“STRATFORD EVENING POST” WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 1925. THE ROMANCE OF INDIA.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 92, 17 June 1925, Page 4

“STRATFORD EVENING POST” WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 1925. THE ROMANCE OF INDIA.

There is, according to a writer in the American Review of Reviews, wlio speaks with inside knowledge, “no greater mystery and romance in history than the growth and existence of the British Empire in India. It is,” lie says, “extremely difficult even for the majority of Englishmen, including those who have followed intelligently throughout their lives the conduct of public affairs, to realise how great that mystery and romance is. Even the most salient facts about India and its peoples are dimly apprehended in their full implication.’’ India is certainly a wonderful country. It contains within its boundaries one-fifth of the world’s population, and, while it is little more than half the size of the United States, it supports a population three times as large. In many of its most densely cultivated areas the incidence of a purely agricultural population approaches 1000 to the square mile. It is as large as the whole of Europe west of the Vistula, and has as many separate languages as Western Europe, and contains culture and points of view as far apart as those which separate a German from a Frenchman, or from an Italian. It has races of fighting men as well developed, as brave and as much animated by inspiring traditions as the heirs of any Western chivalry; it has highly developed, indigenous systems of commerce and hanking; it has ancient cities which yield to none in,beauty and interest; it is the homo of great religions, and is profoundly affecting to-day the religious thought of the world. It has a civilised history extending into the remotest past, a past when Europe was the home of scattered savage tribes. Yet this great country has, until the advent of the English, been the continual scene of internal dissension and. of foreign conquest. and, with all its ancient civilisation, has never developed any progressive idea of stable nr popular government. For 1.50 years it has now enjoyed peace and progress such as it never experienced before, and during this period it has submitted to be governed by a: mere handful of Englishmen, for the actual governors of

the country have never iiumbcm. more than seme 1500 trained administrators, who have been helved by a similar sprinkling of technical experts. The whole system has been expanded and upheld by a minute garrison o* some 05,000 white men and the total •European element in the midst of the teeming millions of brown India has never been more than a most trilling percentage of the indigenous population. The very class of Indians whose solo occupation under the caste system is that of lighting, would out ■ number the men whose presence represents what is meant by tbe British Empire many times ovei. That may be regarded as a very fair summary of the position in India to-day although, unfortunately, disruptive influences are at work which, were they

successful, would largely, if not wholly, undo the work of the last 150 years which has brought peace instead of strife, and welded together, under the one Government, Hindus, M'ahom medans, Buddhists, Parsecs, Sikhs, Jains, Av.imists, Christians and Jews. The wonder of this is all the greater in that, apart from the ten or eleven principal languages spoken, l over twenty other languages are used, while out of the 300,000,000 people living in that vast sub-continent, little more than 300,000 speak or understand the English language used by their rulers, who have co-operated with the natives to bring about stable government.