may never fight at
all. The war of preparations that has been going on for thirty years may
end like a sham-fight at last in an umpire's decision. We shall proudly
but very firmly take the second place. For my own part, since I love
England as much as I detest her present lethargy of soul, I pray for a
chastening war--I wouldn't mind her flag in the dirt if only her spirit
would come out of it. So I was able to shake off that earlier fear of
some final and irrevocable destruction truncating all my schemes. At the
most, a European war would be a dramatic episode in the reconstruction I
had in view.

In India, too, I no longer foresee, as once I was inclined to
see, disaster. The English rule in India is surely one of the most
extraordinary accidents that has ever happened in history. We are there
like a man who has fallen off a ladder on to the neck of an elephant,
and doesn't know what to do or how to get down. Until something happens
he remains. Our functions in India are absurd. We English do not own
that country, do not even rule it. We make nothing happen; at the most
we prevent things happening. We suppress our own literature there. Most
English people cannot even go to this land they possess; the authorities
would prevent it. If Messrs. Perowne or Cook organised a cheap tour
of Manchester operatives, it would be stopped. No one dare bring the
average English voter face to face with the reality of India, or let
the Indian native have a glimpse of the English voter. In my time I
have talked to English statesmen, Indian officials and ex-officials,
viceroys, soldiers, every one who might be supposed to know what India
signifies, and I have prayed them to tell me what they thought we were
up to there. I am not writing without my book in these matters. And
beyond a phrase or so about "even-handed justice"--and look at our
sedition trials!--they told me nothing. Time after time I have heard
of that apocryphal native ruler in the north-west, who, when asked what
would happen if we left India, replied that in a week his men would be
in the saddle, and in six months not a rupee nor a virgin would be left
in Lower Bengal. That is always given as our conclusive justification.
But is it our business to preserve the rupees and virgins of Lower
Bengal in a sort of magic inconclusiveness? Better plunder than
paralysis, better fire and sword than futility. Our flag is spread over
the peninsula, without plans, without intentions--a