ABSTRACT

Any remarks on the best method of promoting goodwill between England and India may appear at the present moment 1 somewhat ill-timed. Two nations in the East of Europe have been locked together for the last few months in a deadly embrace. Their struggle has been marked by worse incidents of savagery than ever disgraced the world's first periods of primeval barbarism. Raging passions have been let loose. A portion of this fair Europe of ours—the boasted home of true Christianity —has been converted into a scene of deplorable atrocities. We Englishmen, who have happily played no part in the dreadful tragedy, have nevertheless watched with a kind of fascination the ebb and flow of the blood-stained tide of war. We have allowed our minds to be engrossed with graphic narratives of military evolutions;— our thoughts to run on fortresses and sieges;—our curiosity to be directed towards the effectiveness of terrible instruments of destruction, Krupp guns, breech-loaders and torpedoes;—our imaginations to be excited by the horrors of the battle-field, by images of dead and dying soldiers, mangled bodies and stiffened corpses;—our hearts to be torn by tales of inhuman cruelty, borne with superhuman resignation.