India's services in the war (Volume 1): General (Lucknow, 1922)

CHAPTER VI.

THE EMPLOYMENT OF INDIAN TROOPS IN THE WAR.
In his introduction to “The Indian Corps in France,” * Lord
Curzon writes:—
“ The Indian Army, in fact, has always possessed, and has been
proud of possessing, a triple function: the preservation of internal
peace in India itself; the defence of the Indian borders : and the
preparedness to embark at a moment’s notice for Imperial service in
other parts of the globe. In this third aspect India has for long been
one of the most important units in the scheme of British Imperial
Defence, providing the British Government with a striking force
always ready, of admirable efficiency, and assured valour.
* * * *
“Now, however, General Willcock’s Army Corps was to be pitted
against the most powerful military organization on the globe, against
a European enemy who had brought to the highest pitch of sinister
perfection both the science and the practice of war, and who was
about to plunge not Europe alone, but the entire civilized world, into
such a welter of continuous fighting and horror as the mind of
msori had never imagined and history had never known. The landing
of the two Indian Divisions, numbering 24,000 men, on the quays of
Marseilles in September and October, 1914, was a great event, not
merely in the annals of the Indian Army, but in the history of
mankind.
* * * #
“ That the Indian Expeditionary Force arrived in the nick of time,
* Lieutenant-Colonel J. W. B. Merewether, c. i. e., Indian Army, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Fredrick Smith (now Lord) Birkenhead. (John Murray,
Albermarle Street, London, W.)