Siam
I
MIDWAY between India and China lies the ancient and independent kingdom of Siam. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, hardy sailors, missionaries, and traders, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and adventuring beyond India, had occasionally made their way to Bangkok, and found a kingdom of Oriental splendor and pageantry, like a picture blown from the Arabian Nights; but not till the 1850’s, when insistent traders, pressing forward their commercial conquests, procured the signing of a succession of treaties for their protection and advantage, did the sleeping kingdom first gain consciousness and begin to realize that the imperious forces of Western civilization must be reckoned with if Siam was to survive.
In 1868 there ascended the Siamese throne King Chulalongkorn — one of those inexplicable geniuses who make plausible the belief that history is made by a few outstanding men rather than by the play of ordinary forces. Convinced that Siam, to reach its maximum development, must break with much of the past and adopt the best of Western civilization, he set himself the task of creating a modern State. Not forgetting that true reform must begin at home, he sent his sons abroad to drink in the new ideas — one, the present King, to England to study at Oxford; another to a German military school; a third to Russia; a fourth to an American university. Thus from the four corners of the West transformation-working modern ideas were brought into Siam.
In the meantime, with characteristic energy he entered upon one reform after another. Realizing the grave social and economic evils flowing from the institution of slavery, then prevalent within the kingdom, he determined to end it altogether; and, in spite of his absolute power, no one could have planned wiser or more carefully considered measures. In order to avoid unnecessary injury to the existing economic system, he first passed a law in 1874 providing that all children born of slaves after 1868 — the year of his accession to the throne — should become free upon reaching the age of twenty-one. (Slave children were not made free until the age of twenty-one, he explained, because otherwise no one would take an interest in the children.) New slaves could not be created. By this wise enactment slaveholders were not overnight deprived of their property, nor was a slave population suddenly and without preparation turned adrift upon the country. By a subsequent law, passed in 1905, every form of slavery within Siam, including debt bondage, was definitely and absolutely abolished.
In 1885 the King organized a postal service, and opened up telegraphic communication with foreign countries. In 1893 he opened the first line of railway in Siam — a slender beginning of only twenty kilometres. Thereafter, with a clear vision of the necessity of building trunk lines of railway in order to link the outlying provinces more closely with Bangkok and thus achieve greater national unity, and in order to bring Siam closer to the world trade routes touching at Singapore, he instituted a policy of vigorous railway development. As a result Bangkok, the capital, has to-day through rail communication with the important seaports of Singapore and Penang to the south, and with Chiengmai, one of the principal cities of Northern Siam, some seven hundred and fifty kilometres to the north. In comfortable sleeping and dining cars the traveler can to-day accomplish in twenty-five hours a journey which previously consumed several weeks. In conformity with this same policy, another trunk line, running from Bangkok to the Cambodian border on the east, is now being completed.
King Chulalongkorn reorganized the government from top to bottom, and replaced the former antiquated system with modern departments, headed by responsible ministers. He instituted radical changes in methods of revenue and rural administration. He built up a modern army, and created an efficient gendarmery service. He established a well-organized system of law courts, and created a royal commission to draft codes of laws based upon the best existing European legal systems. In order to utilize to the full the best Western ideas, he secured the assistance of expert foreign advisers, to lend their counsel and to help push wisely the work of progress. At the time of his death in 1910, this remarkable man had, without violent upheaval or the use of force, converted an ancient kingdom into a modern State, quick with progress and new hope, rapidly preparing itself to take its place in the Western family of nations.
II
The Siam of to-day, largely as a result of his work, is a country of vivid contrasts. With elephants and Buddhist temples and golden images and storybook palaces, with airplane mails and electric lights and ice plants and a modern university, indelibly Eastern in the thoughts and the lives of its ten million inhabitants, yet startlingly Western in the rapidity of its material development, it at once bewilders and fascinates. Bangkok streets are filled with motley throngs, some garbed in ancient native costumes of the East, others in the latest European fashions, and the children in no costume at all. The highways are crowded with Chinese rickshas, Indian gharris, and the latest types of American, English, French, and Italian automobiles. A hurrying Ford turns aside to give respectful room to an elephant slowly lumbering by. Native venders sell their mystic amulets and charms against disease in the shadow of immaculate modern hospitals. The beating of the drums in an ancient temple is drowned out by the strident music of a neighboring temple of American movies. Uniformed traffic policemen clear the way for mediæval cremation processions. Native women, carrying their water jars as of old, gather around the city hydrants out of which a splendid modern supply system pours pure fresh water.
