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The British cruiser "Rainbow" preparing to eject the three hundred Hindus aboard the "Komagata Maru" from the harbor of Vancouver, B. C. The "Rainbow" is one of the few English men-of-war on the Pacific Coast
The Invasion of British America
THE night before the "Komagata Maru," after its stormy stay of two months in the peaceful harbor of Vancouver, set sail and departed for India, Gurdit Singh sent an ultimatum, demand- ing that the ten-thousand-dollar food sup- ply donated by the Dominion government be amplified by the addition of beer and of enough live fowl to give every Hindu aboard the vessel one chicken for every day of the voyage. Though the ultimatum, owing to the guns of the "Rainbow," did not take, its character proves that Gurdit Singh did not finance the expedition to facilitate the entry of his fellow-citizens into British America, but rather to em- barrass the government of British India, to supply additional material for anti- British agitation in the proudest possession of the English crown. Gurdit Singh knew that the order excluding all laborers from British Columbia until September was being enforced even against American workmen; he knew before he started that his shipload of emigrants would be turned back but he accomplished his purpose. The effect of the episode upon the attitude of the natives in India during the present European crisis may be far-reaching; re- pulsion of the three hundred Sikhs, of the men whose fathers were the only natives to remain loyal to the British through the dark days of the Mutiny, may cause the speedy downfall of English rule in India.
The affair created widespread discussion even before the authorities had to mobilize army and navy to control the stubborn British citizens. Every paper in British Columbia was flooded with communica- tions discussing various phases of the Hindu question. Though the bulk of the comment, both private and editorial, supported the exclusion order and emphatically declared for a "white Canada," still there was a perceptible counter current of adverse criti- cism emanating largely from natives of England who condemned what they termed Canadian selfishness, blamed Canada for disregarding the effects of the exclusion order upon the fate of the mother country.
