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29.03.2007 19:04:32
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11-19 век;
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Распознанный текст (18 К).
> http://vif2ne.ru/nvk/forum/archive/1324/1324863.htm
Качество распознавания не на высоте, но ПМСМ лучше чем ничего.
A History of the
English-Speaking Peoples
Since 1900
ANDREW ROBERTS
Weidenield & Nicolsc LONDON
148 PtAC E GUILT
progressed, in Nicolson's words, it slowly dawned upon the с America might not ratify the Treaty, and although it 'was never r between us, it became the ghost at all our feasts
Less than two weeks before he died, Roosevelt wrote to Rudyard stating that Woodrow Wilson's parents were born in hrtgland and Si adding, 'I have always insisted that the really good understanding the British Lmpire and the United States would not come except we developed a thoroughly American type, separate from every tvpe and free alike from mean antipathy and mean crmgeing' He claims of 'the Wilson adherents and the Sinn Feiners and pro-i Socialists and Pacifists that he was pro-British However, he did add 'Because of the almost identity of the written (as opposed to the language and from other reasons I mink that on the whole, and wh( isn't too much gush and effusion and too much effort to bring them t the people of our two countries are naturally closer than those of any othefj Roosevelt intensely deprecated the 'good, rnushv, \\ ell-meanmg creatures^ are always striving to bring masses of Englishmen and Americans togeftl likening them to a philanthropist he once knew who was saddened byi historic antipathy between New York's police and fire departments In tor them to get together', the rich man had hired the Yankees' stadiumR friendly game of baseball The moment the umpire's decision was dispute! the middle of the first innings, Roosevelt recalled, bodi sides 'got togethe^ a vast brawl with thousands of stalwart men in uniform' exchangj blows
At 4 30 p m on the afternoon of Sunday, 13 April 1919, a s>eventy-nve-sUa detachment of native troops - only fifty of whom were armed with гщ were ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald Rex' Dyer to march to. enclosed space called the Jalhanwala Bagh in Amritsar in the Punjab, to be up a prohibited political meeting of between 15,000 and 20,000 peaj Without giving an> warning to the unarmed crowd, the hftv (mainly NepaJ Gurkha and Baluch from Sind) riflemen opened fire and c for ten minutes Only after each man had fired thirty-three rounds was; cease-fire order given and the detachment marched away, leaving 379 Щ and around i ,000 injured "
Although there were those who argued that Dyer's actions had prevent! second Indian Mutiny, he was deprived of his command and sent homj Britain, and it became clear that although he was never cashiered he ч not be given any future employment Army officers complained that D\er was acting in support of the civil power, he had been let down by Ц the British and Indian Governments in fulfilling his undeniably unpleaa
PEACE UlflLT 149
R necessary duty. For the Indian Home Rule movement, of course, the nritsar massacre was a propaganda god-send.
The massacre needs to be seen in its political context, in particular the inch by Mohandas Gandhi in February of the Satyagraha mass movement win Indian Home Rule through passive disobedience. Very soon events got it of hand, and the moderate, law-abiding campaign of Gandhi and his mediate supporters was comprehensively suborned by more violent ele-ents amongst the Indian independence movement. On 30 March, anarchy [Delhi. Within a week local disturbances across the Punjab led ю a situaiion sembling a general rebellion there. Nor were matters calmed by Gandhi's rest on 9 April.
It was the events of the next day, ю April, that led directly to Dyer's actions, mritsar had significant Sikh, Muslim and Hindu populations, and was sched-ed to be the place where the All-India Congress Party would meet later in t year to demand Indian independence. Two local agitators - Dr Kitchlew, Muslim barrister, and Dr Satya Pal, a Hindu assistant surgeon - organised strike there for Sunday, 6 April, despite official orders against both. On 8 pril, Miles Irving, the Deputy Commissioner, requested reinforcements om Ignore, since he only had seventy-five armed and 100 unarmed con-ables with which to control a city of 150,000 inhabitants. More controversially, on the morning of ю April, Irving had Kitchlew and il arrested. On hearing of this, a mob stoned a small picket of British and idian troops and police at Amritsar's railway crossing (the city being an iportant entrepot as well as trading centre). The order was given to fire in oder to prevent the civil lines from being rushed, which led to twenty casualties nongst the rioters. Elsewhere in Amritsar, another mob went on an anti-uropean rampage, which was not prevented by the native police present, ho remained passive. Three bank officials were lynched in their offices, their irpses burnt in the street. Two other officials were murdered near the goods ird. An elderly female missionary, Miss Sherwood, was hauled off her bicycle, :aien to the ground repeatedly and left for dead in a gutter. Posters appeared i walls which alleged that the British raped Indian girls in Amritsar and oged Indians to 'dishonour' and 'clear the country of all English ladies'.23 irthermore, buildings connected with the British were defaced or damaged. In an empire based entirely on the prestige of the ruling power - an empire mirrors in which tiny numbers of British troops had to control the teeming illions of a multi-ethnic sub-continent - this kind of behaviour could not be lowed to go unpunished. Once again the reason was the protection of tstige, without which the British Empire in India would have simply evap-ated overnight. (There had always been a dearth of British troops in India, hich was held through native co-operation rather than by force. In 1885, the tio of native inhabitants to British soldiers was 4,219 to I.)