Most of Siam’s present-day problems have grown out of her sudden transformation. New wine has been poured into old bottles; the forms of the past still survive to harass present and future undertakings. Constitutionally Siam is still an absolute monarchy; her sovereign still wields the unlimited power of an Oriental potentate. No parliament or legislative body exists; the King himself makes the laws and executes them, entirely unhampered by constitutional limitations. It is true that the business of the modern State has grown so enormous that the King is no longer able in person to exercise direction over all the affairs of the kingdom; the exigencies of the public business compel him to entrust much of it to Ministers of State. The present Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, War, Marine, the Interior, Education, Commerce, and so on, are highly organized and even bureaucratic; they transact the complicated business of government along lines closely akin to those followed in Western democracies. Nevertheless, the sovereign’s absolute power is never for a moment lost sight of. No legislation can be enacted, no statute can be changed, nor a treaty pass through even the preliminary stages of negotiation, without his personal approbation. In a country where parliamentary responsibility is unknown there can be no appeal for popular support of a minister’s convictions; vox dei est non vox populi sed vox regis.
Since opposition to the monarch’s desires can end only in dismissal, no minister dare undertake any important policy without first ascertaining the personal desires of his sovereign. Indeed, nothing of consequence in the kingdom can be undertaken without the royal consent. No member of the royal family would presume without the King’s consent to contract a marriage or to undertake a foreign journey. Ministers of State are not permitted to leave Bangkok even for a week-end holiday without the ruler’s special permission.
Were such absolute power in this day used tyrannically or capriciously, revolution would be certain, swift, deadly. But it is not so used. The King has ever regarded himself as in very truth the father of his people. As they belong to him, so in a sense his life belongs to them. The members of the royal family are not permitted to squander themselves in lives of idleness. Each is expected to contribute to the public welfare; many of the ablest of the Ministers of State are members of the royal family. The King himself consistently devotes a portion of each day to the careful study of state papers; one is never surprised to find upon documents and memoranda returned from the palace painstaking annotations and comments written in his own hand. As one comes to know him, one gets the picture of a sincere and earnest man, doing his best in the face of grave difficulties to promote the welfare of his people.
III
How to use the forms of Oriental absolutism as instruments of modern progress and Western innovation constitutes one of Siam’s unique problems. Under the rule of such a progressive monarch as King Chulalongkorn, the absolute power of the sovereign has not been without its manifest advantages. Yet the difficulties and dangers which attend the practical operation of such a form of government under present-day conditions are sufficiently serious to make her constitutional question one of the three leading problems of Siamese polity to-day.
Someone has labeled Siam’s present form of government by the King’s ministers as ‘government by watertight compartments.’ Since each ministry is responsible solely and directly to the King, and since there is no premier to shape and unify the programmes of the separate ministries, the inescapable result is a serious lack of coördination, which sometimes results in friction and inordinate delay. With respect to matters transcending the sphere of a single ministry, the difficulties are even more serious; in these progress must occasionally be sacrificed to the personal differences of the ministers or entirely lost in the division of responsibility.
Fresh illustrations are constantly arising. The Minister of the Interior, whose duty it is to suppress crime, formulated the policy of refusing, in so far as possible, to issue permits for the importation of revolvers, in order to lessen the number of shootings and violent assaults in the country. Complaints began to appear in the Foreign Adviser’s office. The American Minister presented the case of the former United States Fish Commissioner, now engaged as an expert by the Siamese Government to study methods for the preservation of Siamese fish. Upon his arrival in Siam, he had requested permission to import a ‘specimen’ revolver, capable of shooting only fine shot, in order to secure specimens for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; his request had been endorsed by high American officials and was seconded by the Siamese Minister of Agriculture. The gun, with appropriate ammunition, had been shipped by American authorities and was held at Hongkong, awaiting a Siamese permit to import. Months passed. The Ministry of the Interior, with its eye single to the reduction of crime, was deaf to all pleas. Before the matter could be straightened out formal memoranda had to be prepared, and lengthy interdepartmental letters pass back and forth between the Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Interior; and valuable weeks, which should have been utilized in the collection of specimens, were irrevocably lost.
