The Soul of a People

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Fielding Harold. The Soul of a People

CHAPTER I. LIVING BELIEFS

CHAPTER II. HE WHO FOUND THE LIGHT – I

CHAPTER III. HE WHO FOUND THE LIGHT – II

CHAPTER IV. THE WAY TO THE GREAT PEACE

CHAPTER V. WAR – I

CHAPTER VI. WAR – II

CHAPTER VII. GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER VIII. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

CHAPTER IX. HAPPINESS

CHAPTER X. THE MONKHOOD – I

CHAPTER XI. THE MONKHOOD – II

CHAPTER XII. PRAYER

CHAPTER XIII. FESTIVALS

CHAPTER XIV. WOMEN – I

CHAPTER XV. WOMEN – II

CHAPTER XVI. WOMEN – III

CHAPTER XVII. DIVORCE

CHAPTER XVIII. DRINK

CHAPTER XIX. MANNERS

CHAPTER XX 'NOBLESSE OBLIGE'

CHAPTER XXI. ALL LIFE IS ONE

CHAPTER XXII. DEATH, THE DELIVERER

CHAPTER XXIII. THE POTTER'S WHEEL

CHAPTER XXIV. THE FOREST OF TIME

CHAPTER XXV. CONCLUSION

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For the first few years of my stay in Burma my life was so full of excitement that I had little care or time for any thought but of to-day. There was, first of all, my few months in Upper Burma in the King's time before the war, months which were full of danger and the exhilaration of danger, when all the surroundings were too new and too curious to leave leisure for examination beneath the surface. Then came the flight from Upper Burma at the time of the war, and then the war itself. And this war lasted four years. Not four years of fighting in Burma proper, for most of the Irrawaddy valley was peaceful enough by the end of 1889; but as the central parts quieted down, I was sent to the frontier, first on the North and then on the East by the Chin mountains; so that it was not until 1890 that a transfer to a more settled part gave me quiet and opportunity for consideration of all I had seen and known. For it was in those years that I gained most of whatever little knowledge I have of the Burmese people.

Months, very many months, I passed with no one to speak to, with no other companions but Burmese. I have been with them in joy and in sorrow, I have fought with them and against them, and sat round the camp-fire after the day's work and talked of it all. I have had many friends amongst them, friends I shall always honour; and I have seen them killed sometimes in our fights, or dead of fever in the marshes of the frontier. I have known them from the labourer to the Prime Minister, from the little neophyte just accepted into the faith to the head of all the Burmese religion. I have known their wives and daughters; have watched many a flirtation in the warm scented evenings; and have seen girls become wives and wives mothers while I have lived amongst them. So that although when the country settled down, and we built houses for ourselves and returned more to English modes of living, I felt that I was drifting away from them into the conventionality and ignorance of our official lives, yet I had in my memory much of what I had seen, much of what I had done, that I shall never forget. I felt that I had been – even if it were only for a time – behind the veil, where it is so hard to come.

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And, again, he would read how that riches are an offence to righteousness: hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of God. He would read how the Teacher lived the life of the poorest among us, and taught always that riches were to be avoided.

And then he would go forth and observe a people daily fighting and struggling to add field to field, coin to coin, till death comes and ends the fight. He would see everywhere wealth held in great estimation; he would see the very children urged to do well, to make money, to struggle, to rise in the world. He would see the lives of men who have become rich held up as examples to be followed. He would see the ministers who taught the Book with fair incomes ranking themselves, not with the poor, but with the middle classes; he would see the dignitaries of the Church – the men who lead the way to heaven – among the wealthy of the land. And he would wonder. Is it true, he would say to himself, that these people believe that riches are an evil thing? Whence, then, come their acts, for their acts seem to show that they hold riches to be a good thing? What is to be accepted as their belief: the Book they say they believe, which condemns riches, or their acts, by which they show that they hold that wealth is a good thing – ay, and if used according to their ideas of right, a very good thing indeed?

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