If War Comes (An Essay on India’s Military Problems)

In the case of the Abyssinian War in 1936 she met the threat of naval action by Britain by the counter-threat of aerial bombing of London and the closing of the Mediterranean route and thus stalemated the sanctions proclaimed by the League of Nations. [...] Within a year of the outbreak of the Chinese war she has helped herself to the possession of Peiping Canton Nanking Hankow Shanghai the whole of the Chinese sea coast the great river systems which form the arterial highways of internal trade and most of the railways and has succeeded in immobilising the international trade of Shanghai and Hongkong. [...] The Anglo-Italian Pact and the Tunisian adventure of Il Duce on the one hand and the diplomatic subjugation by Germany of the Balkan States including Czecho-Slovakia and Yugoslavia on the other have added immensely to the strength of the Rome-Berlin Axis. [...] The main purpose of this book has been to give to the Indian reader a broadkip of the international situation the possibilities of war the11 IF WAR COMES chief alignments of groups among the probable participants and. most important of all the tremendous change that has been wrought in the balance of international politics by the fast-progressing technique of warfare. [...] For two decades ago a sort of Kiplingesque self-complacence seasoned with a liberal flavouring of jingoism pervaded the hearts of the British upper and middle classes who taking their cue from the columns of the Times the Daily Mail and the Morning Post liked to pose as the elect of God entrusted with the special mission of ruling over the greater part of the coloured races for the latte