Indian conditions recently wrote: "Some
years ago it seemed possible that India might, by a rapid assimilation
of Western knowledge and technical skill, adapt for her own conditions
the methods of modern industry, and so reach an approximate economic
level. Some even now threaten the Western world with a vision of the
vast populations of China and India rising up with skilled organization,
vast resources, and comparatively cheap labour to impoverish the West.
To the present writer this is a mere bogey. The peril is of a very
different kind. Instead of a growing approximation, he sees a growing
disparity. For every step India takes toward mechanical efficiency, the
West takes two. When India is beginning to use bicycles and motor-cars
(not to make them), the West is perfecting the aeroplane. That is merely
symbolic. The war, as we know, has speeded up mechanical invention and
produced a population of mechanics; but India has stood comparatively
still. It is, up to now, overwhelmingly mediaeval, a country of domestic
industry and handicrafts. Mechanical power, even of the simplest, has
not yet been applied to its chief industry--agriculture. Yet the period
of age-long isolation is over, and India can never go back to it;
nevertheless, the gap between East and West is widening. What is to be
the outcome for her 300 millions? We are in danger in the East of seeing
the worst evils of commercialism developed on an enormous scale, with
the vast population of India the victims--of seeing the East become a
world slum."[226]

Whether or not this pessimistic outlook is justified, certain it is that
not merely India but the entire Orient is in a stage of profound
transition; and transition periods are always painful times. We have
been considering the new industrial proletariat of the towns. But the
older social classes are affected in very similar fashion. The old-type
handicraftsman and small merchant are obviously menaced by modern
industrial and business methods, and the peasant masses are in little
better shape. It is not merely a change in technique but a fundamental
difference in outlook on life that is involved. The life of the old
Orient, while there was much want and hardship, was an easygoing life,
with virtually no thought of such matters as time, efficiency, output,
and "turnover." The merchant sat cross-legged in his little booth amid
his small stock of wares, passively waiting for trade, chaffering
interminably with