Formula for a Fence

The great majority of the Chinese on Ocean Island were good citizens. Nevertheless, there were always lawless elements among them, and most of our headaches in that lovely little place came from the fact that we were not allowed to control the doings of the midnight-minded by enclosing their settlement in a nice tall steel fence.

The official situation was a very tricky one. Although over a quarter of a century had passed since the Chinese labour scandals in South Africa had overthrown a government in England, the words 'compound,' 'enclosure' and even 'fence' were still politically anathema in Whitehall, and the Colonial Office was frightened into fits by any proposal to surround anyone at all with anything more substantial than a cobweb.

It was stupid indeed of me to forget about all that in 1927, when I put up my ingenuous scheme for establishing allround safety on Ocean Island. But I was still handicapped by the belief that what Secretaries of State wanted most from the grand old colonial service was the truth about the actual needs of colonial populations. Under this pious illusion, I reported how bold by night a lawless element among the Chinese labourers was becoming, how alarmingly for everyone the page 188crimes of burglary and housebreaking had increased, how impossible for a police force short of an army it was, without an enclosing fence and floodlights, to prevent marauders from issuing at will from the Chinese reserve to prowl through the British Phosphate Commissioners' unprotected settlements.

The answer from Whitehall was a cold despatch to the High Commissioner, who had backed my proposals, pointing out that any such enclosure of indentured Chinese within a fence as I had proposed was out of the question.

Reading back into the files then, and balancing one thing with another, I got my first real inkling of how much more in those days the Colonial Office had to worry about the political safety of the Secretary of State than about the physical safety of any colonial population. This lesson having been digested, and the plague of housebreaking remaining constant, the obvious thing to do was to offer the Secretary of State a much more attractive political reason for granting what we needed than the mere proof of how urgent our need was.

A dear little Gilbertese boy of five or six stepped in to help us at this point. He walked one afternoon on the edge of the Chinese location, innocently throwing stones at birds, and one of his shots fell near a coolie who stood watching him. Though the man was not actually hit, he had to skip aside very suddenly to save his shins, and there was immediate uproar. The child was not harmed, but held and brought yelling to the residency by a deputation of twenty men. The idea was that his father had maliciously delegated him to do their colleague grievous bodily harm, and must be made to pay instant compensation.

I had to tell them that, since nobody had in fact been hurt, it wasn't likely that he would agree to pay anything. But I had learned by then that you must never send a Chinese deputation away absolutely empty; the maintenance of face demanded that they should leave with something positive to tell their fellow countrymen. So, casting around rather hopelessly for the right thing to say, I asked them at random if they and page 189their friends wouldn't like to have a beautiful, unscalable, expanded steel fence put up around their location to protect them from prowling stone-throwers—a fence with gloriously bright arc-lamps set along it at intervals to tell their protectors, our police, of the approach of enemies out of the darkness; a fence … well, I admit I became inspired at that point. I suddenly had a vision of the Secretary of State for the Colonies goggling at me as I added detail after shocking detail to the enclosing fence of my dreams. From then on, I fear, the wistful fun of it engaged me more than the actual business of the deputation.

I was the more astounded, therefore, at the clamour of agreement that greeted my forlorn flight of fancy. Nothing, they said, could possibly be more to their liking than the notion of being enclosed day and night with a Io-foot fence such as I had described, provided only one thing, which was that it must be topped off with the crowning glory of another three feet of wire bristling with barbs. The knowledge of being thus securely protected from their alleged protectors, the police, as well as from all their other enemies, they said, would at last give all of them a sense of being permanently safe in, and masters of, their very own piece of territory. They indicated that the good work had better be put in hand pretty soon, or else…

I promised with sudden new hope to use all my personal pull with the King of England himself to persuade him to order their employer to give them their heart's desire.

The child and his father forgotten, they hurried off to spread the grand news far and wide. The same evening, I drafted a despatch carefully devoid of reference to any previous correspondence on the subject of fences. The capture, after a struggle, of the stone-thrower (a male; age omitted) by the gravely alarmed Chinese and the subsequent deputation clamouring at the gates of the residency for some sort of permanent protection made nice copy, even in officialese. So did the closing recommendations, if I may say so. Everything, of page 190course, depended at that point upon avoiding any mention of the forbidden words. The proposed fence accordingly became 'a series of excluding barriers of expanded steel,' and these barriers, instead of being built to surround or enclose anyone in the world, had to be 'erected in the neighbourhood of the Chinese location in such a manner as to afford the inhabitants maximum protection on every hand against unfriendly intrusions from outside.' I draw particular attention to the words 'maximum protection,' meaning roughly an unbroken ring of steel.

We were allowed to proceed almost at once with our Great Wall of Chinatown. (Officialese has its uses, after all.)