ISO PEACE GLILT
By sunset on 10 April, the reinforcements, including 260 Gurkhas, ha*fi arrived from Lahore and Irving handed over official responsibility to restart order to Brigadier-General Dyer, commander of the Jullundur Brigade There can be no doubt that had the kind of murderous unrest seen in Amntsar on 10 April spread throughout the Punjab, and perhaps thereafter northern India, the bloodshed would have been horrific Furdiermore, the distances were as vast as the soldiers available to the authorities were few In order to deal with the unrest in an area the size of Yorkshire, Dyer had fewer than 1,200 British and native troops Taking control at 9 p m, he made an immediate public declaration that all processions, gatherings and demonstrations were prohibited and 'All gatherings will be fired upon' Such an unequivocal command could only be backed up by force, otherwise it would have had the opposite effect to that intended and demonstrated British lack of resolve
Partly to restore order, and partly because, as he later put it, 'We look upon women as sacred, or ought to', Dyer commanded that any Indian men who wished to use the lane in which Miss Sherwood had been assaulted must proceed down it on bellies and elbows between the hours of 6 a m and 8 p The order only lasted for five days and it was hoped thereby to prevent any gloating about what had happened there, but the 'crawling order', as it soon came to be called, was later used to question Dyer's motives In fact 'fancy punishments , as they were called, were common in India at the time Skipping exercises and suchlike were used as alternatives to hard labour at Kasur, for example, and it was not unusual for poets to escape physical punishment il they wrote poems praising British martial law that they then read m market-place Some independence activists obeyed the crawling order way of mocking Dyer, indeed, one had to be stopped after crawling there three times г*
Much has been made of Dyer's personality at, though that might explain the repressive measure he took Had his father's settlement in India before the Mutiny instilled in him a terror of the Indian mob5 Was his alleged unsociE at Staff College a factor m his psychological make-up5 What if anything can the fact that Dyer spoke fluent Persian, Punjabi and other Indian dialects te us5 In fact, as the historian Brian Bond has pointed out, Dyer's long military career 'provides no sinister indications of latent irresponsibility or a laten bloodlust Happily married, popular with his colleagues and men and aboi average in military efficiency, Reginald Dyer was certainly not the monst soon to he portrayed by Indian propagandists "s
Although he had Amntsar reconnoitred from the air, and marched throug it with troops and two armoured cars on 12 April, he only faced some insult and catcalls from the crowds and he only arrested two people The nex morning he reissued his proclamation against public meetings at no fewe than mneteen prominent places in the city, with beating drums and much
ceremony The warning that assemblies would be dispersed by force of arms was then repeated several tones in both Urdu and Punjabi, languages understood by over 90% of the inhabitants of Amntsar No sentient inhabitant of Amntsar could have possibly been under any doubt about the possibly fatal consequences of attending a political ral]v that day
When D\er beard at i p m that a meeting protesting against his proclamation was due to be held at 4 30 p m that very afternoon, he Considered it a perfect opportunity to crush the incipient rebellion When shortly after 4 p m the General heard that the meeting had begun early, he led his small force to the Bagh, the entrance to which was so narrow that his two armoured cars had to be left outside He saw the large crowd about 100 yards awaj, in a dusty open space, about 200 yards long, which had houses on all sides Despite Indian propagandists' subsequent claims, mere were three or four narrow passages running off the Bjgh and in places the boundary walls were low enough for men to climb over without difficulty Although me croud had no firearms, many did have lathis - metal-tipped sacks - and a concerted rush, which Overs staff officer Captain Bnggs feared might happen, could have spelt disaster Dyer therefore directed the fire into me centre of the crowd, and kept firing until his men only had enough ammunition to cover their return to base Because the\ feared retribution if thevmo\ed forward individually,the wounded were not taken care of by the authorities and me curfew meant that the dead had to be left all night where thev fell
Although much about that terrible day is disputed, the fact that it pacified the Punjab virtually overnight is not After 18 April, и was not necessary for another shot to he fired throughout die entire region A deputation of Indian merchants and shopkeepers soon afterwards thanked the General for preventing looting and destruction, and he received many omer such tokens of gratitude, the guardians of the Golden lemple - the central shrine of the Sikh faith - invested him there as an honorary Sikh The readers ot the Morning Ptat in Britain raised over ?26,000 for his subsequent legal costs Sir Michael O'Dwyer, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Puniab, also gave official approv al of Dyer s actions on 16 April, and in his autobiography he wrote that 'not only did Dyer's action kill the rebellion at Amntsar, but as the news got around, would prevent its spreading elsewhere'
Further support tame from General William Benvon, Dyer's Divisional commander who said that пдь 'strong measure' had 'prevented an> further trouble m the Lahore Divisional area' The Adjutant-General of India, Sir Henry Havelock Hudson, stressed to the Legislative Council of India that m situations such as that prevailing in Amntsar m early April moderation was taken advantage oi as weakness while seventy was denounced as murder 'When a rebellion has been started against the Government' he said in conclusion, 'it is tantamount to a declaration of war War cannot be conducted
