mankind to preserve peace where we had found anarchy, to enforce the eternal principles of justice, to help forward those primitive races who are still far behind, and to quicken into new life those highly-cultured peoples who for long centuries have been numbed in sleep.
Most of those who work in India have this faith, and because we believe in ourselves the people believe in us, and I cannot bring myself to think that among the masses of the population there exists any general desire to rid themselves of the British. Even if in a momentary ebullition we were evicted from India, I would still believe the people would, after their mad freak was over, be only too thankful to welcome us back. In the Mutiny many officers were shot dead by their men because, relying on their loyalty, they still went down among them. Some there are who would argue from this that the officers were foolish in showing such confidence in their men. But they were perfectly and absolutely right. They knew this by the instinct of their race, and it is because officers have trusted, and do, and will trust their men, even to death, that their men trust them. How seldom has the confidence been misplaced! how often and often has it proved right! Speaking from my own personal experience, I can say that my life has frequently and entirely depended on the loyalty of Indian troops, and but for their devotion I should not be living now.
And as with the Indian troops, so with the Indian people as a whole. As long as we have that faith in their loyalty which we are amply justified in holding, they will be true to us; and this I say not as the expression of a pious hope, but as the conclusion drawn from practical experience. I know, indeed, that immature Indian youths, drawing false inferences from the rise of Japan, talk about political emancipation, rising against their oppressors, and driving them out of the land; and I have even heard of a Hindu gentleman saying in an after-dinner speech that though the
