Commonwealth and Foreign
THE \\ EST INDIES AND THEIR PROBLEMS-H
By SIR CHARLES HOBHOUSE EVERY schoolboy knew, and most men have forgotten, the story of the West Indian wars. They lasted over a hundred and fifty years, sometimes with official -patronage, quite as often without. These struggles, naval and military, were for the possession of islands, insignificant in size, remote from the European main scene of action, but of high strategic importance because of the wealth they produced and the maritime commerce attaching to them and to the Americas.
As their wealth declined, and the commercial attention of Great Britain was directed to the East, they ceased to receive even such attention as was due to them. During the Great War, they were outside the area of serious operations. Today the wheel has come full cycle. The Army, the Fleet, the Air Force are entirely dependent for all movement on oil. They can neither attack nor defend, neither reconnoitre nor manoeuvre, neither advance nor retire, without the power obtained from refined oil. All our preparation for war is based on the assumption of an unchecked abundance of petrol. Yet there is no native oil in England, only a negligible quantity in Scotland and none elsewhere in the British Empire available for export except in Trindad. Sources of oil there are indeed under British financial control, and (or) in friendly countries, amply sufficient to fulfil any military demand. Remembering, however, the sabotage by enemies in neutral and allied countries during the Great War, can any Government in its senses allow the movements of all our forces to depend on the neutrality or good will of any other country or Government ?
Yet this dependence is being connived at at the present moment, and there appears not to be any practical comprehension of the folly of our neglect to protect the Trinidad oilfield. Within the last twenty-five years the oil production of that island has grown from nothing to two million tons per annum. Moreover, at the toe of the island there are huddled together, besides hundreds of productive wells, great accumulations of oil in storage. While the commercial value of these is very great, the military value is beyond calculation. Yet there is no military protection of any sort whatever to safeguard our only free native source of military energy from organised internal or external destruction. Every history of the War records the planned explosion, either by sabotage from within or by land or air raids from without, of oil dumps. The costly and patient accumulation of months, essential to the unceasing operations of a campaign, are at the mercy of a single aviator despatched by a hostile Government heedless of formalities of diplomacy, but very much alive to the realities of warfare. The records of the Great War are strewn with examples of the deliberate sacrifice of individuals or units by or for the State. If a battle- ship from Japan or an aeroplane from Central Europe can in a few hours or minutes do the national enemy irreparable injury, is the chosen aviator or the sailor likely to be one whit less resolute or daring than Colonel Lawrence or Captain Muller ? It seems sometimes quite impossible to arouse the Admiralty or the War Office to a danger or to an enemy advantage (they are, obviously, the same) which has not been officially admitted as such. Heligoland and the Baghdad railway are the classic examples of this want of prevision. In this instance the precautionary cost would not be great. Anti- aircraft protection of the highest efficiency, but in very moderate quantity, is needed at the points of oil production and of storage. At present, with one small exception, a radius of fifteen miles covers both. Attack, and therefore defence, from sea or air will be strictly localised, though the defeat of a landing party from a battleship or battle cruiser well aware of the desperate character of its raid would have also to be provided for. As auxiliary forces could and would be carried by the enemy on such an enterprise a guard of a battalion at full strength, with its complementary units, would be the least necessary. A drastic reconsideration of the military establish- ment at Bermuda, where we keep an elderly general and his retinue to frighten the United States, has long been overdue, and would provide the requirements of Trinidad. These are not excessive, but they are imperative, and should be imme- dately supplied.
While there cannot be any question of the need of and nature of military defence for Trinidad, its naval relativity is important. Bermuda is nearly 2,000 miles away. St. Lucia, a possible substitute, was deliberately and extravagantly dis- mantled forty years ago. There are no harbours and no docking facilities in Trinidad. A few years ago the Port of Spain drydock was towed out to sea and sunk in equivocal circum- stances. It would not be a difficult or seriously expensive engineering enterprise to create a dockyard and dock adequate for all Admiralty needs at the bay behind the Bocas del Drago. It is not a question for the Admiralty alone to decide. From the purely naval standpoint of the protection of the permanent commerce of the islands, the present arrangements based on Bermuda are fairly adequate. But the interception of oil bound for Europe from South America and the safe delivery to England of oil produced in Trinidad are issues for the Committee of Imperial Defence.* Two minor questions have been raised by the recent Report of the Royal Commission on Disturbances in Trinidad. It is difficult at home to understand the potential dangers of a West Indies mob. Every agricultural labourer habitually carries all day long a broad-bladed " cutlass " fourteen inches long, doubled-edged, and as sharp as a razor. He uses it for domestic, agricultural and forestry purposes. He is most skilful in its use, and it is a weapon of such general usefulness that workmen cannot be deprived of it. But several hundred excitable negroes so armed are a force which no government can permit to get out of hand, even for an hour, nor ought their actions to be condoned, however indirectly, ending as they did in two very brutal murders.
The second question is that of praedial larceny, which is so common and so widespread that, while planters suffer seriously, the native peasants are so harassed by the continual pillage of their produce that they, in places, have refused to continue cultivation. There is some evidence that the spread of peasant ownership and cultivation will cease unless the Colonial Govern- ment takes immediate, and if necessary drastic, steps to end this evil. Now peasant ownership is the ultimate destiny of all the islands.
* Burma produces x I million gallons, Borneo I million gallons. Bahrein about 600,00o gallons. All this is consumed locally.
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