The Case for India | Page 4

the natural tendencies of her martial
races had been permitted their previous scope; but the disarming of the
people, 20 years after the assumption of the Government by the Crown,
emasculated the Nation, and the elimination of races supposed to be
unwarlike, or in some cases too warlike to be trusted, threw recruitment

more and more to the north, and lowered the physique of the Bengalis
and Madrasis, on whom the Company had largely depended.
The superiority of the Punjab, on which Sir Michael O'Dwyer so
vehemently insisted the other day, is an artificial superiority, created by
the British system and policy; and the poor recruitment elsewhere, on
which he laid offensive insistence, is due to the same system and policy,
which largely eliminated Bengalis, Madrasis and Mahrattas from the
army. In Bengal, however, the martial type has been revived, chiefly in
consequence of what the Bengalis felt to be the intolerable insult of the
high-handed Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon.
On this Gopal Krishna Gokhale said:
Bengal's heroic stand against the oppression of a harsh and
uncontrolled bureaucracy has astonished and gratified all India.... All
India owes a deep debt of gratitude to Bengal.
The spirit evoked showed itself in the youth of Bengal by a practical
revolt, led by the elders, while it was confined to Swadeshi and Boycott,
and rushing on, when it broke away from their authority, into
conspiracy, assassination and dacoity: as had happened in similar
revolts with Young Italy, in the days of Mazzini, and with Young
Russia in the days of Stepniak and Kropotkin. The results of their
despair, necessarily met by the halter and penal servitude, had to be
faced by Lord Hardinge and Lord Carmichael during the present War.
Other results, happy instead of disastrous in their nature, was the
development of grit and endurance of a high character, shown in the
courage of the Bengal lads in the serious floods that have laid parts of
the Province deep under water, and in their compassion and
self-sacrifice in the relief of famine. Their services in the present
War--the Ambulance Corps and the replacement of its materiel when
the ship carrying it sank, with the splendid services rendered by it in
Mesopotamia; the recruiting of a Bengali regiment for active service,
900 strong, with another 900 reserves to replace wastage, and recruiting
still going on--these are instances of the divine alchemy which brings
the soul of good out of evil action, and consecrates to service the
qualities evoked by rebellion.

In England, also, a similar result has been seen in a convict, released to
go to the front, winning the Victoria Cross. It would be an act of
statesmanship, as well as of divinest compassion, to offer to every
prisoner and interned captive, held for political crime or on political
suspicion, the opportunity of serving the Empire at the front. They
might, if thought necessary, form a separate battalion or a separate
regiment, under stricter supervision, and yet be given a chance of
redeeming their reputation, for they are mostly very young.
The financial burden incurred in consequence of the above conflicts,
and of other causes, now to be mentioned, would not have been so
much resented, if it had been imposed by India on herself, and if her
own sons had profited by her being used as a training ground for the
Empire. But in this case, as in so many others, she has shared Imperial
burdens, while not sharing Imperial freedom and power. Apart from
this, the change which made the Army so ruinous a burden on the
resources of the country was the system of "British reliefs," the using of
India as a training ground for British regiments, and the transfer of the
men thus trained, to be replaced by new ones under the short service
system, the cost of the frequent transfers and their connected expenses
being charged on the Indian revenues, while the whole advantage was
reaped by Great Britain. On the short service system the Simla Army
Commission declared:
The short service system recently introduced into the British Army has
increased the cost and has materially reduced the efficiency of the
British troops in India. We cannot resist the feeling that, in the
introduction of this system, the interest of the Indian tax-payer was
entirely left out of consideration.
The remark was certainly justified, for the short service system gave
India only five years of the recruits she paid heavily for and trained, all
the rest of the benefit going to England. The latter was enabled, as the
years went on, to enormously increase her Reserves, so that she has had
400,000 men trained in, and at the cost of, India.
In 1863 the Indian army consisted of 140,000 men, with 65,000 white
officers. Great changes were