As long as we rule India we are the greatest Power in the world. If we lose it, we shall drop straight away to a third-rate Power. - George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston

While the material forces which hold the Empire together, with the single exception of the Crown, are as precarious and as inchoate as I have shown them to be, there is one force and one only upon which we can rely to fill the gap, and to supply the cohesive influence we desire; and that is the sense, to which you appeal, of brotherhood between men and women, our fellow-subjects all round the great circumference of our Empire.

"and to feel that somewhere among these millions you have left a little justice or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a spring of patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenment, or a stirring of duty, where it did not before exist-that is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India. It is good enough for his watchword while he is here, for his epitaph when he is gone. I have worked for no other aim. Let India be my judge."62

There are coming from India as many as 70,000 of the pick of our forces, British and Indian... Why are these men coming? What has induced them to volunteer to take part in our fighting? They are thousands of miles away. They cannot hear the thunder or see the smoke of the guns. Their frontiers have not been crossed, their homes are not in jeopardy. They are not our kith and kin; no call of the blood appeals to them. Is it not clear that they are coming because the Empire means something to them, much more than mere government or power? It speaks to them of justice, of righteousness, of mercy, and of truth. They have no desire to exchange that rule for the Prussian sabre or the jackboot of the German trooper. They have no desire to change that rule for any other. If any testimony was ever required to the feelings by which they are actuated and to the success of the fundamental principles by which we have endeavoured to rule them, surely it is to be found in this convincing and overwhelming demonstration.