We are accustomed to think of the British Empire as
consisting mainly of men of the Anglo-Saxon blood, and
as being on the whole well governed, highly civilised and
wjealthy. As a matter of fact the Empire consists mainly
of Asiatics; it is more cursed by deep poverty than any
other great state, and the great majority of its adult
population are unable to read or write. The first and
greatest of all the problems of Empire is the problem of
India. Among the prominent facts with regard to India
which are confessed in the Statistical Abstract, are that
the average death-rate for the ten years ending 1908 was
between thirty-four and thirty-five per thousand, which
represents an excess of unnecessary deaths, judging by the
standard of a country like Japan, of some four millions
per annum. Poverty and ignorance are the obvious
causes of this appalling death-rate. The fundamental
duty of the Government is to protect the people against
devastating plagues and famines; and the obvious means
of doing so is to train the most gifted of the native popula-
tion to lead the people in the fight against the evils that
beset them. How little the British Government in India
realises this duty may be judged by the statistics Qf



IMPERIALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM 277

graduates turned out in the year 1909-10 in different pro-
fessions ; in medicine there were but thirty, in engineering
only seventeen, in agriculture not a single one ; but in arts
there were 2,116 and in law 576.