Other complaints were not so easily satisfied. Many foreigners, pointing to the fact that the smuggling of revolvers could not be stopped and that wrongdoers could always procure them without serious difficulty, demanded the right to protect themselves against armed criminals; and when the Ministry of the Interior persisted in refusing them the right to import revolvers for their self-protection, they induced their Governments to make strong representations to the Siamese Minister of Foreign Affairs. The latter Minister felt the wisdom of avoiding the possibility of foreign complications and the risk of heavy indemnities; yet, because there was no premier to shape and assume responsibility for the larger questions of policy involved, the matter remained pending for months, with no ready solution apparent.
Difficulties of the same kind arise in graver matters. The Siamese Government for years has been definitely committed to the policy of gradual opium suppression; but since legislative prohibition alone will clearly not stop opium smoking the problem of method is extraordinarily difficult and infinitely complex. Yet opium control has been divided between ministries entirely independent of each other and often following quite divergent views. At present the Ministry of Finance exercises control over the opium régie, and, through its customs department, over the prevention of private importation of opium into Siam. Yet the practical enforcement of the opium laws through arrest and prosecution rests with the Minister of the Interior, who is pessimistic as to the possibility of opium suppression until opium production in other countries can be put under effective international control. Again, Siam’s international responsibilities under the International Opium Convention of 1912 rest upon the shoulders of the hopeful and forwardlooking Minister of Foreign Affairs. Further progress in opium suppression awaits a definitely formulated plan; and no constructive plan grows out of the independent action of three Ministers, each viewing the question from his own peculiar point of view. There seems but one logical solution: His Majesty will in all probability shortly appoint a Royal Opium Commission, entirely independent of any ministry, with power to make a careful study of the problem as a whole, to formulate a concrete policy, and to administer the entire work of gradual opium suppression, to which the Siamese Government is definitely and sincerely committed.
The lack of any legislative body means that there is no way of measuring the extent or the strength of popular opinion, and it may cast upon the King a burden which he ought not to be called upon to assume. Ever since the new leaven has been at work the feeling against polygamy in Siam has become more and more widespread, particularly among the rank and file, who are for the most part unable to afford more than one family. The Royal Code Commission, charged with the formulation of a Siamese code of law, cannot proceed with the law of inheritance and of the family until a decision has been reached upon the fundamental question of monogamy or polygamy; and since under Siam’s constitutional framework there can be no representative public discussion of the matter, the King must decide, alone and unaided. Yet no matter what his conception of progress may be, he in fact possesses more than one wife, as do many of the most powerful and influential of his close relatives. It follows inescapably that further legislation along the line of Western ideas in this matter is for the present impossible.
IV
In still another respect has Siam felt the practical difficulties and limitations of one-man rule. As the business of State has assumed more and more gigantic proportions, it has become increasingly manifest that the personal direction of every executive and legislative activity of government transcends the actual limitations of any one man’s time or physical capacity. Either he will have insufficient time for the study of necessary state papers, or he will not be able to meet the representatives and understand the different views of divergent schools of thought. If the responsible head of the State is not freely and constantly accessible to the leaders of conflicting views, he may come under the dominant influence of a single group or clique, representing but one school of thought, and as a result form his judgments subject to the restricted view of that clique. He may thus be cut off from invaluable counsels and information vitally necessary for the formation of correct decisions; and in so far as this takes place, sound government will be imperiled. Herein lies one of the real dangers in Siam to-day.
There is also the menace in every absolute monarchy of a possible future abuse of the sovereign’s unlimited power. Fortunately for Siam, her present sovereign is so sincere in his concern for the people’s welfare and so earnest in his work in their behalf that this danger is not a present one. Nevertheless, from the standpoint of permanent stability one must recognize the fact that probably no other form of government, if subjected to abuse, would under the influence of twentiethcentury ideas so quickly provoke dangerous reaction or bloody revolution. With no safety valve of public discussion or parliamentary action, pent-up popular discontent or outraged feelings could find no outlet other than action by force.
The present ruler is not blind to these problems and dangers. He has no selfish wish to perpetuate absolute monarchism. The present form of government places upon the shoulders of any conscientious sovereign a terrible burden from which he can never hope to gain respite or relief, and King Rama VI would sincerely welcome a greater participation by his people in the hard task of government. The great present difficulty is that the rank and file of the Siamese people are as vet unfitted to share in such responsibilities. For centuries they have had no voice or part in the government; there has been nothing to stimulate their interest in public affairs or their understanding of Siamese problems; they have formed a politically dead and inert mass. With no political experience or education, they are not yet ready for full-blown Western democracy. King Rama VI cannot shut his eyes to the truth that the mere creation of a so-called parliament neither creates democracy nor necessarily advances the cause of free government. A parliament uncontrolled by an intelligent electorate may constitute an infinitely more dangerous and corrupt engine of tyranny than the most absolute of kings.
