Page:The empire and the century.djvu/690

 have lacked much war experience. Even when there is no actual fighting the circumstances of the army of occupation require it to be in a state of readiness and efficiency that makes Indian service of greater value as a training for the soldier than ordinary duty in England, even under the present active conditions.

If it is an advantage to a nation to have before its eyes the example of brave and devoted men (and what else can raise us from the parochial dust in which most of us grovel?), then we owe much to India. Since the days of Lord Clive, and even before that, 'India,' as Mr. Pitt said in eulogizing Clive, 'has been fertile in heroes.' If we were to wipe out from the scroll of English history the men who have made great names as soldiers or administrators in our Indian service, the list of our heroes would be meagre indeed. The names of Stringer Lawrence, Ford, Eyre Coote, Clive, Warren Hastings, Thomas Munro, Baird, Ochterloney, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Malcolm, and a shoal of others; and, in more recent times, Charles Napier, Henry and John Lawrence, John Nicholson, John Jacob, Herbert Edwardes, Donald Stewart, and Lord Roberts, who is still with us, might have been unknown to fame. And then there are the great Viceroys, who could have found nowhere else a field fitted for the exercise of their abilities. Men like Lord Wellesley, Lord Dalhousie, Lord Canning, could have shown their capacity as rulers of men nowhere so well as in the Government of our great Dependency. It may seem a paradox to say that we are indebted to India for the great Mutiny, which has been well called the 'Epic of the Race.' The Mutiny has proved to us what our countrymen can do in the face of great odds and terrible hardships. More especially it reminds us that the women of these islands can be at least as brave and heroic as the men. When we are sickened by the pictures of the women of England drawn by the modern novelist—especially the female novelist—it is good to be able to turn to the scenes of fifty years ago within the battered