ndia just across their own often very artificial
boundaries. Their material interests are too closely bound up with those
of their British-Indian neighbours. In many matters, _e.g._ railways,
posts, telegraphs, irrigation, etc., they are in a great measure
dependent upon, and must fall into line with, British India. Their
peoples--even those who do not go to British India for their education
or for larger opportunities of livelihood--are being slowly influenced
by the currents of thought which flow in from British India.

Political unrest cannot always or permanently be halted at their
frontier, though His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad, whose ways
are still largely those of the Moghuls, has not hesitated, albeit
himself a Mahomedan Prince, to proscribe all _Khilafat_ agitation within
his territory. The Extremist Press has already very frequently denounced
ruling Princes and Chiefs as obstacles to the democratic evolution of a
_Swaraj_ India which will have to be removed, and if the Nagpur Congress
pronounced against extending its propaganda to the Native States, it did
so only "for the present" and on grounds of pure and avowed expediency.
Apart from the menace of Indian Extremism, there must obviously be a
fundamental conflict of ideals between ruling Chiefs bent on preserving
their independent political entity and the aspirations towards national
unity entertained by the moderate Indian Nationalists whose influence is
sure to predominate over all the old traditions of Indian governance if
the new reforms are successful. Some Princes are wise enough to swim
with the current and have introduced rudimentary councils and
representative assemblies which at any rate provide a modern facade for
their own patriarchal systems of government. But all are more or less
conscious that their own position is being profoundly modified by
constitutional changes in British India, which must, and indeed are
intended to, alter the very character of the Government representing the
Paramount Power to whose authority they owe their own survival since the
beginning of British rule. Their survival has indeed always been an
anomaly, though hitherto, on the whole, equally creditable to the
British _Raj_ that preserved them from extinction in the old days of
stress and storm and to the rulers who have justified British
statesmanship by their fine loyalty. But in a democratised and
self-governing India it might easily become a much more p