Yet at the very time when the future of Indian industries seemed to be at last almost assured, and largely thanks to Indian enterprise, it was gravely compromised by the miserable breakdown of the most important of all the services on which the very life of industry depends.  The Indian railways proved altogether incapable of meeting the new demands made upon them.  Even in the essential matter of coal supplies, though the output of the Indian coal mines suffices for present requirements, huge dumps of coal accumulated round the mines and could not be moved owing to the lack of rolling-stock and to the general inadequacy of the existing railway system.  The breakdown may have been due in the first place to the rapid deterioration of rolling-stock and permanent way that could not be made good during the war, and has not been made good yet, but the real causes must be traced much farther back to the parsimonious and short-sighted railway policy of the Government of India for years past.  Apart from the economic consequences, it is particularly unfortunate, even from the political point of view, that such a revelation of inefficiency should have occurred in a field which has been hitherto most jealously preserved for British enterprise, and just in the very sphere of Western activity which has appealed most strongly to Indians of all classes.

Of all the Western inventions which we have brought to India, the railway is certainly the most popular, perhaps because the modern love of travel has developed largely out of the ancient practice, still continued, of pilgrimages en masse to popular shrines, near and far.  During the great days when the worship of Juganath reaches its climax and half a million pilgrims pour into Puri from all parts of India, the terminus of the branch-line from the Calcutta-Madras railway is busier than Epsom Downs station on Derby Day.  A big Indian railway station—­the Howrah terminus in Calcutta, the Victoria Terminus in Bombay, the Central Station in Delhi—­is in itself at all times a microcosm of India.  It is never empty, never silent by day or by night.  It is always alive, always crowded, always full of Indian sounds and smells.  It is a camping ground not only for those who are actually going to travel but also for those who merely come to give their friends a send-off or to greet them on arrival.  No Indian of any position can be allowed to depart or to arrive without a party of friends to garland him with flowers, generally the crude yellow “temple” marigolds.  The ordinary Indian to whom time is of little value cares nothing for time-tables.  He goes to the station when he feels moved to do so, and waits there patiently for the next train that will take him to his destination or bring the friends he wants to meet.  He does not in the least mind waiting for two, three, or four hours—­sometimes in more remote parts of the country for the best part of twelve or even of twenty-four hours.  Only the Europeans and