A "RED AUDIT" IN INDIA.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12934, 14 October 1907, Page 6

A "RED AUDIT" IN INDIA.

No member of the Indian Government need borrow trouble nowadays— i\ is his constant conspenion. Sedition creeps through the land, seeking to undermine the foundations of British rule, and is only kept from breaking into open revolt by the inability of the agitators to, convince the peasantry as a whole that they are oppressed. Abroad, in British, colonies—Canada, South Africa, British East Africa—and in the United States, Indians are being made to realise that they are unwe- ,- coxne, and the treatment accorded to them will undoubtedly be tfisoueaed in tho tMsaars of Calcutta, and used by native sedition-mongers ss proof alike of British brutality and of British help-

lessness to protect British subject*. To this factor in the general situation has now to be added the failure of the barvest in a large part of India. Times of scarcity are, frith moat nation*, times of discontent. The rule hardly applies to India, for the ryot eufers starvation with truly Oriental mi*. nation. But the mere fact of » bad harvest, despite the tremendous efforts which the Government as usual will make to mitigate ita distressing effects, •will be fuel for the smouldering flame of disloyalty and unrest. Finally, above all, tfjere is the epiaemio of plague, now in its .twelfth successive year, and threatening to be wore disastrous than ever. It may be doubted whether many people realise the appalling consequences of the epidemic that hae devastated India since 1896. In that year the number ot deaths it caused was only 1704. But only in two years since then has the death-rate been lees than. a s hundred thousand; it has reached over a million in one twelve months, and just under the number in another. This year, however, these dreadful records should be surpassed, for in the first five months, up to the. end of May, no fewer than 991,000 persons died from plague. In little more than eleven years the pestilence has slain in India nearly five and a half millions of people—moro than six times the total present population of New Zealand. This truly awful death-roll moved the King to express to his Indian subject*, through the Viceroy, his deep eympathy with them. Their welfare, wrote his Majesty, " must ever be to mc an "object of high concern, and I am "deeply moved irhea I think of the "misery that hat been fcoroe with "such silent patience in all those j " stricken homes." Sβ hoped that j the further measures now being prepared b.y the Viceroy for the mitigation of the plague would be crowned with j success. According to Mr Morley, j the Secretary for India, the preventive measures -which have proved utoaft effectual aro the systematic deatrue- ] tion of rat*; disinfection of feotwe* and clothing; evacuation of infeot-td locali- ; tieej inspection of traveller*; segregation of the siok, and inoculation. Uft ; fortunately, «c the Viceroy remarked lately, the greatest difficulty in the waj of tha Government* effort* "i* the "inability of the people tq understand "the eatiitary and hygienic measures " taken by the Government, which they "have actively resented." loveftigationa by the Plague Commission h*ve proved that certain "expensive and harawing" operations ©an be safely abandoned. But the problem remain* one of -exceptional difficulty for, a* hi* Excellency »vs* L tha Government oannot insist unreasonably upon the acceptance of its idea* of modem hygiene. In half-a-dosen direction* these ideas clash, with the immejoojiaj custom* of Indian life* and e»peo|»Uy of duroestio life, qncj th.c officials -who fight the plague hare to do so agaywt the inert or active, of whom they, seek to benefit. "It teem* to m,*,' , aaya an Indian official in one of Kipling* ftories, "that Nature , * going to audit "her account* with % big red panctl " thie year/ Thi* ye«r, indeed, with famine and "plague working together, there must be "a red and heavy •ud.it , ' in India.