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It was hours before they would acknowledge themselves betrayed. Flinden called a council.

"Pu has got his separation," he said, pointing to the distant earthworks.

The young men knelt and made the sign. They were for a last sortie. But Flinden held them back.

"That's Tring work," he said. "They are working for us yet. The Yavo detachments cannot have gone over. We must wait. Maybe one of our youngsters

will lead them through to us. A dying Yinni would rise from his bed at such a call."

The

But the end came that night. The moon had waned, dense clouds thickened the darkness, the rain fell heavily. Primitives ringed the zariba round twenty deep; they broke over like a wave. The guard of ten were overwhelmed at the wall. Ooria listened for a cry, but there was none, of rage or pain, only a plash of feet in the mud as the greater darkness rolled towards them. A sound of stealthy movement everywhere, the pawing and clawing of Faltu for the skin that was not hairy, for the smooth hide that was not of themselves, into which they might drive the flint about the spine. That was their stroke, and they had the strength for it-to snap rib or vertebræ. The reek of their skin and breath reached Ooria in her corner. The silence of voices appalled her. She heard no utterance save the gurgling cluck in the throat with which

they unhanded one another after pawing and clawing themselves all over, and the intermittent hiss of "Yav," which drew a stampede after it and died away in a snapping and crunching of bone as one more went down in the press.

Flinden crouched by her for the last sally. He pressed her warm shoulder. "Little, shall I strike?" he whispered. But she spared him. The blade was ready at her throat. He heard her say, "Sâl would be better with us now than over there in Yavo." And he felt her fall forward away from his hand. Then he leapt forth maddened, crying, "Flinden! Flinden!" scattering his obscene foes. His voice opened out a lane for him. But they struck from behind and brought him down. He sank with the rest.

I lived through the scene again, as Stumbeldorf had pieced it together, when I was flying from the Huri Huri Hua Huans, and lay hid at night in the neck of Faltu. There is no doubt that when Flinden fell the Primitives broke through the guard at the barrier and overran the island. They must have exterminated the Oultaie in Yavo, and destroyed the grove and temple, thinking the place accursed, as indeed it was. No one can have eaten of the nut or there would have been another era. The records cease with Flinden's despatches and the debate in the Chamber on measures of safety. The chronicler, and keeper of the Unt, breaks off abruptly in the middle of a sentence. Pu was on his legs

again when the man dropped our hairier brethren will reach his stylus. He thought the a higher stage of culture and immediate difficulties might be self-realisation, to an age when

smoothed over by a policy of confidence and conciliation,

"I would recommend," he was saying, "a weak dilution of Môm. A very weak dilution will, I think, meet the present needs. But the dose must be strengthened as the Primitive constitution becomes assimilated. Progress must be gradual, but at the same time progress must be sure. Gentlemen, it is a great ideal which you are inaugurating, and one intrinsically worthy. We may not see its fruition in our own day. Our sons may not live to see it. But I look forward with confidence to an age when

they will be standing beside us on the same platform and sharing with us the common blessings of our civilisation. Gentlemen, I think you will admit that the only real difference between a Primitive and an Intellectual is . .

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But the chronicles do not tell us what this difference was. It was here that the scribe broke off, and there is no more further recorded speech of Pu or any other Intellectual after this eloquent aposeiopesis. The Primitives must have come upon the scene with their grim refutation almost as the words were spoken.

VOL. CLXXXVIII.-NO. MCXXXVIII.

P

THE SILENT INDIA.

AT the bottom of all the unrest in India to-day is the unsettling of men's minds due to the diffusion of some sort of education and the greater and more frequent contact with the West and its ideas. There are many men who view this solvent and disintegrating process with equanimity, and even satisfaction, as being a necessary phase of transition from a lower to a higher intellectual plane, and indeed that this stage must be gone through is indisputable. But there are others, and these not inexperienced or foolish, who wonder where, when the flood-gates are fully opened, the torrent of educational progress will pass, and with what results. They point out that the source is vast, the water not always free from turbidity, and they fear lest the flood thus let loose over the country may sweep away much of what has taken centuries to create, and which is worthy of careful preservation. They ask in vain for the designs and plans of the training works and channels through which the mass of troubled waters is to be led and directed, and they altogether deny that there is any indication that such an extensive outlet for pent-up forces is demanded. They consider (to pursue the analogy) that the restricted irrigation operations conducted up to the present time have not been an unqualified success, and have brought to the surface

a quantity of objectionable matters, formerly hidden and innocuous, which have caused a distinct decrease in the outturn of useful produce, and that the raising of the watertable has even led to a lamentable falling-off in the public health.

