THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9122, 23 June 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

Indian Women and Indian Missions.—An Unspbaiubm Road—Tims' Enormity op Johnbonvillts. Miss Fulcher, a missionary whose work lies principally in Indian zenanas, has been speaking here in Wellington. I have nothing to say against missions to India, except that perchance it might be well to pluck the beam from our own eye before we troubled about the mote in the eye of the Buddhist and Hindu. The missionaries are often sincere and fervently honest folk, and they unquestionably do guod work among the poor. But Miss Fulcher strays into politics. She calls the Bengalis "the people of all the people in India the laast fitted to be entrusted with self--go/ernment;" and that is flat nonsense. Miss Fulcher is settled on the Bombay side* where there ara very few Bengalis. I lived in Calcutta, and was closely associated with Bengalis during the whole period of my residence u\ India. If any race in India is fitted for self-government (although it is not easy to determine exactly what that means), that race ii emphatically the Bengali. Next j woulu come the small Parsi com- 1 munity on the Bombay side. But t*r> ParpK like the British, are aliens in India; thay must be left out oj. toe consideration. There is a greater (solidarity among the people of B j n;a> tnan amon<r any other of the Indian peoples, and a vastly more progressive spirit. They are the only peaple in India with any well-defined political ambitions. One of the finest Parliamentary speakers 1 ever heard was a Bengali; and some of the ripest scholars I have ever met were Bengalis. Mind you, I don't believe that any Indian race is fitted out for self-government, as we understand the term; but the Bengalis as less unfit than the others. It was of another quite misleading remark of Miss Fulcher's that I set out to speak—her statement that "the women of India can only be reached through the zenana." This is just as though one should say that the women of England can only be reached ( through the titled classes or the ladies of the lyric stage. The vast majority of the women of India are jiot, and never have been, immured in zenanas. The average Indian is a terribly poor man, and he could not afford to lock away his wife and daughters, even if he desired it. You may see the women of India unveiled in thousands and tens of thousands about the streets of all the cities; and by comparison with the multitude of them the women of the zenanao count at most as tens. To influence any nation through its women, you must begin with the women of the people. If ever you come across a Welling-

ton man who is exalting his metropolis and condemning country roads, your course is clear. Wait till he takes time to breathe, and then say "Ngahauranga!" If that doesn't settle him, you can give him up as impossible. The road to Ngahauranga is Wellington's inimitable concession to the spirit of the dark ages. I ought to know it ; I've swum it. It was the other afternoon. We set out to walk to Johnsonville. From town to Kaiwarra it is reasonably decent going. Beyond Kaiwarra the footpaths end and'the trouble begins. Kight before you there stretches a channel of treacherous mud. To attempt to pick .your way is sheer waste of time. You have just to

take your chances, and if you are ilot smothered, you can solace yourself with the reflection that the gods have destined you to a better death—a worse one were impossible. Occasionally a motor-car may flounder past you. Then, as you stand still, saying nothing as you scoop the mud out of your eyes and mouth, a horse will rush desperately by. I am an avowed enemy of cruelty to animals, and I say that in any humane civiisation no man would be allowed to subject a dumb creature to the perils of the road. We got through eventually, my friend and I; but nobody could have recognised us except by our fervent talk. It is a delightful walk up the Ngahauranga Gorge; but when you are Bheeted and armoured with mud you don't enjoy it as you ought. At Johnsonville there is a hotel wherei you may drown dis-

gust in lemonade. Johnsonville! Was there ever a place-name more barren of comeliness and charm, more utterly stupid and bourgeois? As a name, it is vastly less picturesque and pleasing than Murderer's Gulch or Dry Dog, McNab is greatly to be preferred. The mere sound of it is enough to make Christian citizens go out in a great host incontinently to hang and destroy everybody of the name of Johnson. I'm sorry to have such a statement forced from me, because 1 have known some very decent fellows named John r on. There was Tom Johnaon. He lived a blameless life, marrie 1 an evangelistic widow with a good estata, and fell into Vesuvius or some other old place like that while 1 on his honeymoon. I had always wept for Johnson's untimely end until I came across the village ,of Johnsonville; but now I chortle. I knew a missionary named Johnson. He came from a pretty little place called Bugthatch, Illinois, and he was a man of sweet and yielding disposition, and a very gentle.spirit. I was terribly shocked when, I heard that ohe wicked Chinese had drowned him in boiling oil on a very high mountain in Central China; but I can't help being glad now;. What's the good of living a quiet life and person tly striving to be kind and good, when people call a place Johnsonville?