But never has it occurred to an English government as now to the Liberal government, to oppose black infidels to Christian Europeans! That is a crime against culture, against civilization and against Christianity. And if the English missionaries approve it, then are they hypocrites and false bearers of the Gospel.
India's English rulers despise—and rightfully—all marital relations between whites and Hindoos; the children of such marriages are regarded as mules, and are often called such; they are neither horse nor ass, they are half caste. In Calcutta they have their own quarter and are allowed to live in no other part of the city. But—when it comes to the question of overthrowing the "German barbarians," then an alliance with the bronze-skinned people is good enough for England!
Is it one of the twentieth century's worthy advances in culture and civilization that the unsuspecting Indian is brought hundreds of miles over land and sea that he may on the battlefields of Europe drive to destruction the first soldiers of the world, the German army? Even though some may answer this question in the affirmative, I hold unshaken to my assertion that such a course of action is the very height of frightfulness! Not frightful to the German soldiers, for I know what sort of feeling the Indian fighters have for them—respect and sympathy!
And we aren't much nearer that "roaming about in the streets of Berlin," and the lindens of Sans Souci are not yet waving above the warriors from the slopes of the Himalayas.
What must these Indian troops think of their white masters? That the future will show. Whoever has seen something of the land of a thousand legends, who has ridden over the crests of the Himalayas, who has dreamed in the moonlight before the Taj Mahal, who has seen the holy Ganges slip gray and soft past the wharves of Benares, who has been entranced by the train of elephants under the mango trees of Dekkan—in short, whoever has loved India and admired the order and security which prevails there under the English rule, he will need no very powerful imagination to understand with what thoughts the Indian soldiers will go back, and with what feelings their families and their fellow countrymen in the little narrow huts on the slopes of the Himalayas will listen to their accounts. Only with a shudder can we think of this, for it must be said that here a crime against civilization and Christianity has been done in the name of civilization.
The question cannot be suppressed: Will the Indian contingent really be used? Will not the white millions of Great Britain, Canada and Australia suffice, to say nothing of the French, Belgians, Russians, Serbians, Montenegrins and Japanese? Apparently not. In The Times of September 5th appears in large letters: The need for more men. Already they are in need of more people to overthrow the Kultur of the "German barbarians"! The English people must be educated by a special method in order to understand both the cause and the aim of this war. Otherwise the Englishman will stay at home and play, football and cricket.
And what is this education of the people? In regard to this the English press informs us daily. It is a systematic lie! The fatal reality, that England is slowly sliding to catastrophe, must be hidden by a strict censorship. The English people has no suspicion of Hindenburg's victories. The development of the German operations in Poland is translated into a victorious move of the Russians on Berlin! The most shameful slander concerning the Kaiser is spread abroad! The Germans are barbarians who must be annihilated, and the civilized peoples of Servia, Senegambia and Portugal must take part in this praiseworthy undertaking!
England carries on this war with a perversion of the truth, and truth is as rare in the English press as lies in the German.
But do the people really believe what they read in the English newspapers? Yes, blindly! I have been convinced of this by letters received from England. An appeal signed by many scholars—among them several Nobel prize winners—and sent to me, closes with the words:
We regret deeply that under the unwholesome influence of a military system and its unrestrained dreams of domination, the country which we have once honored now has become Europe's common enemy and the enemy of all people who respect the rights of nations. We must carry to an end this war which we have entered. For us as for the Belgians it is a war of defense, which will be fought through for peace and freedom.