However this may be, it seems clear that having put our hands to the plough we cannot look back, but must persist in our efforts, relying largely on the the comfortable philosophy that we shall muddle out all right somehow in the end. The bantling must cut its teeth, albeit to the considerable discomfort of its nurse. It is our duty, we are assured, to assume "the white man's burden"-an obligation the recognition of which, however, is of comparatively recent origin. Our immediate reward appears to be the prevalence of "unrest," and the extent of this has been considerably enlarged by circumstances over which we have had no control whatever.

A good deal of literature has been recently appearing on this subject. The facts set forth are usually intended for the information of people in England as to the existing state of affairs in our great Eastern dependency, and various remedies are suggested for the improvement of the same. Most of these effusions appear to be written from the standpoint of the dweller in cities

and towns, and, so far as they are concerned, the statements are probably correct enough. There really is at the present time a good deal of unsettled feeling in the larger towns and centres of education, and some of this has filtered, through the medium of agitators and seditious publications, into the rural areas, though not, the writer believes, to a serious extent. This is usually termed "unrest"-"a word of exceeding good command," as Bardolph says. Phrases are Phrases are dear to the proletariat; but whatever may have been the case at one time, it is far too general a term now. It is fairly applicable to that natural sentiment of dissatisfaction with conditions under which the circumstances of life are not as we should wish them to be, and however unreasonable the view may appear, undoubtedly a good deal of the distress arising from plague and famine is attributed to the Government. It is useless to ignore the fact that the rumour was diligently spread, and frequently believed, all over the country, that plague was deliberately introduced to keep down the population, which, it was stated, was considered by the Administration to be shown by the recent census to be too great.

The average native of India, again, is no social economist, and, if he had his way, would probably not permit the exportation of a single grain of corn from the country. Old people have related to the writer stories of local dis

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tress in past times, before railways were largely distributed in India, but they nearly always capped the narration by adding that in years of bumper crops grain was so cheap and plentiful that a man could go to a landowner's granary and take away what he wanted almost for the asking. In their memories they set one time against another, regarding both dispensations of Providence. Such being the mental attitude of a considerable section of the population, the seditionmonger finds his task sufficiently easy. The connection between the trouble and the Government is not clear to the people, and he supplies the explanation. The statements of such men to their hearers would be received with derision by a European audience; but the case is very different in India.

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This general feeling of vague discontent is, as already said, doubtless abroad, and may be correctly termed "unrest.' With improved times it may be fairly expected to subside. It differs greatly from the hostility and organised action of the extremists. Speaking generally, the latter have suffered comparatively lightly from such afflictions as famine and plague, and their attitude must be described by a much stronger term. Although the real unrest may easily develop into a different and more dangerous feeling, at the present time the two conditions may be largely dealt with separately; and whereas

The present situation is perplexing and even pathetic. It is difficult for the old AngloIndian-even to one who, like the author, has but recently left the country to realise that recent crimes could have been committed, or to believe that the mass of the people, so docile and amiable if understood, is really seriously disaffected. Doubtless there is a section, intoxicated with ideas

in one case a conciliatory and creeds, is impossible; and if reassuring policy is indicated, it were a question of coming in the other stern repression under the rule of another is called for. Active sedition foreign Power, they would and temporary discontent are probably (if they had any two different phases of thought, voice in the matter, which is and should be differently treat- unlikely) elect to remain as ed; and this indeed appears to they are, preferring to bear be the view of the adminis- the ills they have to flying to trators of the country at the others that they know not of. present time. There is no such thing as an Indian nation; and when this expression is used in political publications and speeches, a cynical smile is apt to cross the faces of those acquainted with the real facts of the case. The area of India is about 1,767,000 square miles, and its total population, according to the last census, was 294,361,056 souls. Size for size, there is probably no tract of country in the whole world presenting greater diversities among the inhabitants. What is there in common between the Bengali and the Pathan, between the Goorkha and the Mahratta, the Sikh and the Madrassi? There are whole races which practically never leave the jungles: learned in forest-lore, but hardly acquainted with the rudiments of civilisation; and whole tribes, nomadic from tradition and choice, who have never known a home, and of which the men are nearly all thieves and the women nearly all immoral—not from vice, but because their ancestors have never been anything else. Efforts made by the State to reclaim these people, by keeping them in settlements and teaching them trades, have only resulted in ghastly failure, for the people died like

have incautiously inculcated, which furnishes ready tools for a small number of dangerous conspirators. As regards the latter, there can be no question as to the course to pursue; but in dealing with the cases of immature youths who are their victims, it may perhaps be doubted whether capital punishment is a really deterrent penalty. It bestows a martyrdom-spurious, it is true, but what the neurotic lad seeks. Penal servitude with transportation would largely defeat this object, and in India is a punishment often more dreaded than death.

The desires and aspirations of the advanced party are somewhat nebulous. They know well enough that such a thing as a united India, with its various races, castes, and

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