Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/317

 No wonder then that even such a strong man as Tom Johnson, one evening, when the day was done, should fling himself back in the motor car, with the dark shadow of utter weariness and despair on his face, and say:

"I wish I could take a train to the end of the longest railway in the world, then go as far as wagons could draw me and then walk and crawl as far as I could, and then in the midst of the farthest forest lie down and rest."

We all have such moments, of course, but we should have fewer of them if we had a national trait of which I have read, in a book by Mr. Fielding Hall in relation to Burma. He says the Burmese have a vast unwillingness to interfere in other people's affairs.

"A foreigner may go and live in a Burman village," he says, "may settle down there and live his own life and follow his own customs in perfect freedom; may dress and eat and drink and pray and die as he likes. No one will interfere. No one will try to correct him; no one will be forever insisting to him that he is an outcast, either from civilization or from religion. The people will accept him for what he is and leave the matter there. If he likes to change his ways and conform to Burmese habits and Buddhist forms, so much the better; but if not, never mind."

What a hell Burma would be for the Puritan! And what a heaven for everybody else! Perhaps we would all better go live there.

These things, however, should be no part of a