PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON INDIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3137, 13 March 1909, Page 4

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON INDIA.

Speaking in January at the celebrations of the diamond jubilee of the establishment of the Machodi-t Episcopal Church of Africa, Mr Roosevelt said that th« expansion of tha white races and European blood over so much of the earth's surface during the past four centuries had been fraught on the whole with lasting benefit to the native races dwelling in the lands overrun. The English administration of India, he declared, was a greater feat than any performed under the Roman Empire. It was easy enough to point out shortcom-

ings, but the fact remained that it had been one of the most notable and admirable achievements of the white race for two centuries. "Undoubt, edly," he continued, "India is a less pleasant place than it was formerly, for the heads of tyrannical States. There is little or no room in it for successful freebooter chieftains avA despots, who lived in gorgeous splendour, while under their cruel rule the immense mass of their countrymen festered in sodden misery. But the mass of the people have been, and are, far better off than ever before; far better off than they would be now if English control, were overthrown ! or withdrawn. Indeed, if English control were now withdrawn from India, the whole peninsula would become a chaos of bloodshed and violence. All the weaker peoples and the most industrious and law-abiding would be plundered and forced to submit to indescribable wrong and oppression. The only beneficiaries among the natives would be the lawless, the violent, and the bloodthirsty."