The Star. Delivered every evening by 6 o'clock to Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham. Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 1917. GERMANY AND INDIA.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 15 January 1917, Page 4

The Star. Delivered every evening by 6 o'clock to Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham. Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 1917. GERMANY AND INDIA.

Driven from the seas and /unable to beat the Allies in the field, Germany still continues (it has all along been •one of her specially perfidious plans) by the most discreditable means her efforts to "hamstring" the British Empire. Her vile work in Ireland in this connection may be said to have been defeated, but it is doubtful ~ whether the same, can yet be said with respect to India. A day or two ago it was reported that of seventeen persons under trial in the second Lahore conspiracy case, six were sentenced to death, five to imprisonment for life, one to two years' imprisonment, and five were discharged. To understand the position one of vital importance to the preservation of the British Empire—the reader should remember that, in giving its judgment, the Court stated that the evidence had proved the complicity of German Consular agents in the United States; that the Court was fully satisfied that the United States was the chief centre of the movement for the overthrow of British rule in India; and that plans were laid there for- war, murder and rapine. This is a terrible record against Germany, and enough, apart from other perfidies, atrocities and abominations connected with the war, to brand Germany as a country never to be trusted again by other nations, and least of all by Britain and the people of the British Empire. At the first trial at Lahore, at which eighty-one persons were charged with conspiracy against the Government of India, evidence quite as strong as that' adduced at the recent second trial was before the Court. It showed that there was a revolutionary conspiracy, fomented by German agents, for the overthrow, of British rule by means of— "(1).- The seduction of Indian soldiers { from their allegiance to the KingEmperor, and to cause them to mutiny ■and to join in rebellion and to furnish arms and munitions; (2) the collection of arms, men and munitions, and also money, for the purchase of arms and munitions; (3) the obtaining of money for the same purpose by means of forcing and robbing Government treasuries, and by dacoities, necessarily involving the murder of police arid other officials who interfered with the carrying out of the conspiracy; (4) as soon as the rebellion started, the murder of all civil Europeans, the wrecking of trains and railway, bridges, a sudden attack on and the killing of all His Majesty's European troops; and (5) the production and circulation.of seditious literature, the delivery of seditious speeches, anC exhortations to the rebels." This grim' record presents a formidably unwelcome contrast to the courage and self-sacrifice of native Indian troops in the war, and to the unstinted liberality of eminent Indians in contributing to funds connected with it. But as Lord Sydenham, sometime Governor of Bombay, has said, "vast masses of the Indian people are .quite unaffected by the war, and tens of millions do not understand its issues. As the Bishop of Madras has lately stated, many simple villagers are under the impression—derived from bazaar ru- | mors of the Emden's proceedings off Madras— that the Germans had conquered the country. The idea of a wave of enthusiasm spreading spontaneously throughout the great populous plains and the hill tracts of India is purely visionary. In the conditions of the country such a phenomenon is plainly impossible, and even in other conditions we should have no right to expect among Asiatic peoples what has occurred in the Dominions created by British efforts and inspired by British ideals." It is on these conditions that German}' has been assiduously operating, not without effect, yet happily so | far without disastrous results. Still i the conditions have to be counted on, i as well as a continuance of Germany's perfidious machinations; and yet we must not overlook the factors that make so nobly for quite other consequences; for it may fairly be hoped that these, with India's admission to the Imperial Council, may in time lead to vital and comprehensive changes in India, all favorable to that great country's solidarity as an integral portion of the British Empire.