THE "TIMES" ON THE STANDING ARMY OF INDIA.
WHAT is the Times at? Twice this week, the organ of her Majesty's Government has fired off articles so com- pletely " out of the blue " that it is difficult to believe they are uninspired, which point to some impending coup d'aat or coup de the'dtre to be immediately struck in India. Great Britain, the writers of these articles affirm, has now, by the success of her third Afghan war, for the first time reached a safe position in Asia, and has converted India, which was a peninsula, into a sort of " island." " For the first time in her history" she has been placed beyond the danger of external attack. Our Indian wars are ended. The circumstances and the dangers for which our military force in India was created "now no longer exist." There are no foreign military forces which could confront us. The only forces left indeed are those of the Native Princes, and to keep up " a huge stand- ing Army" in order to watch these forces, which are totally unnecessary, is to impose on the people a needless and unendurable financial burden. The " case" ought " to be met , by mutual disarmament," the troops of the Native Princes being reduced by ninety per cent.— "counted by hundreds instead of thousands," is the exact phrase—and "placed en permanence at the disposal of the British Government," which on its side will also reduce its Army, as a sacrifice to the " susceptibilities " of the Native Chiefs, in the same proportion.
What in the world does it all mean? We are still waging a war in Afghanistan which, in spite of official announcements, is not ended, or fairly begun, Yakoob Khan having struck no stroke yet, and the time for insurrection not having arrived ; we have occupied positions beyond the mountains which must be garrisoned by strong bodies of men, and we have embarrassed ourselves with Passes which, to be safe, require to be held by thousands of soldiers posted en echelon along three routes, the shortest of which is 180 miles from point to point,—that is, from a safe base of supply to the station to be supplied. The new arrangements will require at least 15,000 men ; and the Government of India, admitting that fact, has just increased its Native Army by that amount. Of all the other dangers to meet which our military system in India was created, before Imperialism was even heard of, or a viewy diplomatist had determined on having a spirited foreign policy, not one has disappeared. The Native Army, which twenty-two years ago tried to drive us out of the land, by slaughtering all white faces, still exists, and is, we have the highest authority for saying, stronger for battle than it ever was. The Native Princes still control 300,000 troops, much better armed than the mutineers were, and divided into armies, one of which, Scindiah's, is backed by a whole population, passed, on Scharnhorst's plan, through the military mill. Above all, we have to maintain in order, tax, and in all ways govern, nearly 200,000,000 of dark men, of whom only 40,000,000, the Bengalees of the Delta, sincerely approve our rule ; who include at least 50,000,000, counting Sikhs, Punjabees, Hin- dostanees, Beharees, and Marhattas, of brave and warlike races,—men of undoubted courage and great military aptitude; and who all regard the white caste with an uneasy sense that it is hostile to their creeds, and to their special civilisation. We have to garrison with the utmost care, and with a deter- mination to be ready for action at a day's notice, a continent as large as all Europe west of the Vistula, inhabited, as the Census showed, by 250,000,000 of people, in a region of the world 7,000 miles from our base, and one in which our people cannot settle ; and because we have seized three defiles through a hostile range of hills, the Times talks of a grand reduction of our "huge standing Army." What does it all mean ? Lord Cranbrook is surely never going to seize this moment, of all others, to reduce the European Army in India, already insufficient to provide the necessary proportion of white troops with the large force employed in different parts of Afghanistan ? Sixty thousand men may be too many for the permanent garrison of India, now that we can reinforce it in twenty-five days ; but a reduction certainly ought not to be attempted just yet, when the Afghan war is not over, when we have not triumphed in Zululand, and when, if we mistake not, we have a dangerous enterprise on hand, to be carried out by a Viceroy who does not understand the first conditions of Asiatic success.
