emy that
Motherland and that enemy had well have cried, "Peccavi!" on the moment.

Above all, the neutrals wondered about India. That vast Far Eastern Empire
with her millions of men--what would India do?

What did India do? The maharajahs threw into the coffers of the homeland
millions of money, they threw in jewels in quantity to be judged by weight
of hundreds, in value to be judged in millions of pounds. They offered
their men and their lahks of rupees without reservation. The regular troops
of the Eastern Empire, the Ghurkas, the Pathans, the Sikhs, a half dozen
others, clamored to be taken over to Europe to fight at the front for the
great White Chief.

The Indian troops came to Europe, landed in France, and took up their stand
on the western front. To them I must make special reference. Some idea may
be abroad that because the Hindu troops are not still in France that they
proved poor fighters. This is very far from the truth. The Indian regiments
were among our best, but they could not stand the rigors of the European
climate. They had been used to the warmth and brightness and dryness of
their homeland; they came to cold and rain and mud and unknown discomforts.
It was too much. Again, the Indian is made for open, hand-to-hand warfare.
Give him a hill to climb and hold, give him a forest to crawl through and
gain his point, give him open land to pass over without being seen, he can
not be beaten. But the strain, mental and physical, of trench life was too
much.

To the Indian, war is a religion. One day I went down the line to where a
body of Ghurkas were lying to our left. I walked along about a mile through
the muddy ditches and at last came up with one of the men. I stopped and
spoke, then offered him a fag. After this interchange of courtesies we
fell into conversation. He did not know very much English, and I no
Hindustani at all, but in a short time one of the Ghurka officers
approached. The officers and men of these regiments are very friendly, more
chummy almost than are our officers to our men. This officer acted as an
interpreter, and together they told me much that I was anxious to know.

After a little I asked the Ghurka to show me his knife, but he would not.
The Ghurka knife is a weapon of wonderful grace. It is short and sharpened
on both edges, while it is broad and curved almost to the angle of a
sickle. It is used in a flat sweeping movement, which, when wielded by an
expert, severs a limb