LOVING SERVANT

General Edgar is right.

Ignore it.

Mr. Gandhi will find it takes a great deal more than a pinch of salt to bring down the British Empire.

“ Wotan had toiled to create the free Siegfried; presented with the free Siegfried, he was enraged. 

This terrible need to be needed often finds its outlet in pampering an animal. To learn that someone is “fond of animals” tells us very little until we know in what way. 

For there are two ways.

On the one hand the higher and domesticated animal is, so to speak, a “bridge” between us and the rest of nature. 

We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the sub-human world — the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! 

We must not — and incidentally we can’t — become beasts. 

But we can be with a beast. 

It is personal enough to give the word with a real meaning; yet it remains very largely an unconscious little bundle of biological impulses. It has three legs in nature’s world and one in ours. It is a link, an ambassador. 

Who would not wish, as Bosanquet put it, “to have a representative at the court of Pan?”

Man with Dog closes a gap in The Universe. But of course animals are often used in a worse fashion. 

If you need to be needed and if your family, very properly, decline to need you, a pet is the obvious substitute. 

You can keep it all its life in need of you. 

You can keep it permanently infantile, reduce it to permanent invalidism, cut it off from all genuine animal well-being, and compensate for this by creating needs for countless little indulgences which only you can grant. 

The unfortunate creature thus becomes very useful to the rest of the household; it acts as a sump or drain — you are too busy spoiling a dog’s life to spoil theirs. 

Dogs are better for this purpose than cats : a monkey, I am told, is best of all. 

Also it is more like the real thing. 

To be sure, it’s all very bad luck for the animal. But probably it cannot fully realise the wrong you have done it. 

Better still, you would never know if it did.

— CS Lewis : The Four Loves

“Of course, The Empire must be maintained, but History shows us only too clearly the dangers of overreach.

I myself considered the Indian Mutiny, so-called, a warning that perhaps our presence on the subcontinent was not the universal benevolence that we believed.

A glass of Tokay, Dean?

That would be most agreeable.

So, Dean, do you think it's true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

What Mr Wrather means is... Will we ever give India back to the Indians?

Not in my lifetime, I would venture. We've become too dependent on it.

Not just economically, although we derive inordinate treasure from, erm, its exploitation.

We have become habituated... to the role of Master... and dog... Servant!

Beyond Hope, beyond imagining.

The actuality exceeds anticipation.

I am in your debt, sir!

And yours, Mr Wrather.

You were saying about... our relationship with the Indians, between the Master and the Servant?

Not just servant, but •loving• servant.

It's most important to the English that we are loved by those we rule.