Mar. 17.
Students of history are well aware that, at certain times, waves of unrest pais over peoples leading. to fundamental changes in their manner of thought and habits of life, We joe this fact exemplified in the. lives of animals even more clearly than amongst mankind. Deer trek to the north, or seek the uplands, in summer. Eels and salmon leave the sea at certain seasons and, for a time, become fresh water fishes, accomplishing extraordinary feats in their determined efforts to reach the new surroundings their nature demands. The lemmings, small rat-like creatures that have their habitat in Northern -Scandinavia, are overcome, at intervals of 2 few years by a passion to travel and, in vast herds, rush headlong to the sea into which they precipitate themselves and swim outwards till, exhausted, they sink and drown in the blue water. It is an extraordinary phenomenon which some scientists account for on the hypothesis that in remote antiquity there was some land on which the progenitors of these rodents landed. The land has now vanished but the inherited asserts itself still. Others aver that these animals multiply so rapidly that nature has to. thin them out and adopts this method of readjusting the balance between food and existence. Examples of migrations of races are found in the entrance of the Aryans into India, the irruption of Goths into central Europe and the emigration of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races into America. Economic causes, the urge for food, a desire for better conditions of life, are at the root of all those movements and revolutions, in the course of which "the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang oft agley."
The great war set free new. tides of discontent which changed the face of Europe and had a repercussion, almost as great, on the peoples of Asia, The eyes of the world are, for the moment, fixed on India where the unrest has surged: up into a movement that, unless wisely guided, may eventuate in a catastrophe. India demands self-government. Britain has promised that she shall have Dominion Status, which is self-government, but Gandhi and his followers (who are by no means to be called India) demand complete independence now. This not being granted he initiates.a cam-
Paign of defiance of the Jaw and calls it "civil disobedience." But Gandhi's presumption to speal for India is evident on. facts. There are 60,000,000 "untouchables". who would: rather be dead than placed under the rule'of high: caste Indians, There are 72,000,000 Indians living under the rule of native princes who are as much opposed to Gandhi as Gandhi is to. Great Britain. And there' are 70,000,- 000 Moslems who hate him no less. If the unthinkable were to happen and Britain were to say to Gandhi "Here is India, you rule it" the result would: be, not Utopia, but instant anarchy. Britain did not win India by the sword nor does she hold the sword, When she took possession of India the land was torn and bleeding from incessant internecine war, among the forty different races speaking one hundred and fifty diverse dialects, in that great continent. Britain has given India a peace such as she never previously enjoyed in the course of her long history. Banditry, once the scourge of every town and. village in India has been suppressed and the poorest ryot holds his possessions with as much security as the wealthiest prince, The menace of famine, always peeping over the shoulder of the farmer, has been banished from India by the 40,000 miles of railway and 20,000 miles of canals, Yor irrigation purposes, constructed since the land came under British rule. The schoolmaster, too, is abroad in the land and, though 92 per cent. of the dwellers in villages are illiterate, knowledge does filter down and the grosser supersti+ tions have been rudely shaken. The abolition of Suttee was carried out against the bitter opposition of the majority of Indians and, with shame be it spoken, of some Anglo-Indians. And there remains much to be done. An act has been passed raising the age at which a female may be married to. fourteen surely low enough in all conscience, but the census of 1921 showed that there were then in India 8,665,537 wives under fifteen, here were also at that date 218,000 child wives and 16,000 child: widows under five, Also two million wives and a hundred and two thousand widows between five and ten, Since the act has been passed.
has been a. rush to effect lage before the law, comes into operation. It is rank hypocrisy to talk of pride of race and the sanction of ancient laws for these things, but nothing can make that right which transgresses every sentiment of decency and outrages the sanctity of childhood. Britain is a trustee for the oppressed races and for the defenceless childhood of India. Self-government for India will surely come but not, we hope, until the conscience of India is as firmly set against these customs as is that, of every ized country in the world.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.