essed that terrible
massacre which for cruelty and heartlessness is almost without a
parallel in modern history.

In Agra is the Pearl Mosque, which is itself an architectural triumph
splendid enough to make the city famous if the Taj had not already
made it so; the Great Temple in Madura is one of the most impressive
of the strictly Hindu structures in India; in Madras I found a curious
reminder of early missionary activity in the shape of a cathedral
which is supposed to shelter the remains of the Apostle Thomas; and
the ruins of the once proud and imperial but now utterly deserted
cities of Amber and Fatehpuhr-Sikri have a strange and melancholy
interest. But all these have been often enough described, and there
are things of greater pith and moment in present-day India to which we
can better give attention.

{248}

One thing concerning India, which should perhaps have been said in the
beginning, but which has not had attention until now, is the fact that
it is no more a homogeneous country than Europe is--has perhaps,
indeed, a greater variety of languages, peoples, and racial and
traditional differences than the European continent. I have already
called attention to the fact that there are 2378 castes. There are
also 40 distinct nationalities or races and 180 languages. For an
utterly alien race to govern peacefully such a heterogeneous
conglomeration of peoples, representing all told nearly one fifth of
the population of the whole earth, is naturally one of the most
difficult administrative feats in history, and Mr. Roosevelt probably
did not give the English too high praise when he declared: "In India
we encounter the most colossal example history affords of the
successful administration by men of European blood of a thickly
populated region in another continent. It is the greatest feat of the
kind that has been performed since the break-up of the Roman Empire.
Indeed, it is a greater feat than was performed under the Roman
Empire."

I was interested to find that the American-born residents of India
give, if anything, even higher praise to British rule than the British
themselves. "I regard the English official in India," one
distinguished American in southern India went so far as to say to me,
"as the very highest type of administrative official in the world.
More than this, 90 per cent. of the common people would prefer to
trust the justice of the British to that of the Brahmins." In Delhi an
American mi