The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, JULY 14, 1930. DEFENCELESS INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 164, 14 July 1930, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, JULY 14, 1930. DEFENCELESS INDIA.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistanoe, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

Among the many questions raised by the demand of the Indian Nationalists for autonomy and independence, the grave problem of defence plays a conspicuous part. Through a series of geographical accidents India is, and always must be, exposed to invasion along the nprth-west frontier; and as a historical fact, in past ages many successive hosts of invaders, forcing their way into India at this point, have established tyrannies there and have for centuries dominated the helpless peoples whom they have subdued. For it happens that the tribes inhabiting the hill country beyond the frontier are ferocious and warlike, "while many of the races of Northern India —and more especially the Bengalis who are loudest in their demand for "freedom" —

have never shown any ability to defend themselves against armed invaders.

From time immemorial Northern India has been at the mercy of foreign conquerors. Persians and Tartars and Afghans and Mongols in turn have made themselves masters of Northern India, and always they have brought with them great hordes of the savage mountaineers who live by plunder in the broken and precipitous "hinterland." Pathan and Afridi, Abazai and Zukka Kehl have been names of evil omen to the dwellers in the rich river-plains of the North ever since history began there, and to-day it is as certain as ever it has been in the past that, at the slightest sign of weakness in India's outworks, the fierce hill men who are always awaiting their opportunity beyond the frontier will gather once more in their countless thousands to swoop down upon their prey.

In the recently published work of an experienced Anglo-Indian—"The Dilemma in India," by Sir Reginald Craddc<?k, who has spent forty years of his life there —it is predicted that if once the protection of the British Raj is withdrawn the Afghans and all the warrior tribes of the mountainland beyond the frontier will pour down upon the Punjab, to plunder and slay. But it is not simply external foes that India will have to fear. It is only the prestige of the British flag or the fear of Britain's wrath that now overawes the lawless and protects the man of peace. "The business of the great cities would stand still in awe and amazement, and the credit so long built up by the British peace would totter and crash in the panic." The danger from Avithout would not be. the only peril to be faced. "The great princes and chiefs would raise their standards and collect their forces, and the soldiers of the Indian Army would flock to their banners." Bengal, rich and defenceless, would be as in olden days "the common theatre of countless invaders." Further to the south "the Moplas, like hill torrents, would flood over peaceful Malabar, bringing death and desolation to the helpless Hindus." And everywhere through this vast area, peopled by more millions than Europe holds, "Sikhs and Mahrattas, Rajputs and Mohammedans, would be locked in deadly conflict." What safeguard have the people of India that the worst horrors of the days of Akbar or Surajah Dowlah or Hyder Ali will not be re-enacted through the length and" breadth of Indi-a when once the British Raj has disappeared?