between these old men-of-war and the vessels which are now being passed into the Fleet, because the progress in artillery, the development of armour manufacture, the adaptation of machinery to needs formerly met by hand labour, and the tremendous consequent increase in fighting power render any comparison impossible. Yet, in spite of this progress, the Indomitable has actually a smaller crew than the old line-of-battle ships. Whereas the Queen carried 1000 men, the Indomitable is fully manned with 731 officers and men, and the Dreadnought with 742.

The impression that it is difficult to obtain the 128,000 officers and men needed for the Fleet ought to be well founded. Many reasons could be advanced in explanation of a shortage if it existed. We have become essentially a comfort-loving people; we place greater store than ever on amusements-theatres, musichalls; the lower classes are nicer in their way of living; the modern ships of war are not homes, but floating barracks, in which, until quite lately, the sailors were not even provided with knives and forks. Again, as Dr. Johnson once remarked, 'the great increase of commerce and manufactures hurts the military spirit of a people, because it produces a competition for something less than martial honours-a competition for riches.' Discipline in the Navy, if humane, is still strict, because war efficiency depends on instant, and indeed unreasoning, obedience to orders; and democracy does not care to be cribbed, cabined, and confined all day and every day. So long as a bluejacket is a bluejacket he is under discipline; he lives and sleeps with the Naval Discipline Act an ever-present and restraining influence.

Yet the truth is that the Navy is manned without difficulty, and the explanation is only in part due to the better food, higher pay, and improved prospects of promotion. One of the main causes of the change must be found in the officers. Nelson not only won victories for us, but he taught how discipline might be maintained without brutality. Anyone who has seen an admiral revisiting a naval port and grasping the hand of some gnarled old seaman, with whom he served in his younger days, will understand the deep significance of the change which has occurred in the relations between the quarter and the lower deck. The phrase, a band of brothers,' has a wider and deeper significance to-day. The Navy is all one, as are the seas. There is a community of sentiment between officers and men which reacts on the general well-being of the Fleet, for a 'happy ship' is invariably an efficient ship. It is a case of cause and effect.

Finally, we have the ships and the men, and it depends on Parliament how many more ships and how many more men we shall have in the future. Our capacity for building ships and arming them is still unrivalled; as many men as are required can

be obtained without difficulty, because the Navy is becoming increasingly popular. It may be hoped that the recent statement in the House of Commons by the First Lord of the Admiralty with reference to the progress of recruiting in the first half of the present financial year can be regarded as evidence that numbers are again on the 'up grade.' Mr. McKenna stated that approximately 6000 boys and men had entered the Royal Navy and Royal Marines between the 1st of April and the 30th of September. Last year the numbers were 5330. These figures suggest that the Admiralty are beginning to study the manning policy in the light of the responsibility of future years, when the many large ships now building will join the Fleet, and when men will be loaned' to the new Colonial navies in accordance with the agreement reached at the Imperial Defence Conference. It is essential that the personnel of the Navy, sufficient for to-day, should be steadily increased if the new Fleet now being constructed is to be adequately manned and ready for war. Men highly trained for their duties are as necessary as ships. The ships are now being built. The country will scrutinise the next Estimates carefully to ascertain if proper provision is being made to man them.

ARCHIBALD HURD.

THE OUT-CASTES OF INDIA

SOME years ago I was walking through the streets of Calcutta with a young English sailor, an apprentice in one of the sailing ships in the port, and as we turned into Cornwallis Street a magnificent carriage drove past with a Rajah gorgeously dressed seated inside. My companion exclaimed in astonishment, 'By Jove, that's a fine-looking coolie!' To the young sailor all Indians were coolies. His only idea of the three hundred million people in India was derived from the coolies who loaded and unloaded the ships in the Hooghly. People in England are apt to make a very similar mistake and to form their idea of the peoples of India from the highly educated Indians at the opposite end of the social scale, or from what they hear and read about the political movements in the large cities. They forget that about 95 per cent. of the people of India live in the village districts, and that only 5 per cent. of the whole population can even read or write. The townsfolk form a very small part of the whole people; and the highly educated men are only a small fraction of the townsfolk. It is quite possible to have even a very intimate knowledge of town and city life in India and yet hardly to know India at all. The real India is in the villages; and even the educated Indians of the higher castes in the towns often know as little of the great mass of the lower castes in the villages as a Londoner, born and bred, knows of the peasantry of France. My object, then, in writing this article is to draw attention to a class which forms about a sixth of the village population of India, but whose very existence is almost completely ignored in discussions about the wants and demands of the Indian people. The out-castes of Hindu society form all over India a distinct section of the population, numbering about fifty millions. They are the descendants of various races who inhabited India before the Aryan invasion, and who were through various causes reduced to a state of slavery or serfdom. Some of them were the slaves of the ruling races before the Aryans entered India. Certainly in South India slavery was a regular institution long before the appearance of the Aryans. But some of the servile classes of the present day have in historic times fallen from a high estate and were originally ruling classes

in the countries where now they are slaves. Sir W. W. Hunter says that the Bhars were formerly the monarchs of the centre and east of the province of Oudh in North India, that they were the traditional fort-builders to whom all ruins are popularly assigned, and that they were reduced to slavery by a Mahomedan ruler of Jaunpur. So again, he says 'the Gaulis are ancient ruling races of the Central Provinces, the Ahams of Assam, and the Gonds, Chandelas and Bundelas of Bundelkund are other instances of crushed races. In centres of the Aryan civilisation, the aboriginal peoples have been pounded down in the mortar of Hinduism into the low castes and out-castes, on which the labour system of India rests' (The Indian Empire, p. 112).

