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not been a brilliant one. The capitulation at Kut in place of the capture of Baghdad, the deadlock in East Africa until the arrival of General Smuts and the South Africans, the jeopardy of Aden-these are the results that the Indian administration has to show in its own sphere of operations. An account must be demanded of them some day, but in fairness criticism must wait for fuller knowledge. The truly valuable contribution of India was the despatch of the Army Corps which under Sir James Willcocks arrived on the battle front in Flanders just at the moment when the British Commander-in-Chief was most sorely in need of reinforcements. It was a great and striking incident, which is the less reason that its bearings should be obscured by clouds of misplaced superlatives. The British troops in India, up to the very last limit of the indispensable margin, had to go. The urgency of their country made the call for them imperative; and the judge of that urgency was the British Government, not the Government of India. But, when India was being all but denuded of British troops, it would have been clearly impossible to leave the country in sole possession of the Native Army. There was, in fact, no alternative to the plan actually adopted of sending the troops, British and Native together, as they stood in the Army List, by local divisions and brigades. From much that has appeared on the subject, a stranger might be led to suppose that the Native regiments were a body of volunteers, who with magnificent public spirit had placed their services at the disposal of the Empire in the day of peril, rather than regulars whose only business was to obey their orders. Still, everyone must recognise that the Indian regiments, virtually without exception, were proud and eager to go, and were not in the least deterred by the thought that they were going forth to meet the most formidable Army in the world. The sepoy of the line can have had only the faintest idea of the merits of the war with Germany; and, in giving him full credit for his conduct and mettle, let us not forget that which is due to the British officers who have created this military spirit, and to the wise rule which has taught the classes who enter the army that they have a country which is worth fighting for.

The admirers of Lord Hardinge's administration lay great stress upon his personal popularity with the people of the country. It was, they tell us in the phrase of the day, a great asset' in the time of trial. It seems to be taking a somewhat low view of Indian loyalty to represent it as a thing that is here to-day and may be gone tomorrow. We prefer to think of it as a feeling whose roots go deeper and rest upon a more permanent basis. There is not the least reason to suppose that at any time during the last quarter of a century, had the call arisen, the response would have been different. The Indian Chiefs and magnates, by whom the tone of the country is mainly judged, did not develop the symptoms of loyalty yesterday; but on the other hand, though the expression of dissent is considerably hampered in time of war, there has been unfortunately ample evidence of the existence of very pronounced disloyalty. From North Punjab to Singapore, and even to the jungle divide between Burma and Siam, we have had conspiracies and mutinies, all more or less failures in the execution, but equally venomous in their aims. With these has come to be coupled a singular development of predatory crimes, gang burglary and murder, committed for the sake of obtaining funds for the support of the campaign of sedition. The Hardingite dismisses these manifestations as the work of an infinitesimal minority, having no more bearing on the general attitude than the crimes of Jack-the-Ripper on the general morality of London. So the same school persisted in minimising the signs of disloyalty in Ireland until it broke out in open rebellion; and even after that event they continue wilfully blind. Few people who have any first-hand information as to the conditions of India can be inclined to take so easy a view of the case. The remarks of Lord Carmichael, Governor of Bengal, to his Legislative Council at their final meeting at the beginning of last April seem to be conclusive. After mentioning that in the course of the year there had been twenty-six 'political' gang robberies in Bengal, four of them accompanied by murder, that eighteen persons had been murdered, five of them being police officers, by these 'political' conspirators, Lord Carmichael went on to say:

'It has been brought to the knowledge of Government in a Vol. 226.-No. 448.

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way which Government feels makes it certain that some persons in Bengal have got into touch with and taken pay from, or have tried to get into touch with and take pay from, the enemies of our Emperor and of our Country, I mean with foreign enemies belonging to the countries with whom we are at war; that other persons in Bengal have been ready to tamper with the loyalty of the King-Emperor's Indian troops, those troops of whose loyalty and of whose bravery Indians and Englishmen alike have every right to be proud; and that yet other persons in Bengal have been planning, or considering how to plan, crimes which would at any time be hurtful to the public weal but, at a time like this, are doubly hurtful. . . . There are different degrees of guilt. Some men are mere dupes, sometimes perhaps unconscious dupes in the hands of more astute criminals. . . . I am sorry for these dupes, but they are a source of danger, though not so great a source of danger as those who exploit them. It is the duty of Government to use the powers which it possesses against any danger to the State. That, gentlemen, is my duty and the duty of my colleagues, a duty which we are doing our best to fulfil.'

