ABSTRACT
During the same period wherein this change has been coming over Great Britain, the distress in India itself among the very poor has painfully deepened. This again has been due in the first instance to the after effects of the World War. I have been living among the poor in that vast country for half a lifetime, and have seen in recent years this misery continually increasing. The prolonged agony of war shook the whole fabric of Indian village life as it did that of urban Britain. It has caused everywhere immense upheavals. Though in certain districts some temporary advantage was gained, owing to the shifting of current market values, nevertheless the sharp rise in prices, especially of cotton cloth, was immediately felt by the poor; and acute misery was caused which I witnessed with my own eyes. It needs to be remembered that many millions in India are constantly living very close to the starvation limit. I f we include the women and children, these pitiably half-starved, half-clad people can hardly number fewer than fifty to sixty million souls. The mind becomes bewildered as it tries to realize in individual units such a degree of suffering as this. People in Great Britain, who are facing their own unemployment problems, need at the same time
to show sympathy towards the Indian people, who have to bear the intolerable weight of their own poverty and suffering with an almost superhuman patience. For hitherto one of the greatest stumblingblocks between the two countries has been the lack of sympathy and understanding. The newspaper Press on both sides has been partly to blame for this; but intelligent interest, along with a much wider and fuller exercise of imagination, could do much to overcome initial difficulties.
