry season. Soccer started in April and there were some very fine teams, the Calcutta Football Club, the two British regiments in the Fort and at Barrackpore, Mohan Bagan and Mahommedan Sporting, the last two, which were Indian Clubs, played a wonderful game in bare feet. Then Rugger started in August when the monsoon had made the ground sufficiently soft. Sometimes play would take place on heavy mud or on ground an inch deep in water and if there had been, as often happened, a brief break in the rains on ground that was baked and almost corrugated from the cutting up it got on the muddy days. I had not played rugger for twelve years since I left school but I started again in 1919. I bought my first motor car, a model T Ford. Distances in Calcutta were considerable and a car was essential. I had become a member of the Bengal United Service Club when I was in Aijal and now I joined the Saturday Club, a social club with facilities for tennis, squash, dancing and so forth. Life was very gay and more expensive than in the mofussil districts but as Assistant Inspector General I received a duty and a house allowance over and above my grade pay.

On the expiry of our six months tenancy of Mr. Justice Beachcroft’s54 house my wife and the three children left for England and I moved into chambers in the United Service Club. I was to follow in the coming April. By then I had been out in India for over seven years without any Home leave.

The Inspector General had two Assistant I.G’s - A.I.G (D) and A.I.G. (O). D stood for duties and discipline and O for organisation. In military parlance they approximated to the ‘A’ and ‘Q’ branches. I was the A.I.G. (O) and the A.I.G.(D) was T.C. Simpson, a very able officer and a master of English. He was a very fine Classic and I remember a very distinguished and senior member of the I.C.S. saying to me once that Simpson was one of the finest Classics to come out to India. We had a splendid office staff and office system. The head of the clerical staff was the Registrar who had two Head Assistants under him for the two branches of the office. Under them were what we called the ‘dealing clerks’ each responsible for the various groups of subjects dealt with in the force, with typists, despatchers and account clerks. While Simpson dealt with all matters relating to recruiting, training, promotions, postings and appeals in disciplinary proceedings against members of the force he also dealt with proposals for improvements in the police in the way of technical and personnel matters. I had in my care matters of buildings, equipment, arms and ammunition, clothing and the day-to-day accounts and the preparation of the annual budget. All inward correspondence went first to the dealing clerks who would find the appropriate file or if there was no previous correspondence on the subject open a new file. All correspondence was page numbered in arabic numerals and the note sheets in roman numbers to facilitate reference in the note-sheets. The clerk would note the gist of the letter under action on the note sheet, refer to previous correspondence on the subject giving parallels or precedents and pass the file to the Head Assistant who would suggest action and in many cases draft a suggested reply. The file would then go to the Registrar who would add his comments if necessary and then pass it to the A.I.G. concerned. These preliminary notes were so sound, born of many years of experience, that quite often the A.I.G. would only need to initial in acceptance of the action proposed. In the more important cases the A.I.G. would give his own views and discuss the merits of the case and pass the file to the Inspector General for final orders or reference to Government. The work of the office staff, all Indians, was of a very high order and a Chief Secretary to Government once admitted to me that the I.G’s office was the most efficient in the whole Government secretariat.

Lord Curzon, on arrival in India as Viceroy, examined the office method then in vogue in the Government of India Secretariat and expressed his dismay at the lack of system and wrote a famous minute on how the work there should be carried out. Simpson gave me a copy of this masterly document with a few embellishments of his own - the arabic and roman numbering was one - when I joined the office and it was on these lines that the whole office worked. In this post I learned a great deal about the wider administrative problems of running a huge force of over twenty thousand officers and men spread over a vast territory, how to prepare budget estimates for all needs, to prepare persuasive arguments in support of proposed increases or innovations and how to watch over expenditure once sanctioned by Government, not only in the Head Office but also in the Districts. There was a very large building programme but little could be spent on this head during the war and many police stations were dilapidated and unsuitable and the first thing was to get the co-operation of the Public Works Department to prepare plans for a standard type of station adaptable to the number of officers and men approved for each. Having got this sanctioned by Government there was the struggle to get budgetary authority each year for as much as I could squeeze out of them. The back-log was so great that only a few could be built each year. Nevertheless we did make a start.

R.B. Hyde, who had been my S.P in Mymensingh was now my Inspector General. Knowing him so well was a great advantage; I knew his general views on police matters and it was easy to anticipate his thinking and to discuss frankly any problem that arose. I had applied for leave from April 1920. As a result of the war and the inability to take leave during its duration except in the case of sickness - and I had kept very fit - Government allowed its officers to accumulate their annual allowance of one month a year on full pay up to a total of six months. I was then entitled to six months on full pay and six months furlough on half pay. I therefore applied for a years leave which was granted. Hyde told me that I would return as Assistant Inspector General on expiry of my leave. With a sense of great happiness I sailed on the P&O S.S. Karmala looking forward to being re-united with my family and to seeing my parents again after seven years. But a whole year on leave is a mistake and I vowed later that I would never again take such long leave. The first part I enjoyed to the full but with no serious occupation I found that time began to drag.

I did do a short course at Scotland Yard who held annual courses for Indian and Colonial Police Officers who were home on leave. I don’t know that we learned a great deal but it was very interesting to see how another large and highly renowned force worked. The lectures were given at Peel House, the old constables’ training school and the course was fathered by Inspector Abbiss (afterwards Sir George Abbiss, Assistant Commissioner). Shortly before this there had occurred one of those rare scandals when a Sergeant of the Metropolitan Police had been convicted of taking bribes from a certain fashionable night-club owner. In an interval between lectures I asked Abbiss how he felt about the matter and I still remember his answer which went something like this:

“Naturaly we are all very distressed about this blot on our proud reputation. But,” he continued “when the law was more or less based on the ten commandments the majority of the public disapproved strongly of its infringement and of the wrong-doer. Now that man-made restrictive laws are coming in which do not necessarily have the support of the public, when and where you may drink for example, there is scope for offers and acceptance of bribes to keep your eyes and ears shut, and the weak man may fall.”

I thought how much truth there was in these words and there is no doubt that restrictive legislature has invariably brought in its train ‘fiddling’ and black-marketeering. The fact, too, that the police are the enforcing agency for this kind of offence has undoubtedly affected the relationship between the public and the police.

A few weeks before I was due to return to India I had a letter from Hyde to say that he was sorry to have to change my posting - I was to have returned to my former post as A.I.G - but the man in charge of the Police Training College had proved incapable of handling the considerably older Probationary Assistants who had been appointed from among war-time officers and he would like me to go there as Principal to pull things together. This I took as a considerable compliment and since the Principal received a duty allowance of Rs 100 a month and a free house and since the cost of living in country districts was cheaper than in Calcutta I was going to be as well off if not better, financially I was quite pleased with the change of plans.

My daughter, Helen, was now nearly eight and she had to be left behind at school; and so began the first of these separations which were the one chief draw-back to service abroad. Modern medicine and improved sanitation had eliminated a great deal of the health risks of earlier days. Later, of course, the aeroplane was to eliminate the time-lag in keeping in touch. My wife and I with the two boys set off in March 1921 on a thirty day journey to Calcutta on the British India S.S. Merkara.

54  C. B. Beachcroft had been at Cambridge with Aurubindo Ghose (see chapter 7) and was Judge at his trial in the 1908 “Alipore Bomb Case”.