Caribbean Visionary: A. R. F. Webber and the Making of the Guyanese Nation

CHAPTER TEN: Exploring New Worlds

137 CHAPTER TEN EXPLORING NEW WORLDS Sugar, sugar, everywhere, But ne’er a crystal to spare; Sugar, sugar, everywhere, Its sweetness none can share. Sugar, sugar, everywhere, Its rancidity is tasted all around; Sugar, sugar, everywhere, Yet starvation and deprivation abound. —SELWYN R. CUDJOE, “Rime from an Ancient County” Let me tell any boys and girls, or boys alone, or girls alone, who are anxious to spend a wonderful Easter holiday, to make the trip. See a country that is a hidden book to nearly everybody, and come back missionaries for a Greater Guiana. —A. R. F. WEBBER, Exploring Unbroken British Guiana AT THE END OF 1929, EVERYWHERE THEY LOOKED, any way they turned, the people of Guyana saw the effects of a sugar economy gone sour, leaving ruination; devastated plantations; starving, desperate people; and a helpless, inept government . Diseases had increased, unemployment had jumped, schools began to close down, head teachers were being laid off, and families began to break up. Viewing the predicament the people faced, one could not help but think of a Guyana variant of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Rime from an Ancient County.” The sugar industry, the largest employer of skilled and unskilled labor, was always the backbone of Guyana’s economy. According to Denis Williams, “For better or worse, ours has been a sugar psychology . . . whilst robbing us of some of the most unalienable of rights, [it] has nevertheless . . . kept us alive. . . . In 1922, EXPLORING NEW WORLDS 138 despite at times crippling ups-and-downs, sugar remained the sheet-anchor of our economy—and our psychology.”1 Given this reality, like so many of his compatriots, Webber was exasperated by the reluctance of the colonial authorities to assist the Guyanese people during their hour of need and felt devastated by the utter helplessness of his people. As 1929 came to a close, he, too, seemed to have been overcome momentarily by the depression that inundated the people of the land. It was as though an albatross was placed around his neck. He wrote a prescient, melancholy poem, “The Great Dissolve,” in which he seemed to challenge fate. He wrote: No Sunset and evening star for me, Nor twilight and vesper bell. Let me fall on the raging battle field With banners gaily flying, In full throated battle cry With drums a’throb and bugles calling. Give me not a forgotten soldier’s fate To lie like a log in a stagnant pool. ’Tis better to fall with ideals high, Tossing buckler and pennon bright To those that will seize with exultant cheers, For the crowds onrush to final victory. Though I go with work undone The world’s work is never complete ’Tis better to leave the fields aglow, And a following with falchions flashing bright, Than to wait and watch the fires grow dim, And steal away in the still and darkening night.2 At that point of his life, Webber could not have known that he only had two and a half more years to live. His brother George Isaac died two months later, at the same age and from precisely the same disease from which Allie died (Webber was sometimes called Allie, a shortened form of his first name). Sensing the melancholia that lay beneath the poem’s surface, a reader, J.R., in defiant optimism and inspiration, castigated Webber’s seeming to despair: Why talk at all of the Great Dissolve, Of going while work remaineth undone? Hast thou lost heart in the raging fray, Or see’st thou a shadow dark’ning thy Sun? EXPLORING NEW WORLDS 139 Fear not, but press on with might and main, The Country needs men still of valiant heart Though thou’rt leading a forlorn-hope, Victory is thine if thou’lt play well thy part. Not always doth Might prevail over Right, Not always the struggle will nought avail Legions may sink in the thickening dust, But the faith that endurerth is bound to prevail.3 Although Webber was discouraged by what he saw around him, he had lost neither heart nor hope about the future. At the beginning of 1930, he was still wearing freedom’s flag and leading his troops into battle. He and his colleagues held large public meetings throughout the country to encourage those who were eligible to register and vote. On January 7 Webber, Arnold Seeram (an elected member of...