OUR INDIAN EMPIRE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8145, 20 November 1905, Page 4

OUR INDIAN EMPIRE.

Lord CukzoinY before-he left India, had something to say about the work he has been doing in the great Eastern dependency, and the feelings with which he had done that work. He avoided matters of controversy and spoke, as he said himself, to the comrades who had i shared his toil, and who had enabled him to conquer where lie has conquered. He paid to them a very high tribute—how well deserved only those who know India know. Lord Curzon (says the London Times in commenting on his speech) spoke from his heart when he reminded his fellow labourers of the task they have to do, of the aims;, that inspire them as they grapple .Iwith it, ot the joys and of the sorrdws of their work. It is on the whole, perhaps, the greatest and most wonderful work performed by governing man. It is the glory of our race that we can do it, and perhaps a little to our shame that at Home we so often forget> or seem to forget, the unflinching courage, the incessant care, and the unwearying labours by which it is done. Lord Curzon explained the secret of our success when he said that England gives India the pick of her youth. So long as she does that, India, he declared, is safe. There is no country and no service in the world where success depends so largely upon character and ability, and where character and ability so speedily succeed. Lord Curzon has himself done much— and it is not the least valuable of his achievements—to ensure that they shall succeed even more certainly and more promptly than before. In the course of his extensive tours—and no recent viceroy has travelled so widely or so far—he'has seen with his own eyes the younger men at their work, and he has taken care that they have got full credit for it. The. prospect of recog. nition is a great spur to industry but it is not the only spur, or the most effective spur, in the case of the Indian civilians. . It is the consciousness of their immense responsibility; it is. the knowledge that the welfare] the very lives and the future development of scores of millions of men depend upon their sagacity and their exertions ; it is the feeling that they, a mere handful of men—they are but 1100 all told—are moulding for all time the'destinies of a mighty Empire ; it is these things that steel them against exile, against disease, against neglect, against injustice. "We feel," said Lord Curzon, " we shall never have such a life.again, so crowded with opportunity, so instinct with duty, and so touched with romance. We forget rebuffs,; and are indifferent to slander and to pain. We remember the noble cause for which we have worked to-

gether.