Excerpt from India and the War

IN estimating the results to India of this war, it is safe to say that it will have no effect on the great masses of the people - at any rate, no direct effect. There was a slight tremor, almost approaching to panic, among the villages round about Madras on the east coast and near Cochin on the west coast, when the Emden appeared in Indian waters and threw a few shells on to the land and sank a few ships. The story goes that the captain of the Emden got hold of a few fishermen when he was prowling about Madras and told them to tell their fellows on land that the British mj had been defeated on the high seas, and that his ship was the vanguard of a host of other German ships on their way to India. The story, like most war stories, lacks confirmation, but that there was some sort of apprehension among the village folks is certain, from all that one has heard. An Indian government official wrote to say that for a whole week end he was occupied with receiving callers from neigh bouring villages anxious to be assured that there was to be no change of sirkar. That tremor has now passed with the disappearance of the Emden, and things have got back to their even tenor. The war apparently is forgotten except in the little echoes that come gently and fitfully from the bazaars of the city. Other and more important matters now fill the mind - births, marriages, and funerals - and so long as the sun shines and the rains fall in their season, and the tax is not too heavy, and there is enough grain and salt, life will be as tolerable as ever; for the villagers' attitude to life is seldom anything more than an amused tolerance.

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