The Daily News. MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1911. BRITAIN IN INDIA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 141, 11 December 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1911. BRITAIN IN INDIA.

At historic Delhi, in a great Empire teeming with myriads of the King's colored subjects, a wonderful thing is happening. These teeming millions of 'a land that was subtly wise and wonderfully advanced in the arts and sciences ages before the King's renjote ancestors had emerged from savagedom are acclaiming him Emperor. India, its wonders, its glories, its wealth and its story, reaching back into the shadowy centuries, has always been, and still is, an unsolved mystery. A land that has never shown any genius for self-govern-ment, but which, however, contains millions of people of high intellect, great courage and infinite resource, is placidly content to permit many of its great affairs of government to be managed by a handful of white people under a white emperor. Few of the wonders of the Land of Mystery are more wonderful than this. A curiously proud race, from the great millionaire rajahs to the meanest punkah-wallah who lives on a few pence a day, knowing their strength, they yet obey without protest the will of the white man. No people are so apt to decry the "slowness" of Britons as the British, but even Britons may sometimes admit that the race has an enviable genius for controlling and managing the affairs of other people. The administration of India is one of the greatest achievements of the British people, and it is safe to say no other people could obtain and maintain the fealty and respect of the innumerable sects inhabiting the vast empire. The history of the British occupancy of India is a history of unparalleled achievement, and it is solely by this achievement that she has maintained her position. Even in the past fifty years the advancement that has been gently forced on India without great offence to a fatalistic folk, whose mental point of view scarcely changes with the march of the centuries, is a romance in work. Britain has had to be particularly careful, and still Is careful, to avoid trampling upon the religious susceptibilities of the people, and

by inviting and obtaining the aid of the powerful native princes and rajahs she has quietly pushed reforms that match oddly with the ancient usages still ex : isting. If some educational reforms have made caricatures of what are known as the "babus," and if the semi-Anglicised Hindoo has spurned thei hand that fed him and has spoken of "nationalism," the sporadic but small revolts are firmly quelled. Britain does not "advertise" her frequent frontier affairs in India, and does not, indeed, become hysterical over > slight sectional disturbances. Her reserve and calmness is admired and respected by the bulk of the natives, who are themselves most grave and reserved. The British in India hive fought the pestilences which swept at intervals through the land century after century. The fatalistic Hindoo simply accepted what he believed to be the inevitable. The practieal Briton quietly fought disease and (without saying so) scoffed at its inevitability. Britain has taught India to live, and although she has never been able to deal with the griping poverty of the millions, she has made their poverty less apparent by undertaking great engineering enterprises, gigantic schemes of irrigation and water conservation, big railways, forest conservation and the quiet abolition of many murderous practices, of which the "Suttee" (the' burning of a widow) is an example. Not the least of the great feats of government is the magnificent native army, loyal, wonderfully proficient and magnificently equippped. Unaggressive British discipline makes the keeping of India possible and the loyalty of the people as- i sured. The special crowning of King George V. as Emperor of India has a. vast diplomatic significance, and the careful Iplanning and performance of the gorgeous ceremonial is the outcome of generations of study of the native clharactejr. The effect of the presence of the Emperor and Empress among the people of India, to whom the idea of power has always been conveyed Iby display, is a carefully arranged matter, the significance of whiah. is- only denied by men of the 'Keir Hardie type. We are told, for instance, that at Delhi the King rode' alone. This is significant, because it illustrates the point that Britain is not afraid to trust her King to go unguarded among any of his subjects. The elaborate precautions taken in some European I countries to guard Sovereigns, even in the vicinity of a royal residence, can he i dispensed with in the case Of a British sovereign riding through myriads of colored people in a subject land. The British training of distinguished Hindoosthere are many in the great British universities—has the effect of making them powerful for necessary reform on returning to India, and it is very curious- that although the classes ar J castes are more sharply defined in the Indian Empire than anywhere else in the world China excepted—organised or considerable antagonism between native rulers and people, native rules and the "British Rap," or the "British Kaj» and the masses is unusual. If £here is ever 'to ■.be trouble in India, it will come when the long sleeping minds of the masses resent the enormous disparity between the wealth of the native rulers and the poverty of the masses, and it is a triumph of British occupancy to have a firm hand on the innumerable elements that make up the Land of Mystery. The personal visit of the Emperor and Empress, with their special coronation in India, is an additional triumph. and 1 must be of inestimable service in quelling those sporadic outbursts of disloyalty or sedition that have caused some unrest.