From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

Nor does English engineering skill expend itself on railroads alone. It has dug canals that are like rivers in their length. The Ganges Canal in Upper India is a work equal to our Erie Canal. Other canals have been opened, both for commerce and for irrigation. The latter is a matter vital to India. The food of the Hindoos is rice, and rice cannot be cultivated except in fields well watered. A drought in the rice fields means a famine in the province. Such a calamity is now averted in many places by this artificial irrigation. The overflow from these streams, which are truly "fountains in the desert," has kept whole districts from being burnt up, by which in former years millions perished by famine.

While thus caring for the material comfort and safety of the people of India, England has also shown regard to their enlightenment in providing a magnificent system of National Education. Every town in India has its government school, while many a large city has its college or its university. Indeed, so far has this matter of education been carried, that I heard a fear expressed that it was being overdone—at least the higher education—because the young men so educated were unfitted for anything else than the employ of the government. All minor places in India are filled by natives, and well filled too. But there are not enough for all. And hence many, finding no profession to enter, and educated above the ordinary occupations of natives, are left stranded on the shore.

These great changes in India, these schools and colleges, the better administration of the laws, and these vast internal improvements, have been almost wholly the work of the generation now living. In the first century of its dominion the English rule perhaps deserved the bitter censure of Burke, but

"If 'twere so, it were a grievous fault,

And grievously hath Cæsar answered it."

England has paid for the misgovernment of India in the blood of her children, and within the last few years she has striven nobly to repair the errors of former times. Thus one generation makes atonement for the wrongs of another. She has learned that justice is the highest wisdom, and the truest political economy. The change is due in part to the constant pressure of the Christian sentiment of England upon its government, which has compelled justice to India, and wrought those vast changes which we see with wonder and admiration.

Thus stretching out her mighty arm over India, England rules the land from sea to sea. I say not that she rules it in absolute righteousness—that her government is one of ideal perfection, but it is immeasurably better than that of the old native tyrants which it displaced. It at least respects the forms of law, and while it establishes peace, it endeavors also to maintain justice. The railroads that pierce the vast interior quicken the internal commerce of the country, while the waters that are caused to flow over the rice-fields of Bengal abate the horrors of pestilence and famine. Thus England gives to her Asiatic empire the substantial benefits of modern civilization; while in her schools and colleges she brings the subtle Hindoo mind into contact with the science and learning of the West. At so many points does this foreign rule touch the very life of India, and infuse the best blood of Europe into her languid veins.

With such results of English rule, who would not wish that it might continue? It is not that we love the Hindoo less, but the cause of humanity more. The question of English rule in India is a question of civilization against barbarism. These are the two forces now in conflict for the mastery of Asia. India is the place where the two seas meet. Shall she be left to herself, shut up between her seas and her mountains? That would be an unspeakable calamity, not only to her present inhabitants, but to unborn millions. I believe in modern civilization, as I believe in Christianity. These are the great forces which are to conquer the world. In conquering Asia, they will redeem it and raise it to a new life. The only hope of Asia is from Europe:

"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay;"

and the only hope of India is from England. So whatever contests may yet arise for the control of this vast peninsula, with its two hundred millions of people, our sympathies must always be against Asiatic barbarism, and on the side of European civilization.