Page:How People May Live and not Die in India.pdf/12

 by destroyed health; nor of the mutiny years. It takes into account only those who die in India, and in the ordinary course of service.

Few people have an idea of what a death-rate of 69 per 1,000 represents—the amount of inefficiency from sickness—of invaliding.

Assuming the strength of the Indian army at 73,000 British troops—and taking the death-rate at present alone, without the sickness and invaliding—such an army, with this present death-rate, will lose, on an average of years, an entire brigade of 5,037 men per annum. It may lose, some years, half that number. But, in other years, it will lose two such brigades.

And where are we to find 10,000 recruits to fill up the gap of deaths of a single unhealthy year?

It is said that the death-rates of the war-years being the highest (not from wounds), peace, and not sanitary measures, is the remedy. As well might it be said that the British army, having nearly perished before Sevastopol, not from wounds, but from want of every supply of civilised life, peace, and not the supply of the wants of civilised life, was the remedy.

The Royal Commission has shown that, if the death-rate were reduced to even twenty per thousand per annum (which is too high), i.e., double that of home stations since these stations were improved,—to India would be saved a tax equal to £1,000 sterling per diem; and this represents the mere cost