A mighty personage in present-day Calcutta is General Viscount Kitchener, commander-in-chief of the Indian army. In Egypt he reformed the nature of the Nile peasant to the extent of making good fighters of the sons of the cravens of Tel-el-Kebir; good enough, when led by British officers, to annihilate the army of the Khalifa; and in South Africa Kitchener wound up with success a war that had been horribly bungled by others. Military critics had long been aware that the army of India was antiquated, honeycombed with dry-rot, and largely ruled by favorites sitting in high places at Whitehall. Consequently, Kitchener was sent to India with instructions conferring almost plenary power to reorganize the forces, British as well as native. He prefers work to participating in the social game.
In England there is a growing desire that finds expression frequently in the newspapers for Kitchener's translation from Calcutta to the War Office in London, from whence the British army as a whole might profit by the trenchant efforts of the Irish soldier who has seldom blundered. As commander in India Lord Kitchener is paid a lakh of rupees a year—$32,000, and heads an army of 242,000 men—77,000 British and 165,000 native troops.
The lieutenant-governor of Bengal, always spoken of as the "L. G." resides in Calcutta and works in close relationship with the viceroy. This British functionary administers the affairs of a territory but one twentieth the area of the United States, but which possesses 75,000,000 people.
And what is this India, governed by Great Britain through its delegated officials? It is a country greater than all Europe, omitting Russia, and fully half as large as the United States. Its population numbers 300,000,000, and is the most heterogeneous of any land in the world—were there homogeneity, or anything approaching it, a mere handful of Britons could not hope to control a fifth part of the people of the earth. India is made up of a multiplicity of races and tribes, professing every religion of paganism; and these are separated by thousands upon thousands of castes each going its own distinct and peculiar way. Great Britain's control of these teeming millions is unique in the history of oversea rule. India is almost exclusively agricultural, and in sections of Bengal averages 900 people to the square mile. At the beginning of 1906 the government had brought 14,000,000 acres of waste land under cultivation by irrigation upon an expenditure of $135,000,000. India now has 215 cotton mills, which employ a capital of $70,000,000, and last year's jute product of Bengal alone was valued at $70,000,000. The Indian Empire is ponderous and complex from any point of view. Possessing but half the area of the United States, it represents one seventh of the British Empire, and more than seven times the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland. It should not be assumed that the whole of India is under British rule, for practically a third of the country is still governed by independent native princes. With almost four times the population of the United
States, India supports less than 29,000 miles of railway, as against 215,000 miles in the great republic—and this difference makes the contrast between Asiatic conservatism and New World progress.
CALCUTTA COOLIES
The person demanding physical statistics gets enough pabulum in a day's search to keep the machinery of the mind going for months, and must be amazed when learning that there are seven hundred and twenty-one distinct languages and dialects spoken in India; that the population has trebled with the British occupation; that for every insane person in India there are thirteen in Europe,—the words "placid East" purveying the explanation. Taking the country by and large it is claimed that only one male in ten and only one female out of a hundred and forty-four, can read and write; and it is said by British residents in the land that the native knows no such thing as scholarship—he learns everything by rote, even to the extent of perfect recitation, without comprehending the meaning of the wards he is uttering. It is the nature of illiterate Hindus to resort to the extremest extravagance in nearly every statement, and it is not uncommon for report to have it that an Englishman has spoken abusively of a hundred thousand good Hindus, when that individual has merely intimated to a native servant that he would like his morning meal served with more punctuality. The illiterate Hindu, it is interesting to know, believes that the human soul passes through eight million reincarnations. When this child of the East deals with numbers his tongue runs into meaningless extravagance, and there appears to be no communion between his intellect and speech.
While marriage is universal in India, if not obligatory, the custom forbidding the remarriage of widows works an injustice to the sex amounting to national disgrace. A Hindu maiden who at twelve or thirteen is unmarried brings social obloquy on her family and entails retrospective damnation on three generations of ancestors. A Hindu man must marry and beget children to make certain of his funeral rites, lest his spirit wander uneasily in the waste places of the earth or be precipitated into the temporary hell called Put. The last available census discloses the astonishing fact that there are twenty-six million widows in India, meaning that out of every hundred women at least fourteen have been bereft of their husbands, and consequently are no better than human derelicts upon the earth. It is a teaching of the abominable Hindu faith that the bridegroom cometh but once. A pundit of the belief will argue that the practical reason for prohibiting remarriage is to prevent the crowding of the marriage market—and this is the only "reason" that can be extracted from one claiming to speak with knowledge on the unfortunate subject. The enlightened Gaekwar of Baroda, devoting influence and fortune to the moral uplifting of the people of his land, pronounces the custom forbidding the remarriage of widows to be a national curse exceeded only by that compassed by the word "caste."