FIRST SIGHT OF INDIA.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1359, 9 February 1912, Page 2

FIRST SIGHT OF INDIA.

AN EDITOR'S IMPRESSIONS. Mr. J. A. Spender, the editor or the "Westminster Gazette,'' thus describes hi.s first sight of India:— "The lir-t sight of India leaves the mind in n whirl. I understand now why Anglo-Indian writers have found it necessary to invent a language of their own, consisting largely of untranslatable anil unintelligible heathen words. For liom- ) bay is lull of a multitude of things for which ]. am unable to find a nam:'. "I never imagined such variety (of people) as Bimiliay displays iu its circuit of twenty miles. Close-Packed Multitude. "I have some acquaintance, with tho East End of London and its crowded tenements, but nowhere in London or iu any European city that I know, except possibly iu one quarter of Naples, have 1 ever seen anything like this swarming, vivid, various humanity. "No multitude eouhl live thus closepacked without establishing sumo rougn rule of mutual forbearance. Yet thr.sj who know them will tell you that this immense jumble of humanity sorts itself into hundred-; of intensely separate little heaps, each of which is guarded from the others by an unimaginable code of I;.ilt- 01 prejudice. '.'Bombay must be the despair of the Indian sanitary reformer; The grey and brown slums of an English town are bad enough, but these brilliant, bizarre, sun-smitten slums of Bombay, with the plague iu their dark place*, give you a shudder such as you could get in no northern country. There is, one feels instinctively, something poisonous in their glittering squalor. Nothing would help but a lire which, swept them all away. The Handful of Rulers. "It does in a measure take your breath away to find tho handful of the ruling race asserting themselves so absolutely over these rich and successful men of business men who veritably possess the place, who have made large fortunes as merchants and cotton-spinners, and who are obviously no whit inferior in the managing capacity to the ablest of Europeans. It is as though Manchester or Liverpool were being governed by a liandtul of Civil Servants sent, not from London, but from Berlin. Vet, if you ask the question, you are told at once, that these men have no grievance. British rule, and British alone, has provided them with the opportunity of making their fortunes, and like capitalists everywhere, they cry out for security. "Von must l>c a very forlorn man in Bombay if you have not a friend to tako you to the Yacht Club. There towards sunset you will find the English colony assembled on a green lawn fronting the sea. which might be anywhero in England. "While you aro hero you forget tho great, seething, niiasmic city behind you, and wonder at the cheerfulness, smartness, good looks, and good maimers of the Bombay English and their womenkind. Civilians or soldiers, they are clearly a strong, self-reliant, well-favour-ed race, with an indefinable air of being in authority. 'It is an authority, however, which is never flaunted. No Big Talk. "You hear no big talk; it is, indeed, the most; difficult thing in the world to induce any of them to talk at all about themselves or their duties. They seem to take for granted that they should be there and doing what they are doing. The first dominant impression one bears away is that they have a great interest iu governing and none at all in possessing."