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24 CHAPTER TWO THE PRIVATE THOUGHTS OF A POLITICAL MAN The Making of A. R. F. Webber, 1917–19 If love could bring you joy I would abundance spread thee: If pride could bring you safety Mountains I will build thee But naught that I can wish you, Nor still undying feel Will strew your path with roses, Or buy you free from care. The world’s a stage by setting And you must be a playwright, And actor too, and “prompter”: For the band that fain would help you, Will be forbid and useless. —A. R. F. WEBBER, “Poem to My Daughter” Wouldst thou be Great? Then grapple to the soul these primal truths. Greatness is neither born of intolerance nor schism, But ’tis a sturdy growth of open minds, And fierce competing. —A. R. F. WEBBER, “Guiana!” THE END OF THE GREAT WAR (1914–18) ushered in new social and political relations in the Caribbean and the colonial world and made questions of selfdetermination and racial awareness even more urgent. Not that there were no indigenous liberation movements prior to the war, but the contradictions in the colonial-capitalist world simply gave colonial peoples a better opening and a greater determination to continue their struggle for liberation. In a way, it allowed more PRIVATE THOUGHTS OF A POLITICAL MAN, 1917–19 25 people to speak about their liberation in their countries with greater confidence and assurance. A. J. P. Taylor, a British historian, noted: “In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behavior. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world; the dramatic moment of modern man’s existence.”1 By inclination and training, Caribbean people were positioned to etch themselves into this phase of social development. C. L. R. James noted that Caribbean people descended from the same stock of people as the Haitians and lived a similar life on the plantations that “made them what they were.” Such a tendency inhered in people who had made the Middle Passage and who “had to learn all that they can and build a new life with what they gathered from the standards, the ideas and the ideologies of the people and the new civilization in which they live.”2 He emphasized that African people did not come to the Caribbean as empty vessels. By looking at the past, one could get a good idea about what Caribbean people could achieve. James noted: The Negro people in the Caribbean are of the same stock as the men who played such a role in the history of their time. We are the product of the same historical past and the same type of life, and as long as we are not being educated by the Colonial Office (or the stooges of the financial interests), we shall be able to do whatever we have to do. We have to remember that where slavery was abolished by law, the great mass of the Negro slaves had shown that they were ready to take any steps that were necessary to free themselves. That was a very important step in the making of the Caribbean people.3 The war also had a tremendous liberating effect in that it opened up new possibilities for the people of the Caribbean. Those who went abroad to help “make the world safe for democracy” demanded more democracy at home when they returned from the war. This resulted in a greater intensity of the nationalist struggle and a rise of racial pride throughout the Caribbean and other parts of the colonial world after the war had ended. The war also had an important impact on those who served in it. James remembered seeing soldiers from Trinidad going to war, many of whom had never left the narrow confines of their villages, many of whom “wore shoes consistently for the first time.”4 They became first-class soldiers to the astonishment of all those who saw them perform. Speaking specifically about Captain Arthur Cipriani, one of the leading proponents of self-government and a West Indian federation, James averred: “From that time he advocated independence, self-government, and federation on the basis that the West Indian rank and file, ‘the bare-foot man’ as he called him, was able to hold his own with any sort of...

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