Here lies one of Siam’s serious and ever recurring problems. It is not insoluble, and already the Government has initiated a well-planned system of general compulsory education. Nevertheless, its solution will require time and much patience and experience.
V
One of the lesser problems which arose out of the transformation of Siam was that of the administration of law.
When King Chulalongkorn ascended the throne justice was largely a personal matter: throughout most of the kingdom each governor or provincial chief maintained his own courts, wherein cases were decided rather in accordance with his own desires than with any fixed system of law or of equity. If Siam was to take its place in the Western family of nations, it was imperative that a code of law be formulated and a thoroughgoing reorganization of judicial administration be undertaken. This work of reorganization began with the establishment of the Ministry of Justice in 1892; this was followed by the organization of a carefully worked-out system of courts of first instance throughout the kingdom, appeal courts, and a Supreme Court at Bangkok.
The interesting question early presented itself as to whether the new law to be formulated should be based primarily upon the English common law or upon the Continental codes, descended from the Roman law. The latter won the day; and in 1905 King Chulalongkorn appointed a royal commission, composed of Siamese and French jurists, to draft the new codes. Consequently the new Siamese written law is based very largely upon the Code Napoléon, and has a strong French flavor. In 1908 a new penal code was enacted; a large part of the civil code has been finished; and it is the hope of the code commissioners to complete their task within the next five years.
Since most of the Siamese judges have received their legal training in England and the majority of Siam’s judicial advisers are English, the situation resulting from the adoption of a Continental system of law promises to be of more than passing interest. Will the administration of a Continental code of law by English-trained judges result in an English law modified by Continental legislation, or will Continental ideas gradually prevail and ultimately supplant the English legal conceptions prevailing at the present day? Probably much will depend upon whether Downing Street or the Quai d’Orsay cultivates the warmer political friendship with Siam during the next few decades.
Of even larger importance than her constitutional problem is Siam’s international problem, springing from the passionate desire of her people for freedom and independence. The Siamese call themselves the Thai or ‘Free.’ Of all the tribes and peoples of Southern Asia, the Siamese are the only ones who have through the changes and vicissitudes of constant warfare maintained their entire independence and achieved modern statehood. The pathway to this achievement has not lain through a bed of roses. In the language of a popular proverb, ‘Siam is a hare lying between a lion and a tiger.’ Bordering Siam on the west and south lie Burma, British India, and the Malay States, backed by all the power and prestige of the British Empire. On the East lies French Indo-China. built up at the expense of neighboring States as part of the expanding colonial empire of France. Out of the very intensity of the imperial desires and jealousies of her powerful neighbors it has been the nice problem of Siamese foreign diplomacy to wrest her safety and independence. There have been dark times, when exquisite Siamese tact and forbearance have met with Western brutality and even the resort to Western guns; and Siam has had to learn that might sometimes plays a larger rôle than right and justice in the Western scheme of things.
Although the independence and international standing of Siam are now assured, there has remained the problem of how to win her freedom from the harassing provisions of outworn treaties made three quarters of a century ago.
In the middle of the last century, in the days when Siam was still almost untouched by Western progress, the Western nations secured treaties giving them the right to push their trade into Siamese dominions and to exempt their subjects from the jurisdiction of Siamese courts. As the object of those early treaties was to provide for unhampered trade, further provisions forbade the Siamese sovereign to levy export duties beyond a certain fixed schedule or import duties higher than three per cent. The early conditions which justified those treaties have now completely passed away; yet the treaties, containing no abrogation clauses, have been maintained against Siam, and, by means of extended interpretations imposed upon her, have been enforced in an even more aggravated form. Not only were Europeans held to be exempt from Siamese courts; they were held exempt also from such Siamese laws as any treaty Power chose not to accept; and these exemptions were extended to include all Asiatics hailing from European colonies in Asia, such as Sumatra, Java, or Macao, and even all such foreign residents of Siam as the treaty Powers choose to enroll at their consulates as ‘protégés.’ Once Asiatic residents of Siam discovered a method of obtaining immunity from Siamese courts and Siamese law, abuses followed, so flagrant at times that the work of progress was hampered at every turn.
A few months ago a Chinese tailor of Bangkok appeared at the American legation. ‘What do you want, Ling?’ the American chargé asked him.
