The men who govern India—more power to them and her!—are few. Those who stand in their way and pretend to help them with a flood of words are a host. And from the host goes up an endless cry
that India is the home of thugs, and of three hundred million hungry ones. The men who know—and Athelstan King might claim to know a little—answer that she is the original home of chivalry and
the modern mistress of as many decent, gallant, native gentlemen as ever graced a page of history. The charge has seen the light in print that India—well-spring of plague and sudden death and
money-lenders—has sold her soul to twenty succeeding conquerors in turn.
