The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1905. THE VALUE OF INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 35, 10 February 1905, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1905. THE VALUE OF INDIA.

9er the emtue thdt todte — eUfme; Ft the wnmg that needs ruittemU, 9mt tine future in tb* iiittuum, Am 4 the gmrt the* «•• m 4m.

The importance of India as a member of the Empire has long been recognised by all Imperial statesmen; but we doubt if the value of our great Asiatic dependency was ever so strongly insisted upon before by any British Minister as by Mr Brodrick in his recent comments upon Imperial trade. Merely as a commercial factor in the Empire, India carries an immense amount of weight. Her imports for last year were valued at close on £90,000,000, and her exports reached the enormous sum of £112,000,000. Figures like these are too vast to produce any very definite impression; but taken in conjunction with what we know of India's wonderful natural resources, we need not be astoniehed at the inference drawn by Mr Brodrick that England's interest in India is too great to be ignored, and that whatever form England's fiscal policy may take, India's commercial prospects inusf. be considered even before those of the colonies. To the average man tht , great obstacle in the way of an intelligent comprehension of the importance of India is the mere vastness of the country. As Mr Meredith Townshend aad many other travellers and historians have said, it is almost impossible for the European to realise what India is—"a continent j large as Europe west of the Vistula, and with 30,000,000 more people, fuller of ancient nations, of great cities, of varieties of civilisation, of armies, nobilities, priesthoods, organisations for every conceivable purpose, from the spreading of great religions down to systematic murder." There are more than twice as many Bengalees as there are Frenchmen; there are more Hindoatances than there ara white men in the United States; the Mahrattas would fill Spain; and the people of the Punjab with Seinde are double the population of Turkey. Yet these are only four of the great territorial divisions of India. Amid these 250,000,000 natives "the tide of life flows as vigorously as in Europe. Every.occupation which exists in Europe exists in India," end the industry of these teeming hordes never ceases. ''India, with all her multitudes, with a population in places packed beyond European precedent, imports nothing either to eat or drici:, and but *or the Europeans would import nothing whatever." Yet in this land of swarming millions, with its boundless potential wealth not yet one tithe exploited, "there is as much latbour, as much contention, as much ambition, as much crime, as much v.uU>ty of cares, hopes, fears, and hatred" n-.i among any of the peoples that we think civilised. And over all this surging mass of humanity is set a small corporate body of some 1500 Englishmen-r-our Indian Civil Service— backed by a little force of 65,000 whites. India in itself is one of the most marvellous of all the world's phenomena; but not less astounding is the authority exercised by this tiny band of rulers, and the success that has hitherto attended their efforts to govern this great continent for the good of its people. On the results cf British rnje in India no man cajx speak with higher authority than Lord Curzon, now for the second time appointed Viceroy; and in a contribution to a recent number of "The World's Work" he has challenged the nations to produce a record in any way rivalling the history of British aehieve;mejot jbi India. 'Where else in the WJSJ\SFJ* i * d 'PS a r*oe ;g«Bfii fp*$ r a?4d Bnbdued iiot r 2 country or a kingdom but a continent; that continent peopled not by savage tribes but by races with traditions and a civili* aation older than our own, with a history not inferior to ouh in dignity and romance; subduing them not by law of the sword, but by the rule of justice, and bringing peace and order and good government to nearly one-fifth of the entire human race, and holding them with so mild a restraint that th« rulers are the merest handful among the ruled, a tiny speck of white foam upon a dwk and thunderous ocean?" Lord Curzon may not be an absolutely impartial witness, but wit«n we think of what England has accomplished in India—how plague and famine have been fought, life and property have been made secure, and the principles of humanity have been inculcated among people to whom they were entirely unfamiliar—we cannot help sympathising with the Viceroy's boast that he would as soon be a citizen of the country that has wrought this deed as of the country that defeated the Armada or produced Hampdeh or Pitt. Already the Empire has reaped a rich return for the blood and treasure that ahe has expended upon India. Lord Curaon reminds us how Indian labour is helping to build up the Empire in Egypt, in the Soudan, in Demerara, and in Natal; how Indian troops have helped to defend the Empire in South Africa, in Somalilnnd, and in China; and how the well guarded frontier of India has become the strongest defensible boundary of the Empire against its most dangerous foe. Already the growing prosperity of India ii at least in part a recompense for England's exertions on her behalf; but we may look for an infinitely richer material reward when once India

under England's guidance has definitely taken her place among the great industrial nations of the earth. There is a school of thinkers and writers which holds that, in spite of all that England has done for India, the effects of the British occupation can never be permanent, and are Liable at any moment to be submerged beneath a rising wave of national feeling. "Beneath the small film of white men who make up the Indian Empire," writes one eloqnent Orientalist, "'boils, or sleeps away, a sea of dark men incurably hostile, who await with patience the day when the ice shall break and the ocean regain its power of restless movement under its own laws." When the ice does break, we may expect a cataclysm to which the Mutiny of 1857 would be a very trivial incident. A great defeat experienced anywhere by iingland, but more especially at the hands of Russia, might bring on an insurrection, and when once the white garrison was overwhelmed there would be nothing with which to continue the contest. British rule in India would in a moment crumble to the dust, and 1 all its works would perish. In the opinion of the writers from whom we have quoted, the English, if they departed, or were driven out, "would leave behind them, as the Romans did in Britain, splendid roads, many useless J buildings, an increased weakness in the 'subject people, and a memory which in a century of new events would be extinct." This pessimistic view of India's future is based, of course, upon the assumption that there is so deep a gull' fixed by nature between the East and the West that no form oa European civilisation can ever permanently impress itself upon the Oriental world. But it is consoling to see that these despondent views are not shared by Lord Curzon. "If our Empire were to end to-morrow," he writes, "I do not think that we would need to be ed of its epitaph. But it is not going to end. It is still in its youth, and has iv it the unexhausted purpose. Our work is righteous, and it shall endure;" and with its endurance we may .safely predict a constant increase oi moral and material strength to the Empire of which India already forms so great and valuable a part.