‘Me wantee be Melican plotégé. You givee me paper cheap,’ came back the answer.
The American chargé’s eyes twinkled. He explained to Ling that American citizenship was not to be bought and sold across the counter.
‘Why do you want to be an American?’ he asked.
Ling knew the American chargé, and trusted him. His eyes half closed; then his face broke into a smile.
‘Ling go North,’ he whispered. ‘ Bling plenty opium into Bangkok. If no getee paper, policeman catchee me. You no givee me paper? Allee light. Ling know where to go.’ And he was gone.
Even laws obviously framed to promote progress and reform meet with constant difficulty, by reason of foreign rights of exterritoriality. Some time ago Siam adopted a system of universal compulsory education. Complaints came to the Foreign Adviser that certain Asiatics were refusing to comply with the provisions of the education law. Local investigation proved that these residents of Siam had originally hailed from a European Asiatic colony and were therefore exempt from arrest. When the Adviser approached the Minister of the mother country, he was informed that it declined to accept the education law for its subjects. That ended the matter. Under the existing treaty provisions Siam could do nothing.
On another occasion the British Minister raised the question of the application of the same law to a community of Mohammedan residents of Northern Siam. They were of Burmese birth and therefore British subjects; but out of respect for the memory of Mohammed they objected to their girls being sent to school instead of doing penance through the sacred month of Ramadan, and they had induced the British Empire to take up the cudgels in their behalf. Fortunately the law was so wisely framed that, after some discussion and adjustment, a way was found for overcoming the objections and enforcing the law.
Similarly, Siam framed a statute for the protection of trade-marks and trade-names. After its enactment, however, it was found impossible to secure the consent of all the treaty Powers to its application to their subjects; and as it is chiefly foreigners who are guilty of infringements, it proved impossible to put the law into effect. As a result, Siam to-day is unable to punish piracies of trademarks and trade-names.
Again, the same treaty provisions constitute one of the great sources of difficulty and hindrance in Siam’s efforts to suppress opium smoking. Some years ago Siam passed a law forbidding the private importation of opium into Siam, in order gradually to reduce the amount imported into the country. Time after time Siamese officials have worked up their cases and succeeded in capturing Chinese or other Asiatics smuggling large quantities of opium across the border, only to find that the smugglers carried foreign papers and were therefore exempt from Siamese jurisdiction. The keepers of gambling resorts shelter themselves behind the same kind of protection.
Often the complaints which come into the Foreign Adviser’s office concerning evasions of law by foreign protégés give rise to very complicated questions of nationality. The defendant in a libel case alleges that he is a Javanese, and therefore a Dutch subject. Witnesses are procured and affidavits carefully prepared, showing that he has lived in a certain Siamese village from early childhood with Siamese parents; the written statements of close relatives, school companions, neighbors, and village headmen are gathered and put in evidence. The defendant then replies that he was brought from Java when a baby and given into the keeping of the Siamese couple, who are only his foster parents. His father has disappeared, but by virtue of his Javanese birth he claims exemption from Siamese jurisdiction, and his claim is supported by the Dutch legation. Through a maze of conflicting stories and counter-stories the inquiry runs, and the question of identity is clouded and befogged by the defendant’s possession of several entirely different names by which he is known to different groups of people. All the while the wheels of justice in the Siamese courts must wait; inordinate delays follow; and at times justice is entirely thwarted.
In still another way has progress been checked by the restrictive provisions of the out-of-date treaties. At the time when they were made, the three-per-cent tariff restriction worked no injury, for the annual expenses of the backward State were small and easily met. But as Siam’s many-sided progress demanded greater and greater expenditure, serious financial problems arose; and to-day the tariff clause greatly increases the difficulty of financing the expenditure which further progress demands. The securing of additional revenues from an increased tariff would not solve all Siam’s financial problems, inasmuch as Siam is and always will be essentially an agricultural country and therefore will never enact a high tariff. Nevertheless, the removal of the three-per-cent limitation would materially aid her, and would at the same time remove an irritating restraint which seems as unnecessary to the welfare of foreign States as it is unjust to Siam.
VI
One of the lessons which Siam has had to learn to her cost through the course of many years is that great nations do not willingly relinquish, without compensation, rights gained over small nations. Countless efforts to rid herself of the burdensome treaty provisions have proved unavailing. In 1907 and in 1909 France and Great Britain agreed to modify the rigor of the early restrictions, but only in part and only for territorial compensations. At the conclusion of the Great War, after Siam had gallantly thrown in her lot with the Allies and had sent an expeditionary force to France, she again sought from her victorious allies, whose representatives were assembled at Versailles, the abrogation of the early treaty restrictions. The time seemed favorable, when the rights of small nations were being so loudly proclaimed.
