The Washington herald., 1921-09-04
. . . . . .
Bu Sir Philip Gibbs

to the British Empire and the Indian army in France
in the bad early days poured out its blood at Ypres,
Neuve Chapelle, Festubert and on other dreadful
fields.
My memories Of the spring of 1915 in France go
back to the fiat fields about the river Lys and the
Flemish towns where the Indian troops blleted.
To the French villagers, who have of
any color prejudice these dark, soft-eyed Indian
with gentle manners and chivalrous ways seemed like
fairybook figures, romantic and sympathetic. -
Were they not fighting for France and dying
for France? 49,.
saw many of them dying and saw their COM
rades shverng and miserable in waterlogged trenches
in Flemish winter
thought then and think now that in spite of
great need for regular trained soldiers in those
early days before our armies were ready it was
a mistake to bring those Indian troops to France.
The climate was against them and their way Of
fighting did not fit them to stand in bitches under
modern gun fire., but apart from that altogether.
every native who wrote home or went home helped
to lower British prestige in India. -"
They saw the early phase Of the war when the
Germans outnumbered in and guns and
seemed to be winning on many fronts and were in
fictng upon us enormous casualties because Of the
superiority of their artillery and ammunition. It was
a shock to the Indian soldiers who believed in the
invincibily Of the British army.
wv HITE prestige was lowered because white
w women were too friendly and romantic to-
ward these Indians and because this mutual massacre
of white and Christian seemed to many intel-
gent Indians to be ghastly insanity from which their
might profit according ITO the wisdom of
Allah. I saw extracts from many Indian letters in
which such ideas expressed openly allegory.
Long service. Illness wounds, the inevitable hard
ships Of war, long exile and the stirring of ideas
and emotions made some of these men agents of re-
volt and in thousands of secret ways the Far East
which has been called unchanging, had changed in
spirit because of that great European conflict. t'
Yet they only ignorant souls fanatics
who talk of India a people claiming sef-govern-
ment Western lines.
Mr.. Ghandi who has organized widespread
boycott against British goods used such words
nationalsm, home rule and liberty, but in his BRAIN
in other 1ndan brains they have meanings totally
different than Western ideas of the same terms.
Amabe and liberal souls in England, ignorant Of
the East proclaim Ghandi kind of liberal states
like Gladstone. But that is not how he is
garded by Indian peasants. To them he is miracle
worker. Many believe he cause rain to fall
parched fields and raise spirits from deep wells.
They have been told so by the Holy Fakirs
He himself upholds the caste system, though for
time he tried to avert it; and in India is
strange that man is polluted by the shadow of a
of another caste falling across his food;
strange that there be intetmarriage between
caste and another; strange that every trade
and occupation from street sweeper upwards has
definite status of caste from which there is es-
cape in life and which is inherited.
Western Hli5'y cannot exist with the caste .y..