coat and patent-leather boots struts along the platform convoying his fluttering household of heavily veiled ladies, all a-twitter with excitement, to the purdah carriage specially reserved for them.  Or a band of mendicant ascetics, their almost naked bodies smeared all over with fresh ashes and the trident of Shiva painted on their foreheads, return with well-filled begging-bowls from some favourite shrine.  Or an excited crowd, all wearing the little white Gandhi cap, rend the air with shouts of Mahatma Gandhi-ki jai! in honour of some travelling apostle of “Non-co-operation.”  And all over India the swarm of humbler travellers, who lend their own note of varied colour even to the smallest way-side stations, seems to increase every year, whether one crosses the vast drab plains of Upper India or climbs the steep face of the Western Ghats on to the sun-scorched plateau of the Deccan, or is unmercifully jolted through the gentler and more verdant landscapes of Southern India.

One change, however, since pre-war days none can fail to mark.  Travelling is far less comfortable.  Trains are fewer and far more crowded.  The rolling-stock is war-worn and dilapidated, for it could not be renewed during the war, as, although a great deal of railway material can be produced in Indian workshops, some absolutely essential parts have always been imported from England—­as many Indians believe for the purpose of subordinating Indian railways to the industrial interests of Great Britain.  Even the permanent way has deteriorated.  But the mere discomfort inflicted upon travellers is a small matter, and it is chiefly on grounds of racial feeling that Indians are beginning to cry out against the many outward and visible forms of discrimination in favour of European travellers.  What the most moderate and thoughtful Indians are concerned about is the futility of talking of the development of Indian industries and the starting of new ones when railroads and rolling-stock can no longer handle even the existing traffic or move the essential raw materials.  The problem brought to the front by the grave crisis through which the Indian railway system is now passing is neither new nor accidental.  It is the outcome of antiquated methods of railway administration and finance, of which it was possible to disguise the defects so long as they were not subjected to any searching strain.  The war provided that strain, and the system showed, it must be admitted, wonderful endurance under it so long as the war lasted.  But since the end of the war it has betrayed such grave symptoms of imminent collapse that Government have been compelled to appoint an independent Committee of Inquiry, with a fair proportion of Indian members on it, which with a man like Sir William Acworth as Chairman will, it may be hoped, not be content merely to pass judgment upon it, but will be able also to point to a better way in the future.  The evidence produced before the Committee furnishes ample material for a scathing indictment of the system.