For we greatly fear that the Times' articles, following as they do upon other articles, published before the Afghan ex- pedition, point to a decision taken by the Indian Government to insist that the Native Princes shall disband, or, at all events, greatly reduce their armies ; and that the forces still left under their immediate command shall be placed directly under British control, as the " Contingents " are. It is calculated, we presume, that if this is done, the British Government may be able to disband much of its own Native Army, and thus relieve in part a pressure on its finances which is becoming unendurable. The plan will, we dare say, seem to many Englishmen a sensible one, their notion of any army being a drilled body of men intended for foreign warfare, but we doubt if it will be approved by any experienced Anglo- Indian. It is very doubtful, indeed, whether either our own Native Army, or any native army, is much in excess of posi- tive requirements. We cannot impose the regular work of soldiers in India—the suppression of local riots, the protection of treasure, and the general support of authority in a vast and, perhaps, over-populated country—on the European soldiers, without destroying both their health and their discipline. We cannot scatter them widely enough, or march them quickly enough, or house them in detachments cheaply enough, and must rely for such duties upon natives. It has always been found that when we disband a Sepoy regiment we are obliged to create a regiment of Armed Police, as costly, filled with the same men, and from want of officers far more dangerous to its employers.. The idea of any large reduction on our part may therefore be set aside, while a reduction of the Native Armies, in itself desirable, is attended with these difficulties. The Princes, as a rule, want these men to keep their Barons in order. Each of them is confronted by a body of powerful nobles, always ready to resist orders and refuse revenue, always able to rely on armed clansmen or retainers, and always connected with some defeated but powerful party in the Palace. They could not hold their places for a year without force, and it is better they should possess the force, than that they should be able to summon at will the forces of the British Government, which, by the tenure of its power, cannot permit itself to be beaten even in a vil- lage skirmish. The Nizam, for example, could not keep down anarchy on his vast plateau, three-fourths of the size of France, full of fighting-men, without a considerable army. It takes a division to maintain an appearance of order in Hydrabad alone. Again, it is very doubtful whether order is secured by releasing the fighting-men of each State from discipline and sending them into the villages to engage in faction-fights and fights among the nobles, and to long for the old days of excitement, when a military career of some sort was open to the descendants of warriors. And finally, these armies are their Princes' pride. They think their honour, their safety, and the future of their dynasties bound up in their troops. To tell them all, and all at once, that their armies must disappear, is to pass on them, as they will think, a sen- tence of dethronement, and produce an agitation of which it is impossible to foresee the consequences. It may be said they will be powerless if their remaining troops are under British officers, but the soldiers of the Native States sincerely rever- ence their chiefs, and will not, at all events, be more con- trolled than our own Sepoy Army in 1857, which after obeying British officers for a hundred years, shook them off in a day. The attempt, if it enrages the Princes, as we believe it will do, will be a most dangerous one ; it will bind them together as they have never been bound yet, and it will interest on their side that vast body of native troops in our own service, which is, the Times says, to be rewarded for its services by disbandment,—that is, by dismissal from an employment voluntarily sought, highly honourable, fairly re- munerated, and the only one attractive to the martial pride of the men who fill it. To form such a plan seems to us in- judicious, but to announce it to the world in high-flown leaders before it is accomplished, as some one or other has done through the Times, is little less than lunacy. This proposal is in no degree a party question. It is the interest and the wish of Liberals, as well as Tories, of Lord Lytton's friends, as well as of the unbelievers in Lord Lytton, that India should be governed with as little military expense as possible. The expenditure on the Indian Army is very great—though much of it is due to the Horse Guards, who are enabled by Indian allowances to reward an immense body of officers—and any scheme for reducing the mili- tary budget deserves appreciative consideration. But we would very gravely warn Lord Cranbrook that this particular scheme is a very serious one, one not to be lightly sanctioned, even as a measure of internal police ; one, above all, not to be looked at unless he is prepared with a force sufficient to crush at once the first symptom of armed resistance in any Native State in India. If any native army is too numerous, it can be reduced quietly, by pressure applied to that particular chieftain ; but to reduce all at a blow, as part of a scenic policy, is, to say the least, an extremely rash and dangerous experiment.
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