s a perpetual battlefield, and not
since the invasion of Alexander the Great have the people enjoyed
such liberty or tranquillity as they do today. Three-eighths
of the country still remains under the authority of hereditary
native rulers with various degrees of independence. Foreigners
have very little conception of the extent and the power of the
native government. We have an indefinable impression that the
rajah is a sensuous, indolent, extravagant sybarite, given to
polo, diamonds and dancing girls, and amputates the heads of
his subjects at pleasure; but that is very far from the truth.
Many of the princes in the list just given, are men of high
character, culture and integrity, who exercise a wise, just and
patriarchal authority over their subjects. Seventeen of the rajputs
(rashpootes, it is pronounced) represent the purest and bluest
Hindu blood, for they are descended from Rama, the hero of the
Ramayama, the great Hindu poem, who is generally worshiped as
an incarnation of the god Bishnu; and their subjects are all
their kinsmen, descended from the same ancestors, members of
the same family, and are treated as such. Other rajahs have a
relationship even more clannish and close, and most of them are
the descendants of long lines of ancestors who have occupied the
same throne and exercised the same power over the same people from
the beginning of history. None of the royal families of Europe
can compare with them in length of pedigree or the dimensions of
their family trees, and while there have been bad men as well
as good men in the lists of native rulers; while the people have
been crushed by tyranny, ruined by extravagance and tortured by
the cruelty of their masters, the rajahs of India have averaged
quite as high as the feudal lords of Germany or the dukes and
earls of England in ability and morality.

It has been the policy of Lord Curzon since he has been Viceroy
to extend the power and increase the responsibility of the native
princes as much as possible, and to give India the largest measure
of home rule that circumstances and conditions will allow. Not
long ago, at the investiture of the Nawab of Bahawalpur, who
had succeeded to the throne of his father, the Viceroy gave a
distinct definition of the relationship between the native princes
and the British crown.

"It is scarcely possible," he said, "to imagine circumstances
more different than those of the Indian chiefs now and what they
were at th