Kipling ruined India for me, as I
suspect he did for many other of his readers. I picture India as full
of intriguing, snobbish Anglo-Indians, who are always damning the Home
Government for ruining the country. It is an odd thing that, although
I have lived between thirty and forty years in England, nobody
believes that I know how to govern England, and yet the stupidest
Anglo-Indian, who claims to know all about the proper government of
India because he has lived there ten or twenty years, is believed by
quite a number of people to be speaking with authority. No doubt my
friend will have the decisive word in future in all his arguments on
Indian questions with less travelled acquaintances. But he shall not
get round me.
From India he goes to China, and thither I would follow him with
greater willingness, albeit more tremulously. I can never get it out
of my head that the Chinese habitually torture the inquiring visitor.
Probably I read the wrong sort of books when I was young. One of them,
I remember, had illustrations.
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