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 India to us than whole lives of labour which we hum-drum officials may devote to its service. The Government of India and its officials are attacked without remorse and without cessation in the native press, but the Sovereign never. And it would be a hard strain indeed which would cause this tie to snap—of mere sentiment though it be.

But even with this tie to keep England and India bound together, some still dream of a Yellow Peril, which may sweep us from India. China may be rejuvenated as Japan has been, and the Chinese millions, led on by Japanese generals, may come surging on to India, and bear British rule away on the flood of new-born Asiatic energy. I would not like to assert too positively that such a stretch of imagination is not justified. But I would draw 'attention to two great barriers which have always stood in the way of invasion from the East—the one is the range of the Himalayas, and the other is the sea. Our north-west frontier is difficult enough, but our north-east is impregnable. There is no other route across it which can compare, in point of facility, with the route by which we went to and returned from Lhasa the other day. That route is the very easiest along the whole length of the Himalayas, but even that is not one which such an army as would be required to turn us out of India could ever come by. The other barrier is the sea, and no one can seriously contend we cannot hold our own on that element.

I am not, therefore, one of those who dread the Yellow Peril. Just as the Japanese have learnt much from us, we have much to learn from them. But they have probably common-sense enough to know that they have much to gain by keeping on good terms with us, and risk losing much by any such rash enterprise as tilting against us in India.

In the space at my disposal I have been unable to go very deeply into these two great questions—whether we should voluntarily leave India, and whether we are likely