1857, and it is by the railway and the telegraph that India is now strategically held. The telegraph wire followed Lord Clyde's rapid campaigns yard by yard. It brought the latest news from Calcutta to his breakfast tent, 1000 miles off, by the time that he had bathed after his morning march. It flashed back the details of the day's battle or assault to the Governor-General in Calcutta, before he sat down to dinner. 'It is that accursed string that strangles us,' exclaimed a mutineer pointing to the telegraph wire as he was led out to execution.
The electric telegraph now forms the basis not only of our military policy in India, but of the modern mercantile system of India. Indeed, in a country of such vast distances, it is difficult to conceive how the operations either of civilised government or of civilised commerce could be carried on without it. Every morning the great Indian merchant begins his work by reading the cypher instructions from his correspondent in London, despatched the previous night. Calcutta and Bombay, 1409 miles distant by railway on the opposite coasts of India, are within a few minutes' speaking distance by wire, and discuss their hourly transactions with each other throughout the day. There are now 100,000 miles of telegraphic wire in India, along which more than 3 million messages are transmitted each year.
