This vast population is by no means homogeneous. It comprises at least fourteen different branches of the human family and one hundred and eighteen languages and dialects. The following are the principal tongues spoken, with the population in millions speaking

Karen, Mundari, Tulu, Oraon, and Khand range from half a million to one million each, while only 252,388 speak English.

RELIGIOUS FEUDS

An ever present problem of government in India are the deeply seated religious antagonisms which break out in the form of feuds. This is particularly true between the Mohammedans and Hindus, which necessitates the maintaining of large garrisons, especially near the centres of population.

The principal religions, with the number of their adherents, are as follows:

Of this vast population only about fifteen million can read, of which only about 700,000 are females. Immorality and filth are prevalent, as in all Oriental countries; perjury is almost universal, and religious fanaticism has an intensity and violence unknown in other parts of the world. Side by side with the gorgeous displays of the rich is an amount of poverty and disease unknown in Western civilization. It must be confessed that, in view of the elements to be controlled, the task of governing India is a mighty one- vastly more difficult than it would be for the United States to govern South America, and it becomes of surpassing interest to study the methods which have enabled England to accomplish this modern miracle in empire building.

As to the beneficent effects of the English rule in India, it would be impossible to convey any adequate idea, even in the most general terms, without transcending the limits of our space. One could form no approximate idea of the change for the better unless one were to contrast the India of Warren Hastings in 1774 and the India of Lord Curzon in 1904.

Education is yet backward, but there are 148,525 schools and institutions of learning, with four and a half millions of pupils, and the number is constantly increasing.

A table of the occupations of the people, showing the number engaged in the several classes of industry, is interesting:

Millions had died in India of plague, famine, and pestilence; the most horrible atrocities were committed by religious fanatics and

unpunished criminals; widows were buried alive with their husbands who had died; children were sacrificed under the feet of elephants as a religious duty; the systems of caste killed hope and reduced the poor to a condition of animalism; ignorant, brutal, corrupt Oriental despots revelled in licentious splendor, while their subjects died of famine and disease; internal revolutions and disorder added to the general misery and degradation.

Were England to give up India to-day, if there were no other foreign interference, it would become another South America in twenty-five years.

To-day there are numerous colleges affiliated with the five great universities; there are normal schools, medical schools, technical training-schools, engineering schools, and agricultural colleges. There are hospitals and dispensaries and competent medical and surgical practitioners.

Above all, the Indian government since 1870 has been strongly encouraging agriculture, establishing experimental farms, schools of chemistry and science as applied to the soil, new appliances, machinery, crop rotation, manures, seeds, the breeding of livestock, etc.

In 1901-1902 the land actually under cultivation in India was 199,710,722 acres, the crops being as follows:

Of the above 27,634,536 acres raised more than one crop, making a total acreage under one crop of 227,345,258.

It must also be noted that a vast amount of the land of India is under irrigation, and that some of those canal systems are among the most important in the world. Some of the principal irrigating systems are as follows:

The Godavari, Kistna, and Cauvery systems in Madras irrigate 2,364,655 acres, and there are altogether about twenty millions of acres under irrigation.

It is, of course, impossible in this brief article to enter into the details of the vast commercial and manufacturing interests of India, its finances, the income and expenditures of the government, railways, newspapers, posts and telegraphs, public roads (of which there are nearly 200,000 miles, about 40,000 being macadamized), and many other matters of equal importance and interest. But enough has been said to make every intelligent American pause and think. Contrast the results of England's policy in India with that of the United States with reference to South America. Compare, item by item, the material, moral, and intellectual status of these peoples, - their conditions a century ago and to-day. After making such a comparison every reader must agree that the Monroe Doctrine is academic balderdash, advocated only by theorists who go about the world with their eyes shut, ignorant of the facts.

F

CHAPTER III

FRENCH, RUSSIAN, AND GERMAN EXPANSION

RANCE cannot be regarded as a colonizing power in the same sense as is England; but her foreign possessions are nevertheless large and important. The reader who will compare the colonial territories of France with our own dependencies will be surprised at the vastness of the former and the insignificance of the latter. France proper, consisting of eighty-seven departments, or 204,092 square miles, had a population in 1901 of 38,595,500. But her colonies and dependencies contain nearly twenty times the territory of the mother country and fifty per cent more population. They are as given below, the Central Africa statistics being, according to the Statesman's Year Book, necessarily rough estimates. From this it will be seen that the total area of France and her dependencies is 4,293,168 square miles, and the total population more than 92,000,000.

As France is increasing in population very slowly, if at all, it would appear that the vast colonial territories will be ample to meet the requirements of her national activities for generations to come, and it would seem that many of them are destined to be ultimately populated, if not actually controlled, by the citizens of other nations.