Some of the best military opinion in India favours, I believe, an experimental scheme for the gradual promotion of native officers, carefully selected and trained, to field rank in a certain number of regiments which would ultimately be entirely officered by Indians—­just in the same way as a certain number of regiments in the Egyptian Army have always been wholly officered by Egyptians.  Indeed, we need not go outside India to find even now, in the Native States, Indian forces exclusively officered by Indians.  The effect upon the whole Native Army of some such measure as I have indicated would be excellent; and though we could never hope to retain India merely by the sword against the combined hostility of its various peoples, the Native Army must always be a factor of first-rate importance, both for the prevention and the repression of any spasmodic outbreak of revolt.  It is no secret that reiterated attempts have been made to shake its loyalty, and in some isolated cases not altogether without success.  But the most competent authorities, whilst admitting the need for vigilance, deprecate any serious alarm, and it is all to the good that British officers no longer indulge in the blind optimism which prevailed among those of the old Sepoy regiments before the Mutiny.

One point which Englishmen are apt to forget, and which has been rather lost sight of In the recent political reforms, is that more than a fifth of the population of our Indian Empire—­about one third of its total area—­is under the direct administration not of the Government of India, but of the Ruling Chiefs.  They represent great traditions and great interests, which duty and statesmanship equally forbid us to ignore.  The creation of an Imperial Council, in which they would have sat with representatives of the Indian aristocracy of British India, was an important feature of the original scheme of reforms proposed by the Government of India.  It was abandoned for reasons of which I am not concerned to dispute the validity.  But the idea underlying it was unquestionably sound, and Lord Minto acted upon it when he drew the Ruling Chiefs into consultation as to the prevention of sedition.  Some means will have to be found to embody it in a more regular and permanent shape.  If we were to attempt to introduce what are called democratic methods into the government of British India without seeking the adhesion and support of the feudatory Princes, we should run a grave risk of estranging one of the most loyal and conservative forces in the Indian Empire.  The administrative autonomy of the native States is sometimes put forward as an argument in favour of the self-government which Indian politicians demand.  It Is an argument based on complete ignorance.  With one or two exceptions, far more apparent than real, the Native States are governed by patriarchal methods, which may be thoroughly suited to the traditions and needs of their subjects, but are much further removed than the methods of government in British India