ENGLISHMAN IN BURMA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 771, 30 April 1954, Page 13

ENGLISHMAN IN BURMA

TRIALS IN BURMA, (12/6 Enf§lish price, and INTO HIDDEN BURMA, 18/-, by Maurice Collis; both published by Faber and Faber. ‘3 POET by inclination, employed in Butma asa member of the Indian Civil Service, Mr. Collis spent many years torn between the love of a country and people he found , fascinating and the longing to return to Europe and become an author. His position was further. complicated ‘and his conscience made uneasy by a suspicion that, "In spite of declarations to the contrary we had placed English interests first, and we had treated the Burmans not as fellow creatures, but as inferior beings." His refusal to accept his countrymen’s assumption. of racial superiority and his denial of their. claims to any special

privilege {n courts of law over which | he presided marked him out, or at least. so he believed, as a man who, being considered unreliable, would never attain a position of the highest responsibility. In 1934, after long hesitation, he resigned from the ICS and began to write, producing a number of books, among which are the two autobiographical works under review. Of these I much prefer Trials in Burma, a reprint first published in 1938, which describes Mr. Collis’s experi-_ ences as District Magistrate of Rangoon. In three important and for him embarrassing cases, he felt bound to give decisions that were unpopular not only in the British clubs but also in the highest official circles. Into Hidden Burma covers a greater period of time in the author’s life, but much of what might have been its best subject. matter has been used up in the previous work. Touching briefly upon incidents already recorded in Trials in Burma, it also tells of an astrologer whose predictions invariably came true, of ghosts and apparitions, of a hill inexplicably scented. More prosaic but no less enthralling is an account of various searchings after rare Chinese porcelain, of which the author was a keen and enterprising collector. Mr. Collis is undoubtedly an expert at presenting each personal experience as a well-balanced short story. This is a literary accomplishment which may or may not render strange tales more easily credible; at least it makes them emin-

ently readable.

R. M.

Burdon