The same is true of the Pareiyars of South India. There is a great deal of evidence to show that originally they were the ruling race in the Tamil country. They had their own priests, the Valluvas, who were priests to the Pallava Kings in what are now the Tanjore and Trichinopoly districts, before the advent of the Brahmans. The greatest poets among the Tamil people, the weaver-poet Tiruvalluvar and the poetess Avvaiyar, who wrote about the ninth century A.D., before the Brahmans had secured a dominant influence in the extreme south of India, both belong to the Pareiyar race; and even to this day there is a familiar saying all over the Tamil country, which literally means 'Pareiyar the elder brother of the Brahman.' Marshman, in his History of India (vol. i. p. 21), says: 'A Tamil literature existed before the introduction of Brahmanism, and some of the best authors in that language were of the tribe now stigmatised as Pareiyars, which incontestably proves that the Pareiyars were . . . a highly cultivated people, who were reduced to subjection and degraded by the triumphant Brahmans.'

These out-caste races are called by different names in different parts of India and have various occupations. Large numbers are agricultural labourers, many are leather-workers, some are weavers, others again are scavengers and sweepers. But, whatever their occupation, they are invariably treated by the Brahmans and the upper castes as degraded and polluted. As a rule, the Hindus feel no sympathy for them and are unwilling to concede them any rights whatever.

The Abbé Dubois, the great Jesuit missionary, who lived as a native among the people of South India for some thirty years, from 1792 to 1823, in his well-known book on the manners and customs of the Hindus, gives the following account of the outcastes of South India as he knew them at that time from personal experience:

Throughout the whole of India the Pariahs are looked upon as slaves by other castes, and are treated with great harshness. Hardly anywhere are

they allowed to cultivate the soil for their own benefit, but are obliged to hire themselves out to the other castes, who in return for a minimum wage exact the hardest tasks from them.

Furthermore, their masters may beat them at pleasure; the poor wretches having no right either to complain or to obtain redress for that or any other ill-treatment their masters may impose on them. In fact, these Pariahs are the born slaves of India; and had I to choose between the two sad fates of being a slave in one of our colonies or a Pariah here, I should unhesitatingly prefer the former.

The contempt and aversion with which the other castes, and particularly the Brahmins, regard these unfortunate people are carried to such an excess that in many places their presence, or even their footprints, are considered sufficient to defile the whole neighbourhood. They are forbidden to cross a street in which Brahmins are living. Should they be so ill-advised as to do so, the latter would have the right not to strike them themselves, because they could not do so without defilement, or even touch them with the end of a long stick, but to order them to be severely beaten by other people. A Pariah who had the audacity to enter a Brahmin's house might possibly be murdered on the spot. A revolting crime of this sort has been actually perpetrated in States under the rule of native princes without a voice being raised in expostulation.

Anyone who has been touched, whether inadvertently or purposely, by a Pariah is defiled by that single act, and may hold no communication with any person whatsoever until he has been purified by bathing, or by other ceremonies more or less important according to the status and customs of his caste. It would be contamination to eat with any members of this class; to touch food prepared by them, or even to drink water which they have drawn ; to use an earthen vessel which they have held in their hands; to set foot inside one of their houses, or to allow them to enter houses other than their

own.

It is indeed a piteous sight, the abject and half-starved condition in which this wretched caste, the most numerous of all, drags out its existence. It is true that amongst Pariahs it is an invariable rule, almost a point of honour, to spend everything they earn and to take no thought for the morrow. The majority of them, men and women, are never clothed in anything but old rags. But in order to obtain a true idea of their abject misery one must live amongst them as I have been obliged to do. About half of my various congregations consisted of Pariah Christians. Wherever I went I was constantly called in to administer the last consolations of religion to people of this class. On reaching the hut to which my duty led me I was often obliged to creep in on my hands and knees, so low was the entrance door to the wretched hovel. When once inside I could only partially avoid the sickening smell by holding to my nose a handkerchief soaked in the strongest vinegar. I would find there a mere skeleton, perhaps lying on the bare ground, though more often crouching on a rotten piece of matting, with a stone or a block of wood as a pillow. The miserable creature would have for clothing a rag tied round the loins, and for covering a coarse and tattered blanket that left half the body naked. I would seat myself on the ground by his side, and the first words I heard would be: Father, I am dying of cold and hunger.' I would spend a quarter of an hour or so by him, and at last leave this sad spectacle torn asunder by the sadness and hopelessness of it all, and my body covered in every part with insects and vermin. Yet, after all, this was the least inconvenience that I suffered, for I could rid myself of them by changing my clothes and taking a hot bath. The only thing that really afflicted me was having to stand face to face with such a