True, it may be possible to keep this deadly enemy at bay by multiplying our hospital fortresses and putting into the field medical legions armed with the latest discoveries of science. But the requisite paraphernalia is too expensive for a country like India; and who does not know that well-fed bodies, and healthy homes are better safeguards against disease than all the most costly medicines that could be provided by the British pharmacopoeia? If therefore we are able to deal radically with destitution we shall at the same time strike an effective blow at the pestilences which are at present such a scourge to India.
2. Again I would like to remind my readers of another fact, and in this aspect of the question, all classes of the community are bound to be interested. If pestilence begins its deadly work among the destitute, it can never be reckoned on to stop there. Indeed pestilence may be regarded as Nature's revenge on society for the neglect of the poor. Once the cholera fiend has broken loose, it is impossible to tell whom he is going to select for his victims. The rich, the fair, the learned, the young, the strong, are often the first objects of his attention. He manifests a reckless disregard of social position. The distinctions of caste and rank, of beauty or learning, are not for him. And even as I write he may be preparing his invisible hordes of bacilli for fresh invasions, more terrible than those that have ever swept down from the mountains of Afghanistan. While we are spending millions upon strengthening our North-Western Frontiers against a foe who may never exist, save in our imagination, can we dare to neglect the more terrible enemy who defies all Boundary Commissions, who overleaps the strongest fortresses, and who laughs to scorn the largest cannon that ever capped our walls?
3. Finally there is one very sad shade in this part of our picture of darkest India. If on the one hand pestilence may be said to somewhat thin the ranks of the destitute by decreasing the number of mouths requiring to be fed, it must be remembered on the other hand that it continually recruits them both by sweeping away so many of the breadwinners, and by frequently paralysing many of those who are left, and preventing them from earning what they otherwise might. How often do we hear of even public institutions having to be closed, and of thousands being thrown out of work by the panic which ensues at such times.
I have sought to confine myself to a matter-of-fact description of this gloomy subject, and to avoid anything that could be construed into mere sensationalism. And yet deaf must be the ears, and hard must be the hearts, that can be insensible to the cries of agony that yearly ascend from thousands and tens of thousands of homes. In a recent Government report, I find that from cholera alone in one year there were reported no less than 300,000 deaths; and yet the year was not remarkable for any exceptional outbreak. Still more terrible and regular are the ravages of the various malarial fevers, that sweep away millions yearly to a premature grave, often just in the prime of life, when they are most needed by the country. That a very large percentage of these deaths are directly connected with destitution, and that pestilence frequently but finishes the work commenced by months and years of starvation, is too notorious to require proof. It is a melancholy picture, and yet without it our review of Darkest India would be necessarily incomplete.
CHAPTER XI.
THE WHITE ANTS OF INDIAN SOCIETY.
Hitherto our description of the Submerged Tenth has concerned those who may be styled principally the children of misfortune, and who in their struggle for existence have resort to means which are indeed desperate in their nature, but against which no moral objection can be raised.
General Booth next calls attention to another great section of the Submerged Tenth who have found a temporary shelter or asylum in the temple of Vice,—those who either trade upon the sins of society, or are the miserable victims of those sins. The unlawful gratification of the natural appetites has ever been the snare by which millions have been deluded to damnation. If it were possible to combat this tendency in human nature by mere legal enactments, it would have been done long ago. But though much has been done in this way to hold vice in check, and to prevent it from openly parading itself in public as it otherwise would, yet it has chiefly been by the chains of religion that the monster has been bound, and even his legal shackles have mostly been manufactured at the anvils of the religious public. Take for instance the wholesale prohibition of intoxicating liquor by the Mahommedan religion, or again the strong Temperance movement that has more lately been established among Christians. The former has no doubt accomplished what would never have been done by means of legal enactments, while the latter has first educated the public on the Temperance question and has thus prepared the way for prohibitory legislation of a more stringent character.
In dealing with this portion of the Submerged Tenth there can be no doubt that the religious and moral appeals of the Salvation Army Officers will serve to stimulate and enforce wholesale reformation. By substituting the attractions of our public meetings, we shall do much to counteract those of the liquor den and other factories of pollution and destitution,—for it is as such that we may regard the places where drunkards, opium-eaters, prostitutes, fornicators, and the other hideous satellites of Vice are manufactured wholesale, whether with or without the shelter of a license. A large proportion of those who are engaged in vice as a trade openly profess to do so as a means of subsistence, and because it enables them to eke out what is in nine cases out of ten but a scanty subsistence, and what is almost invariably accompanied by the most terrible penalties Nature can inflict on those who outrage her ordinances. Many are heartily sick of the trade, but can see no way of escape. In dealing with destitution we shall open for these a door of hope. The deserters from the ranks of those who trade in vice will help us to deal more effectively with those who still cling to the profession on account of its profits.
In dealing with the panderers to the vices of society we shall largely diminish the numbers of its victims. It has been said that sinning is very much a matter of temptation, and in reducing those temptations, as we believe General Booth's scheme will largely tend to do, we shall be able to reduce in quantity, if we cannot hope to cause altogether to cease, the frightful holocaust of human victims that is annually offered up at this dark shrine.