I have always felt that our failure to train the Burmans to be soldiers is a blot on our escutcheon. I have mentioned an experiment to enlist Karens. This succeeded for a time. The men learnt their drill quickly, and as trackers and for forest work they were very useful. It was decided in 1891 to raise a Karen battalion, with which, and an Indian battalion, it was proposed to form a military police force for Lower Burma. The Karens were placed on the same footing as the Indians, and British officers were appointed to command them. In drill, endurance in the field, and courage, the Karen showed himself a good man. But from some cause he failed in discipline, and in 1899 it was found advisable, owing to insubordinate conduct, to disband the battalion and distribute the companies among the Indian battalions. There has been more success, I am told, with the Kachins, who are showing themselves trustworthy. They are certainly a strong race, probably the strongest we have in Burma. Another direction in which the change from the sword to the plough and the pen was showing itself was in the prominence given to the administration of the civil police. It is very easy to get up a cry against the police in Burma or in India, but they will not be improved by constant abuse, frequent prosecutions, censures, and condemnations by High Court judges, or still less competent critics, or by other methods of giving a service a bad name. One of the hardest tasks connected with the administration of a country by foreign rulers is the creation of a good police force. When the people from whom the force has to be recruited have lived for years under a despotic and altogether corrupt government, the task becomes doubly hard. And when the foreigners appointed to officer and train the force have for the most part no knowledge of police work and no acquaintance with the vernacular of the people, the task would have made Hercules drown himself in the nearest ditch. It had to be done, however, and it was undertaken. The work had not gone far in 1890, but it was started, and two good and experienced police officers of high standing had been appointed to go round Upper Burma, district by district, and instruct the English officers. It was not possible at that time to find Burmans fit to take charge of the police of a district. I do not know whether such men are yet forthcoming.[33] We are well advanced in the second century of our rule in India, yet I believe there are few Indian gentlemen who are willing to take an appointment in the police and fewer still who are well fitted for it.