...

To appreciate the gravity of this statement it may be said that Lord Carmichael is as little likely as the late Chief Secretary to be prematurely sensitive about such proceedings. Bad indeed, we conclude, must be the situation that has wrung such a remonstrance from him. It is hardly necessary to say that the respectable class whom Lord Hardinge has laid himself out to win have no part in the sort of doings gently reprobated by Lord Carmichael. The trouble with them is that, while they might have some power to start a popular agitation, they have absolutely no power to control one. However, it was to these moderates that the late Viceroy specially addressed himself; and they and the large Press which is behind them repaid him lavishly. Their gratitude was not entirely founded in a sense of favours to come. It appealed to them especially that in Lord Hardinge they had found a Viceroy who would stand up in public as an independent ruler and rate the Government of South Africa face to face for its injustice to Indian subjects, or the House of Lords for venturing to throw out an Indian reform. Visions of what might be in store when a popular Indian Viceroy would put himself at the head of

an Indian movement, against Parliament, against the self-governing Dominions, even against the public service of which he is the official head, sprang up immediately. From the earliest days, the Indian mind has shown itself quick to grasp the possibilities of playing off one authority against another, though in former times its activities took the form of endeavouring to enlist Crown or Parliamentary influence against the Company, or the Directors against the man on the spot. The prospect of a Viceroy championing Indian public opinion, which could be readily worked up to any required pitch, against Lancashire, for instance, or against the Secretary of State, was a much more alluring one, and it was enthusiastically welcomed.

It may be hoped that these precedents will not extend. Lord Hardinge had in Lord Crewe an easy-going chief and a personal friend; if the late Lord Salisbury had been in office, the Viceroy would assuredly have been reminded of the inexpediency of such sallies as his rebuke of the House of Lords for rejecting a measure sent up by the Government of India. The office of Viceroy of India is not a political one; it will not bear extension into a Tribuneship of the people. An administration in opposition at Delhi would be a greatly more serious phenomenon than what we have occasionally seen in the past at Dublin. If India were to force politics upon Britain, she could not expect a continuance of political impartiality here. The inevitable result of untimely assertions of local antagonism to the general lines of policy prescribed by the ruling Power would be to convert the easy hold of Parliament and the Secretary of State into a more forcible one. The fact that Sikhs and Gurkhas (to whom all honour) have fought in Flanders is ludicrously irrelevant as a reason for supposing that the essential basis of the relations between the two countries has been suddenly subverted.

Art. 7.-A NEW LIFE OF WORDSWORTH.

1. William Wordsworth. His Life, Works and Influence. By Prof. G. M. Harper. Two vols. Murray, 1916. 2. The Early Life of William Wordsworth, 1770-1798. By Emile Legouis. Translated by J. W. Matthews. Dent, 1897.

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3. The Patriotic Poetry of William Wordsworth. Selection (with Introduction and Notes). By Right Hon. A. H. D. Acland. Clarendon Press, 1915.

4. Wordsworth's Tract on the Convention of Cintra, with two Letters of Wordsworth written in the year 1811. Now republished, with an Introduction by A. V. Dicey. Milford, 1915.

THIS is the first life of Wordsworth which has been written by a man in possession of all the facts and able to use them freely and openly. The poet's nephew wrote his Memoir perhaps from still fuller knowledge, but was inevitably prevented, by relationship and other considerations, from giving all he knew to the public. Frederic Myers's admirable little book is a study, not a biography. M. Emile Legouis's 'Jeunesse de Wordsworth' is excellent so far as it goes, but it deals with only twentyeight of the eighty years of the poet's life. The only regular Biography is that by Prof. Knight, which is not well put together, is somewhat inaccurate, and is very far from covering the whole ground.

The field was therefore still open for a final Life of Wordsworth; and it is not much to our credit that it has been left to an American to make the first serious attempt to occupy it. Prof. Harper has had great advantages. He has been allowed by the poet's grandson not only to see but to publish much unprinted material, and has received his advice and assistance. He has also been allowed by Mr Frank Marshall to print a good many new letters of Dorothy Wordsworth, which have the power and charm of everything written by that true woman of genius. The result is a much fuller account than any previous book has given of the generally known facts of Wordsworth's life and character, and a few discoveries of importance, the most surprising of which is the fact, which has amused the profane, that Wordsworth

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