ock-and-bull stories
of successful Indian mutinies and risings, which the German public,
however gullible, ceased at last to swallow. Amongst the Indian
Mahomedans there was a small pro-Turkish group, chiefly of an Extremist
complexion, whose appeals to the religious solidarity of Islam might
have proved troublesome when Turkey herself came into the war, had not
Government deemed it advisable to put a stop to the mischievous
activities of the two chief firebrands, the brothers Mahomed Ali and
Shaukat Ali, by interning them under the discretionary powers conferred
upon it by the Defence of India Act. Indian Mahomedan troops fought with
the same gallantry and determination against their Turkish
co-religionists in Mesopotamia and Palestine as against the German enemy
in France and in Africa, and the Mahomedan Punjab answered even more
abundantly than any other province of India every successive call for
fresh recruits to replenish and strengthen the forces of the Empire.

The British Government and people responded generously to these splendid
demonstrations of India's fundamental loyalty to the British cause and
the British connection. The Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, declared with
special emphasis that in future Indian questions must be approached from
"a new angle of vision," and Indians, not least the Western-educated
classes, construed his utterance into a pledge of the deepest
significance. For two years India presented on everything that related
to the war a front unbroken by any dissensions. The Imperial Legislative
Council passed, almost without a murmur even at its most drastic
provisions, repugnant as they were to the more advanced Indian members,
a Defence of India Act on the lines of the Defence of the Realm Act at
home, when Lord Hardinge gave an assurance that it was essential to the
proper performance of her part in the war, and it voted spontaneously
and unanimously a contribution of one hundred million pounds by the
Indian Exchequer to the war expenditure of the Empire. India had
thrilled with pride when, at Lord Hardinge's instance, her troops were
first sent, not to act as merely subsidiary forces in subsidiary
war-areas, but to share with British troops the very forefront of the
battle in France, and she thrilled again when an Indian prince, the
Maharajah of Bikanir, and Sir Satyendra Sinha, who was once more playing
a conspicuous part in the political arena, and had been one of the
oldest and ablest m