m accordance with standards of humanity to which we are accustomed in peace' The Commander-m-Chief in India agreed, saying, 'the semi-educated native takes clemency as proof of weakness' Even the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Simla wrote that Dyer had 'saved the Punjab, and, in the opinion of many, saved India'
For all this support from the men on me spot, me people who knew India best and who had the responsibility of administering her, Djer's professional reputation was soon comprehensively blackened A committee, named alter its chairman Lord Hunter, was appointed, the hearings of which turned into a de facto trial of Dyer It had no members, sitting on it with any Indian administrative experience, but three Indian lawyers, two of whom were personally hostile to the Punjab Government The investigation was restricted solely to events in Bombay, Delhi and the Punjab and so did not even cover Dyer's claim that he had also nipped in the bud a threatened attack from Afghanistan Native witnesses hostile to him were not put under oath or cross-examined, nor was he allowed any legal counsel 'I had a choice of carrying out a very distasteful and horrible duty', he told the committee, 'of suppressing disorder or of becoming responsible for all future bloodshed' Although the Hunter Committee's majority crincised Dyer report for firing before giving die crowd a chance to disperse and for continuing to fire afterwards, die diree Indians also submitted a minority герои mat was vitriolic
Even though the Government of India wrote to die India Office on 3 Mav 1920 to say that there had been 'a dangerous rising which might have had widespread and serious effects on me rest of India', the reply from the Secretary for India, Edwin Montagu, who had long been sympathetic t< Indian Home Rule, took me point of view of me Hunter Committee ant especially its minority report Dyer was relieved of his command and re to Britain, although he kept his Army pension He suffered a stroke in Novem ber 1921 and died m 1927
Today's reactions to Dyer's deed are of course uniformly damning In 200; m reviews of a biography entitled The Butcher of Amntsar, it was various! described as 'an unforgivable atrocity', 'state terrorism, 'a heinous crime the biggest and bloodiest blot on the generally benign record of British ru in India, and so on s6 As well, of course, as tarnishing the prestige of th British Empire, and presenting it to world opinion as cruelly oppressive, one of the results was that senior British soldiers were convinced that, in the words of one historian, 'in the last resort the British would hesitate to repress disorders by the use of force the imperial grasp was slackening If necessary the British could be prized from power inch by inch by threats or by calculated outbreaks of violence " Gandhi spotted how this unwillingness to employ force would shame the Brmsh into making concessions
Ph ACt. GUILT 153
In the Commons, Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, described Amnbar as 'an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in sinister isolation , and criticised Dyer for his 'mtenoon of terrorising not merel> the rest of the crowd but the whole district or country That was indeed what had happened, but if the Amntsar district, Punjab region or northern India generally had earned on m revolt, many more than 379 people would ha\e lost their lives (As a postscript it is worth recording that, on 6 June 1984, the Go\ernment of India sent tanks against Sikh extremists who were inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, massacring over 250 people The orders were given by Indira Gandhi who largely escaped global criticism since she was not a British imperialist like Reginald Dyer)
On 14 and 15 June 1919, Captain John Alcock and his navigator Arthur wbmen-Brown, flew non-stop across the Atlantic from Lester s Field, near St John's, Newfoundland, to crash-land m a bog in Clifden, Ireland Five months later the South Australian brothers Ross and Keith Smith flew from Hounslow near London to Darwin in Australia s Northern Territories in twenty-eight days All four were knighted by King George v for their daring Both teams won prizes of ?10,000 from the Daily Mail and the Australian Go\ eminent respectively which both insisted on sharing with their mechanics The New York 1 imes headline, Alcock and Brown Fly Across Atlantic, Make 1,890 Miles in 16 Hours, 12 Minutes, Sometimes Upside Down m Dense, Ic^ Fog', captures the essence of their adventure The flight was threatened by engine trouble, thick fog and snow, and Brown had repeatedly to climb onto tile aircraft s wmgb to remove ice from the engines They averaged 118 mph in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber Alcock was killed )ust months later, aged only twenty-seven, flying to the Paris air show Brown lived until 1948 Both men are commemorated m a memorial statue built at Hounslow Airport in 1954 The world was shrinking, bringing the English-speaking peoples closer than ever before, and the heroism of men like Alcock dnd Brown was in the forefront of that process
One week before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, an event took place which highlighted how recalcitrant, indeed revanchist, Germanv was hkel} to become in the years ahead Under Article 23 of the Armistice agreement of ii November 1918, seventy-four named warships of the German High Seas Fleet had to be handed over for internment in an Allied or neutral port It was decided that the best place for this would be the Royal Navy s base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Isles This powerful and undefeated fleet and its 20,ooo-str