For British India we naturally felt ourselves first of all, as to the heathen world, under obligation to do something.  And no inconsiderable results have followed the efforts which were first commenced there twenty-eight years ago.  Our pioneers, though they greatly disturbed the official white world, won the hearts of the people at a stroke, by wearing Indian dress, living amongst and in the style of the poorer villages.  Soon Indian converts offered themselves for service, and after training; were commissioned as Officers, and it was at once seen that they would be far more influential than any foreigners.  From the point at which that discovery was really made, the work assumed important proportions, passing at once in large measure from the position of a foreign mission to being a movement of the people themselves.

The vastness of the country and the difference of language have led to our treating it as five separate commands, now under the general lead of one headquarters.  Incidentally, this has helped us in dealing with some of the difficulties connected with caste, as it has been possible to remove Indian Officers from one part of India to another, and we have made some efforts which have, I admit, proved less successful in some districts than in others, to deal with castes which, within their own lines, are often little more than Trade Unions with a mixture of superstition.

Meanwhile, the practical character of our work has shown itself in efforts to help in various ways the lowest of the people to improve their circumstances.  The need for this is instantly apparent when one reflects that some 40,000,000 of the inhabitants of India are always hungry.  A system of loan banks, which has now been adopted in part by the Government, has been of great service to the small agriculturalists.  The invention of an extremely simple and yet greatly improved hand loom has proved, and will prove, very valuable to the weavers.  New plans of relief in times of scarcity and famine have also greatly helped in some districts to win the confidence of the people.  Industrial schools, chiefly for orphan children, have also been a feature of the work in some districts.

Recently the Government, having seen with what success our people have laboured for the salvation of the lower castes, have decided to hand over to us the special care of several of the criminal tribes, who are really the remnants of the Aborigines.  Although this work is at present only in its experimental stage, all who have examined the results so far have been delighted at the rapidity with which we have brought many into habits of self-supporting industry, who, with their fathers before them, had been accustomed to live entirely by plunder.  About 2,000 persons of this class are already under our care.

There are some 3,000,000 of these robbers in different parts of India.  They are only kept under anything like control at great cost for police and military supervision; but we are satisfied that, if reasonable support be given, a great proportion of them can be reclaimed from their present courses of idleness and crime, and in any case their children can be saved.