ing full well the difficulties they had to contend with on account of their not having the opportunity, but they have also helped in giving to the villagers and stay-at-homes in India some idea of the great Western world. As a matter of fact the returned emigrants have except in rare instances shown genuine desire for reform, and thus served as vehicles for carrying western civilization to these out of the way and remote villages. Some have taken with them to India agricultural machinery and implements, and are thus fitting themselves to be better farmers.

In 1908 they started a colonization company on a coöperative plan. With that end in view two hundred acres were bought near Vancouver, where the Sikhs out of employment could get work, but of late years things have improved, and they have had all the work they wanted.

Many of them have bought land and put up houses here. Their holdings in land, houses, live stock (as many of them have quite a few dairy cattle), horses and wagons, etc., amount to at least $2,000,000. I have heard white grocers and others say that they would trust a Sikh and continue doing business with him, as over and over again it has happened that after being in debt for one or two years he will come and pay his debts to the grocer and storekeeper. There are no paupers amongst the Sikhs, as their system of practical self-help insures that those who have been unfortunate in being out of work, or on account of some accident, are duly cared for by the well-to-do members of the community. They have put up considerable sums to help the weaker brethren in divers ways. The Hindus have spent over $250,000 in their struggle for justice.

And this reminds me of the case of nearly ninety Hindus who were held up by the authorities at the port of Seattle, Washington, and ordered to be deported until each of them put up a security of $500 cash. To show the Hindus' self-help their friends in British Columbia, with great generosity characteristic of them, supplied the forthcoming money to the tune of nearly $50,000 and had these men released on bail in the fall of 1913. In addition to this the

Sikhs have built temples in Vancouver, Victoria, New Westminster and Abbotsford, all in British Columbia. The one at Victoria cost over $10,000. These are open to the public.

Speaking about the Hindus Mr. W. W. Baer, a well-known Canadian journalist, said:

I could print a hundred letters telling me of the faithfulness of the Hindu in his service to his employer; the reliance that may be safely placed upon him at his work, and his unshrinking application of his strength to his varied tasks. Altogether my opinion is, that of the several racial types who have crossed the Pacific Ocean to participate in our great toil of reducing this Western province to its final productive power, the Hindu is the most desirable.

And now a few words about the Sikhs will be useful. What are they? The Sikhs come from the Punjab in North India. As there was a Reformation in Europe, so there was one in India, and about the same time, viz., in the fifteenth century. A great teacher or Guru by the name of Baba Nanak was born in a village near Lahore. He taught the unity of all religions, the brotherhood of man, raising the outcasts and abolition of the caste system, equality of sexes in divine worship, and doing away with idol worship. Nanak wanted all races and sects to unite in the spirit of service. The Sikh worship is very democratic, and the spirit of self-sacrifice is the dominant characteristic. He taught belief in One God, the Father of all. This pure teaching could not but reform the whole Hindu social system. All his followers were known as Sikhs or disciples. There were nine more teachers, the last of whom was Guru Govind Singh, who in order to protect the religious brotherhood from bigotry within the Hindu system, and persecution from without from the authorities of the day, organized the Sikhs into a strong militant body known as the Khalsa, or the Elect Fellowship. He instituted the Khanda di pahul or baptism of the sword, whereby a Sikh became a member of the great Khalsa brotherhood for help of the weak, the fallen and the oppressed. Moreover Sikhs are farmers, a kind of people which a young country especially needs in her development.

In face of the high ideals of Sikhs especially, it is surprising when a Canadian member of Parliament gives out a challenge that Hindu civilization has done nothing to uplift the other races of the world, and has produced nothing. That is a libel upon a whole nation, and, leaving aside what India has stood for in the past, we point to the most recent example, Rabindranath Tagore, the Hindu poet, who in 1913 won the Nobel Prize in literature.

Speaking about Tagore. Miss Gertrude V. Jamieson who saw him in Seattle, Washington, in September, 1916, asked him if he would visit Canada, and he said most emphatically "No!" He would never visit Canada on account of the manner in which his countrymen had been treated by the Canadians. He said he had been invited to both Toronto and Montreal, but refused to go, and he wishes this published and generally known. He said he was asked to go ashore at Victoria, British Columbia, but refused. He said he would never set foot on Canadian soil or that of Australia, while his countrymen were treated as they were. He said, of course, things would not change until the psychology of nations was changed.

Regarding the equal status of Hindus and other British subjects the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 is quite emphatic and clear. It reads:

We hold ourselves bound to the natives of our Indian territories by the same obligations of duty which bind us to all our other subjects.

This is truly called the Magna Charta of the Indian people. To the Hindus it has not been a mere "scrap of paper." In spite of this the Sikhs in Canada have not even fared as well as the Chinese and Japanese. Whilst from 1908 to 1914, during 6 years, 28,525 Chinese, and during the same interval 3548 Japanese entered Canada, only 117 Hindus were allowed to enter the Dominion. Each Chinaman on admission has to pay a tax of $500. Who pays this tax is quite a different story. A Japanese has only to show $50 in his possession when landing in Canada, a Sikh must have $200,000. All this is not in the spirit of the Queen's proclamation.

The Hindus believe the Great War which ought to be really called the Great Change will help in solving this question as a writer said in a letter to the Toronto Globe:

This great episode in human history does not throw primarily upon us the necessity to appeal for a hearing from you, our fellow-subjects. We could be excused for waiting till the bloodshed is ended, and to leave it to you to make the next move. But we think more of what is involved in this matter than some of the politicians do, to whom India is a sealed and mysterious book, even when they talk about the Empire, three-fourths of whose population is in that country. So we are willing to make the first advances, even to the extent of appealing for a hearing in places where men and women gather together.

Believe me, this is of deep Imperial significance, and our people will be greatly disappointed if Canada will not meet us half-way in settling the difficulties which have hitherto beset our relationships as fellow-subjects in the Empire.

NOTES AND REVIEWS

The Negro Year Book. Edited by MONROE N. WORK of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.

For the past four years The Negro Year Book Publishing Company at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Alabama, has issued from the press an annual volume under the title Negro Year Book. The editor of this annual publication is Monroe N. Work and associated with him, as president and treasurer of the company, are the well known racial authorities and acknowledged leaders, Robert E. Park and Emmett J. Scott. This Year Book has grown in size, scope and quality of subject matter until it is perhaps the most encyclopedic and significant current publication in the United States on the history, progress and present status of the Negraic peoples.

The volume for 1916-17, with nearly 500 pages, surpasses any preceding number, and as a popular reference work, is substantially without a rival. Aside from an amazing amount of data in compact form on the Progress of the Race in Fifty Years, Distribution of Negro Population, the History of Slavery, the Abolition Movement, Emancipation, Civil Rights and Status of the Negro as a Soldier, Religious Development, Educational Achievements, the Negro in the Fine Arts and Invention, in Agriculture, Business and Social Uplift, the latest issue is enriched by contributions and illuminating discussions on the Economic Influence of Prejudice upon the Negro, Southern Whites and Negro Coöperation for Social Betterment, the Negro and Temperance, Improvement in Rural Negro Education, Black Troops in the European War, Race Problem in South Africa, the Negro in Literature and Scholarship, and a number of other subjects of equal importance and general interest to the country and the student of interracial behavior and phenomena. With brief statements on present conditions in Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti and Santo Domingo this volume makes a still wider appeal to all those who wish to secure information concerning and a general view of the situation where the Negro participates in or controls the government.