Eight Lectures on India

India is an empire within an empire. There are four hundred million people in the British Empire, and of these three hundred million are in India. Though it is known by a single short name, India must not be compared with countries such as France and Germany. As regards both area and population it is the equal of half Europe, that half which includes all the countries except Russia. It is a land of many languages, some of them spoken by as many people as speak German or French. It is a land of several religions, differing more deeply than the sects of Europe It is, in short, a world in itself, of ancient civilisation, yet as the result of a wonderful modern history there is to-day peace from end to end of it, for though the systems of government are very different in different parts, yet everywhere the rulers, whether British officials or native princes, acknowledge the sovereignty or the suzerainty of His Imperial Majesty King George the Fifth.

Map of Journey, London to Colombo.| India lies one quarter way round the globe, or ninety degrees eastward from Britain. It is placed wholly in warmer latitudes than Europe, for the northernmost point of India is almost precisely in the latitude of the southernmost point of Europe. It occupies the same latitudes as the great western wing of Africa. If lifted bodily northward and placed upon the map of Europe, it would extend from Gibraltar, past Spain, France, and Britain to a point beyond the Shetland Isles.

The British Empire in India was won, organised, and defended in the days before steam. Access to it was possible only by sailing ship round the Cape of Good Hope, by an ocean path, that is to say, more than ten thousand miles long. The voyage took several months. To-day the British official, and soldier, and merchant go from London to Bombay, and the Indian student comes from Bombay to London in a fortnight. As we see on the map, the route is by rail to Dover, across the Straits of Dover, and by rail again through France to Marseilles. There the traveller joins the steamer which has carried a cargo, probably of cottons and machinery, through the Bay of Biscay. From Marseilles the track is through the two Straits of Bonifacio and Messina to the entry of the Suez Canal at Port Said. Here the mails are put on board, which have come through the Italian peninsula to Brindisi, and thence by rapid steamer. Thus it is only from Port Said through the Canal and the Red Sea to Aden that the vessel carries her complete burden—mails and passengers, and cargo. The redistribution commences at Aden. Our steamer happens to be bound, not for Bombay, but for Colombo and Australia, and the Indian mails and passengers are transferred at Aden to a local steamer, which crosses to Bombay.

From London to Colombo and Bombay is the naval high street of the British Empire. At Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, where the waterways narrow and enemies might obstruct, are British garrisons and naval stations. Even the Suez Canal is partly owned by the British Government. A generation ago shares in that great undertaking were purchased by the United Kingdom for four million pounds sterling. To-day the British shares in the Canal are valued at more than thirty millions sterling, and each year a profit of more than a million pounds is paid into the British Exchequer. There is a garrison of British troops also in Egypt.

Colombo is one of the chief centres of communication in the world. Some day, when the Dominions beyond the seas have grown to be as rich and as populous as Britain herself, the way through the Mediterranean, to-day all important, will be reckoned as one of several equal threads of imperial power. Other great streams of traffic, India-bound, will then converge upon Colombo from the Cape in the southwest, from Australia in the southeast, and by way of Singapore from Canada in the east.