esire more
often to avoid party embarrassments at Westminster than to protect
public servants, who have no means of defending themselves, against even
the grossest forms of misrepresentation and calumny, leading straight to
the revolver and the bomb of the political assassin. The British
civilian is not going to be frightened by one more risk added to the
vicissitudes of an Indian career, but can you expect him to be proof
against discouragement when many of his fellow-countrymen exhaust their
ingenuity in extenuating or in casting upon him the primary
responsibility for the new Indian gospel of murder which is being
preached against him? Mr. Montagu was well inspired in protesting
against such "hostile, unsympathetic, and cowardly criticism" as was
conveyed in Mr. Mackarness's pamphlet; but this pamphlet was mere sour
milk compared with the vitriol which the native Press had been allowed
to pour forth day after day on the British official in India before any
action was taken by Government to defend him.

The new Viceroy, who himself belongs to one of the most important
branches of the British Civil Service, may be trusted to display in his
handling of the British civilian the tact and sympathy required to
sustain him in the performance of arduous duties which are bound to
become more complex and exacting as our system of government departs
further from the old patriarchal type. Our task in India must grow more
and more difficult, and will demand more than ever the best men that we
can give to its accomplishment. The material prizes which an Indian
career has to offer may be fewer and less valuable, whilst the pressure
of work, the penalties of exile, the hardship of frequent separation
from kith and kin, the drawbacks of an always trying and often
treacherous climate, will for the most part not diminish. But the many
sided interests and the real magnitude and loftiness of the work to be
done in India will continue to attract the best Englishmen so long as
they can rely upon fair treatment at the hands of the Mother Country. If
that failed them there would speedily be an end not only to the Indian
Civil Service, but to British rule itself. For the sword cannot govern,
only maintain government, and can maintain it only as long as government
itself retains the respect and acquiescence of the great masses of the
Indian peoples which have been won, not by generals or by Secretaries of
State, or even by Viceroys, but by the