The Case for India | Page 2

which lead us to Liberty's altar:
These, O men, shall ye honour, Liberty only and these. For thy sake
and for all men's and mine, Brother, the crowns of them shine, Lighting
the way to her shrine, That our eyes may be fastened upon her, That our
hands may encompass her knees.
Not for me to praise him in feeble words of reverence or of homage.

His deeds praise him, and his service to his country is his abiding glory.
Our gratitude will be best paid by following in his footsteps, alike in his
splendid courage and his unfaltering devotion, so that we may win the
Home Rule which he longed to see while with us, and shall see, ere
long, from the other world of Life, in which he dwells to-day.
CHAPTER I.
PRE-WAR MILITARY EXPENDITURE.
The Great War, into the whirlpool of which Nation after Nation has
been drawn, has entered on its fourth year. The rigid censorship which
has been established makes it impossible for any outside the circle of
Governments to forecast its duration, but to me, speaking for a moment
not as a politician but as a student of spiritual laws, to me its end is sure.
For the true object of this War is to prove the evil of, and to destroy,
autocracy and the enslavement of one Nation by another, and to place
on sure foundations the God-given Right to Self-Rule and
Self-Development of every Nation, and the similar right of the
Individual, of the smaller Self, so far as is consistent with the welfare
of the larger Self of the Nation. The forces which make for the
prolongation of autocracy--the rule of one--and the even deadlier
bureaucracy--the rule of a close body welded into an iron system--these
have been gathered together in the Central Powers of Europe--as of old
in Ravana--in order that they may be destroyed; for the New Age
cannot be opened until the Old passes away. The new civilisation of
Righteousness and Justice, and therefore of Brotherhood, of ordered
Liberty, of Peace, of Happiness, cannot be built up until the elements
are removed which have brought the old civilisation crashing about our
ears. Therefore is it necessary that the War shall be fought out to its
appointed end, and that no premature peace shall leave its object
unattained. Autocracy and bureaucracy must perish utterly, in East and
West, and, in order that their germs may not re-sprout in the future,
they must be discredited in the minds of men. They must be proved to
be less efficient than the Governments of Free Peoples, even in their
favourite work of War, and their iron machinery--which at first brings
outer prosperity and success--must be shown to be less lasting and

effective than the living and flexible organisations of democratic
Peoples. They must be proved failures before the world, so that the
glamour of superficial successes may be destroyed for ever. They have
had their day and their place in evolution, and have done their
educative work. Now they are out-of-date, unfit for survival, and must
vanish away.
When Great Britain sprang to arms, it was in defence of the freedom of
a small nation, guaranteed by treaties, and the great principles she
proclaimed electrified India and the Dominions. They all sprang to her
side without question, without delay; they heard the voice of old
England, the soldier of Liberty, and it thrilled their hearts. All were
unprepared, save the small territorial army of Great Britain, due to the
genius and foresight of Lord Haldane, and the readily mobilised army
of India, hurled into the fray by the swift decision of Lord Hardinge.
The little army of Britain fought for time; fought to stop the road to
Paris, the heart of France; fought, falling back step by step, and gained
the time it fought for, till India's sons stood on the soil of France, were
flung to the front, rushed past the exhausted regiments who cheered
them with failing breath, charged the advancing hosts, stopped the
retreat, and joined the British army in forming that unbreakable line
which wrestled to the death through two fearful winters--often, these
soldiers of the tropics, waist-deep in freezing mud--and knew no
surrender.
India, with her clear vision, saw in Great Britain the champion of
Freedom, in Germany the champion of Despotism. And she saw rightly.
Rightly she stood by Great Britain, despite her own lack of freedom
and the coercive legislation which outrivalled German despotism,
knowing these to be temporary, because un-English, and therefore
doomed to destruction; she spurned the lure of German gold and
rejected German appeals to revolt. She offered men and money; her
educated classes, her Vakils, offered themselves as Volunteers, pleaded
to be accepted. Then the never-sleeping distrust of Anglo-India rejected
the offer, pressed