Of all those present, President Wilson was the only one who acted upon her request. Recognizing Siam’s remarkable progress, America in 1920 signed a new treaty with Siam, relinquishing the old exterritorial rights and agreeing to a renunciation of all tariff limitations as soon as other nations should do likewise. No compensation was asked for and none was received.
Since that time, so far as her international problems are concerned, Siam’s future has greatly brightened. Owing to the constructive work of diplomatists on both sides, her relations with her immediate neighbors have within the last few years been greatly improved, and mutual understanding and respect have increased. A few months ago, Siamese officials arrested an opium smuggler on a sand bar on the Siamese side of the Mekong River, which forms part of the boundary between Indo-China and Siam. Local French officials claimed that French sovereignty had been outraged and the French Minister at Bangkok asked for an investigation. A score of years ago the incident might have developed ugly complications. As it was, careful investigation showed that the question depended upon the exact location of the Indo-Chinese boundary; and since, curiously enough, this has never been precisely determined, the two Governments have amicably agreed to let the matter rest until the more important boundary question is definitely settled. Because of many similar questions, negotiations are now well under way for the conclusion of an Indo-Chinese convention which, it is hoped, will remove all cause for future dispute and misunderstanding between the two Governments, and will pave the way for firm friendship and joint economic development.
As a result of America’s action, European nations have also had to recognize the injustice of maintaining indefinitely the old treaty restrictions. Less than a year ago Japan ratified a treaty with Siam closely following the American treaty of 1920; and during the past year new gains have been made, which show an open-mindedness on the part of European nations such as even the most optimistic hardly dared hope for. During the past ten months now treaties similar to the American treaty of 1920 have been at last secured with France, Great Britain, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Sweden, abrogating the early treaties and restoring Siam’s right of jurisdictional and fiscal autonomy. Similar treaties have been negotiated with Italy, Norway, and Belgium, and will doubtless soon be signed. With the ratification of these treaties, Siam will enter upon a new era, freed from the harassing restrictions which have bound her for more than half a century. New vistas open out; a new period dawns.
VII
One other problem of major importance vitally concerns the future of Siam. If money constitutes the sinews of war, no less does it constitute the sinews of peace; and upon the proper solution of Siam’s financial problem depends in very large measure her future.
Siam’s natural resources are very rich. In her fertile rice-fields lies her wealth. The annual rice production far exceeds the nation’s needs; each year she exports $38,000,000 worth of rice, together with teak and other goods to the value of some $13,000,000. Her needs are few; her peasant population lives very simply and frugally, and the warmth of the climate makes expensive clothing or fuel unnecessary. Her abundant natural wealth has always made easy the balancing of her budget; and out of the substantial surpluses which usually resulted each year was built up a handsome Treasury Reserve Fund, utilized largely for the financing of railway construction and irrigation works. But as the activities of her progressive government increased, as she pushed her railway development and land-reclamation schemes and built water-supply systems and electric lighting plants, as she entered upon costly educational undertakings and became engrossed in the manifold enterprises which spell progress, the annual expenditures have been steadily increasing, and in 1921 occurred the first deficit for a number of years. In 1923 another deficit appeared; and present indications are that, unless additional revenues can be procured from an increased tariff and a reduction can be effected in the present cost of government administration, further progress may be seriously curtailed.
A royal commission has been appointed by the King to grapple with this problem and to find the best means for its solution. Some of the ablest Siamese are now at work upon it. A tentative study of the problem would seem to indicate that either by reducing the extremely large amounts annually included in the civil list spent by His Majesty, or by reducing the sums annually spent by the army and navy, a way could be found with comparative ease for balancing the budget without curtailing the further progress of the kingdom.
The future of Siam largely depends upon the solution of her constitutional, her international, and her financial problems. Because she has the will to master them, and not the passive fatalism which allows them to master her, she is a country of hope. Her problems are not so difficult as those of most Eastern countries; none of them is insoluble. She has rich natural resources, and she has a population lovable and of sterling worth. If Europe will but allow her by unhampered self-development to make her own peculiar contribution to the progress of the world, the world will be the richer for Siam. All those who genuinely believe in the rights of small nations and who build their hope on the progress of mankind will wish her Godspeed in her gallant efforts.