THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1907. THE SITUATION IN INDIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8528, 5 September 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1907. THE SITUATION IN INDIA.

The most mysterious question in the whole movement in India, which puzzles, and to a certain extent dismays, the most experienced AngloIndians, is Isayr. the London Spectator) why it should have occurred at the present moment. An electric vibration is evidently passing over the peninsula, but its cause is absolutely invisible. The Government has done nothing good or bad that should rouse the people to l'esistance. There have, perhaps, been blunders in the collection of the land tax in the Punjab; but the movement is not confined to the Punjab, and Bengal is under the Perpetual Settlement. Neither the masses nor the soldiery care one straw whether the alumni of the colleges are provided for by the State or are left to find incomes by their own exertions. Indeed, one most remarkable feature of the whole movement is the absence of any j definite grievance the removal of which would at once conciliate opinion. That India shared in the mental shock produced throughout Asia by the victories of the Japanese is undoubtedly true, and is acknowledged by every experienced official; but the Japanese are bound to the British Government by the strongest of all ties—a necessity for assistance if they are attached by sea in their home waters and by a combination of Powers. The discontent has, in fact manifested itself like a subterranean force which suddenly shatters citie3, yet leaves the citizens powerless to explain, or even to understand, the commotion. In 1857 the insurgents in their letters to each other made much of the fact that the British garrison had been reduced to its lowest point; but the garrison in

India in 1907 never was so strong. There will be an explanation by-and-by; but for the present we have only to acknowledge a grave danger, and face it as our countrymen faced it fifty years ago, without fear, without cruelty, and without hesitation as to the rectitude of our decision to continue ruling.