"SAFE FOR BRITAIN"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23005, 7 October 1936, Page 9

"SAFE FOR BRITAIN"

FEW TROUBLES IN INDIA PROBLEM OF ILLITERACY MEDICAL OFFICER'S VIEWS (Special to Daily Times) AUCKLAND, Oct. 6. India is just as safe for Great Britain as it ever was, according to Major-general C. W. F. Melville, a medical officer attached to the Indian Army headquarters who arrived at Auckland by the Wanganella from Sydney on a short holiday visit to New Zealand. " Occasionally," he said, " there are storms and troubled waters up on the north-west frontier, but such storms are common to every frontier in all countries." Major-general Melville said he had spent the last 36 years in India, and in his opinion the general run of Indians were much easier to live side by side with than any other Oriental people. It was, of course, natural that in such a huge population there should be agitators, those with Communistic leanings, and others who were extremists, but the majority were quite in accord with .British policy and were looking forward to a larger measure of responsibility which the new constitution would give them. Illiteracy was one of the problems which made officialdom, the ruling system in India, absolutely necessary. " Some of the people," said Major-general Melville, " are no more literate than their bullocks." Major-general Melville, who was appointed an honorary physician to the King in 1931, has had a distinguished record in Indian Army medical work. Since 1933 he has been deputy-director of medical services of the Eastern Command. His firsts commission in the Indian Medical Service was in 1901, and since then he has held various posts, including that of medical officer of the 9th Bengal Lancers for 10 years immediately before the Great War, part of which he served with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Major-general Melville is due to retire next March. He will leave on his return to India on October 13 from Wellington.