Page:Anecdotes of Indian Life.djvu/111

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No longer can it be said that the Bengalees are unwarlike. Over a century and-a-half of exclusion from the profession of arms almost emasculated them, although instances of skill and courage of individual men in war such as those of the late Col. Suresh Biswas of Nudia, Bengal, who distinguished himself in the Brazalian army might be cited. In the late world-war the French government first tested the mettle of the Bengalee. A band of young Bengalees of their territory of Chandernagore were trained and sent off to the western front to fight alongside the French soldiers. They fought and fought very well. One of them lost an arm in the defence of Verdun. When it was proposed to invalidate him home to Bengal, he said, "Why so? I have still another arm and can go on fighting. If I lose even this one, I shall pull the trigger with my teeth to fire at the Hun. I will not give up fighting nor go home." A man is generally more or less a type of his nation. This Bengalee was not certainly unwarlike. Could the people of his nation be hopeless poltroons?