stration or under the autonomous rule of indigenous
dynasties, responded to the call of the Empire at the beginning of the
war came almost as a revelation to the British public generally who knew
little about India, and the impression deepened when during the critical
winter of 1914-1915 Indian troops stood shoulder to shoulder with
British troops in the trenches to fill the gap which could not then have
been filled from any other quarter. The loyalty displayed by the Indian
princes and the great land-owning gentry and the old fighting races who
had stood by the British for many generations was no surprise to
Englishmen who knew India; but less expected was the immediate rally to
the British cause of the new Western-educated classes who, baulked of
the political liberties which they regarded as their due, had seemed to
be drifting hopelessly into bitter antagonism to British rule--a rally
which at first included even those who, like Mr. Tilak, just released
from his long detention at Mandalay, had taught hatred and contempt of
the British rulers of India with a violence which implied, even when it
was not definitely expressed, a fierce desire to sever the British
connection altogether. In some cases the homage paid to the
righteousness of the British cause may not have been altogether genuine,
but with the great majority it sprang from one thought, well expressed
by Sir Satyendra Sinha, one of the most gifted and patriotic of India's
sons, in his presidential address to the Indian National Congress in
1915, that, at that critical hour in the world's history, it was for
India "to prove to the great British nation her gratitude for peace and
the blessings of civilisation secured to her under its aegis for the
last hundred and fifty years and more." The tales of German
frightfulness and the guns of the _Emden_ bombarding Madras, which were
an ominous reminder that a far worse fate than British rule might
conceivably overtake India, helped to confirm Indians in the conviction
that the British Empire and India's connection with it were well worth
fighting for. This was one of Germany's many miscalculations, and the
loyalty of the Indian people quite as much as the watchfulness of
Government defeated the few serious efforts made by the disaffected
emissaries and agents in whom she had put her trust to raise the
standard of rebellion in India. All they could do was to feed the
"Indian Section" of the Berlin Foreign Office with c