"What would it cost to punkah the whole regiment during the hot season?" I asked.
"I can tell you exactly," said the colonel: "for I have made a correct estimate. The cost for the five hot months would be under three hundred pounds; and by laying out this sum the Government would save some three thousand or four thousand pounds a-year, at the very least."
"Many men cannot bear the heat of these barrack rooms, crowded as they are, and left without punkahs. The consequence is, that they become ill, go into hospital and die there, or spend the greater part of their time there. I should say that if the men had better accommodation, and the same means as _we officers_ have of keeping their apartments cool, we should save in every regiment fifty lives annually. Now, every recruit who comes from home and joins a regiment in the Upper Provinces, to fill up a death or casualty in the ranks, costs the Indian Government a hundred and ten pounds sterling. I have pointed all this out; but it is of no use."
"I would report it to the Horse Guards," said I.
"And what did the Horse Guards say in reply to your statements?"
"Precisely what the learned world said of poor George Primrose's paradoxes--they said nothing. They treated them with dignified silence, and perhaps contempt. However, I did not stop there. I went further."
"You addressed the Throne, or Prince Albert?"
"No; I did not go so far as that. We had just got the Albert hat out, and after a careful examination of it, I came to the conclusion that his Royal Highness would hardly be disposed to give much ear to my complaint touching the discomfort of the British troops in India. But I wrote to an elder brother of mine, who represents a borough in Parliament, and I begged of him to bring under the notice of the House of Commons the condition of the British soldier in India, and move for a report of the officers in command of the various regiments doing duty in this country."
"Not he. He wrote to me to say that he had never spoken in the House, and never intended doing so, as he had not the faintest ambition to become a public orator; but that he had shown my letter to several friends of his (members of Parliament), who would only be too glad of an opportunity of bringing themselves into notice; and that they, one and all, blew upon it, remarking that the condition of the British soldier in any part of the world was a frightful bore; but that the condition of the British soldier in the East was a bore utterly beyond toleration. 'My dear George,' (he went on to say to me), 'your story would only be received with an ironical hear, hear! followed by a series of coughs, as though the subject had given the House a sudden chill and a very bad cold. Even that garrulous goose, Jamsey, to whom (in despair, and in order to oblige you) I showed your letter--even Jamsey, who is always ready to talk for hours about everything or anybody, shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, sighed, lifted up his hands, groaned, _It won't do_, and left me. Find out some indigo-planter who has been, or is supposed to be, guilty of some sort of oppression towards a sable cultivator of the soil, and we will pretty soon grind his bones to make our bread, my boy; but, for Heaven's sake, and the sake of the House of Commons, don't inflict upon us your British soldiers."