ative officer from the point of view
of military education, but, under present conditions, the Indian Army
does not offer a career that can attract Indians of good position,
though it is just among the landed aristocracy and gentry of India that
military traditions are combined with the strongest traditions of
loyalty. By the creation of an Imperial Cadet Corps Lord Curzon took a
step in the right direction which was warmly welcomed at the time, but
has received very little encouragement since his departure from India.
Something more than that seems to be wanted to-day. Some of the best
military opinion in India favours, I believe, an experimental scheme for
the gradual promotion of native officers, carefully selected and
trained, to field rank in a certain number of regiments which would
ultimately be entirely officered by Indians--just in the same way as a
certain number of regiments in the Egyptian Army have always been wholly
officered by Egyptians. Indeed, we need not go outside India to find
even now, in the Native States, Indian forces exclusively officered by
Indians. The effect upon the whole Native Army of some such measure as I
have indicated would be excellent; and though we could never hope to
retain India merely by the sword against the combined hostility of its
various peoples, the Native Army must always be a factor of first-rate
importance, both for the prevention and the repression of any spasmodic
outbreak of revolt. It is no secret that reiterated attempts have been
made to shake its loyalty, and in some isolated cases not altogether
without success. But the most competent authorities, whilst admitting
the need for vigilance, deprecate any serious alarm, and it is all to
the good that British officers no longer indulge in the blind optimism
which prevailed among those of the old Sepoy regiments before the
Mutiny.

One point which Englishmen are apt to forget, and which has been rather
lost sight of In the recent political reforms, is that more than a fifth
of the population of our Indian Empire--about one third of its total
area--is under the direct administration not of the Government of India,
but of the Ruling Chiefs. They represent great traditions and great
interests, which duty and statesmanship equally forbid us to ignore. The
creation of an Imperial Council, in which they would have sat with
representatives of the Indian aristocracy of British India, was an
important feature of the original s