might well have objected very strongly to some of the proceedings of
my companion, who spent a good deal of his time in searching his person
and his garments for certain forms of animal life, which he carefully
deposited in a little silver box carried for this special purpose.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that there have been from time to time
cases of brutality towards natives sufficiently gross and inexcusable to
create a very deplorable impression. I have met educated Indians who,
though they have had no unpleasant experiences of the kind themselves,
prefer to avoid entering a railway carriage occupied by Europeans lest
they should expose themselves even to the chance of insulting treatment.
On the other hand, speaking from personal experience as well as from
what I have heard on unimpeachable authority, I have no hesitation in
saying that there are evil-disposed, Indians, especially of late years,
who deliberately seek to provoke disagreeable incidents by their own
misbehaviour, either in the hope of levying blackmail or in order to
make political capital by posing as the victims of English brutality.
But even when Englishmen put themselves entirely in the wrong, there is
perhaps a tendency amongst Anglo-Indians--chiefly amongst the
non-official community--to treat such cases with undue leniency, and it
is one of the curious ironies of fate that Lord Curzon, whom the
Nationalist Press has singled out for constant abuse and denunciation as
the prototype of official tyranny, was the one Viceroy who more than any
other jeopardized his popularity with his fellow countrymen in India by
insisting upon rigorous justice being done where Indians had, in his
opinion, suffered wrongs of this kind at the hands of Europeans.

It is a lamentable fact that, amongst Indians, the greatest bitterness
with regard to the social relations between the two races often proceeds
from those who have been educated in England. There is, first of all,
the young Indian who, having mixed freely with the best type of
Englishmen and Englishwomen, finds himself on his return to India quite
out of touch with his own people, and yet has to live their life. Cases
of this kind are especially pathetic, when, having imbibed European
ideals of womanhood, he is obliged to marry some girl chosen by his
parents, with whom, however estimable she may be, he has nothing in
common. Such is the contrariety of human nature that he usually visits
his unhappiness