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

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CHAPTER IX.

special military organizations for the educated classes, like the
University Platoons and the Bengal Light Horse, mark a new epoch,
while the throwing open to Indians of commissioned ranks in the
army, though on a small scale, have added fresh distinction to a
military career in the eyes of India.
In an examination of the happier conditions which promise to
dawn on the earth in this period of reconstruction, elsewhere in this
volume, under the title of the “ New Era,” reference is made to the
beneficent influences beginning to be felt in several countries in all
departments of national life. Having been drawn into the vortex
of the world’s affairs without being confined to a limited national
existence as in the past, it will be seen that India has shared in the
quickening of life perceptible everywhere and many of the
observations would apply to her own conditions of renewed life.
Like the awakening into life of the inmates of the palace in
Tennyson’s Day-Dream at the touch of the Prince, in India also
has
All the long-pent stream of life,
Dash’d downward in the cataract,
by the convulsion of the war which has left no part of the world
untouched. When the time comes to record in full the activities
of India in the twenty-first century, it will undoubtedly be one of
the. prominent landmarks to which the future historian will direct
his vision as the starting point of a richer and more vigorous
national life.