Many persons whose knowledge of India is confined to Miss
Mayo's Mother India imagine that the fate of every Indian girl is to be sold to senile uxoriousness during adolescence, or at best to become the slave of a hard task- master. In Indian Village Crimes (Bean, 10s. 6d.) we find village girls as emancipated as our own, refusing to accept purdah, choosing their own husbands and lovers. Sir Cecil Walsh has, however, avoided describing many sexual crimes : the greater part of his book is concerned with murders. It is in a sense a topical work, for it affords us an insight into the seamy side of Hindustan; but the reader must always remember that it is only the seamy side and no more a description of India to-day than a record of Lord Darling's trials would be an account of British manners and customs.
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