police serve within its confines, nor is it garrisoned by British troops. British supervision is represented by a single political officer, whose moral influence is the slender thread that ties the State to the protecting British Power. Approximately one-third of the Indian Empire — included in India but excluded from the title of "British India" — is composed of territories coming under the head of "Independent States." Some of the largest and most important of these are Hyderabad, Kashmir, and Mysore, and, to give an idea of their size, Mysore State alone is greater in area than Greece. Nepal, regarded broadly, is of the size of England and Scotland combined, but its population, being about five and a half million, is thus only one-seventh of that of Great Britain.
It will be seen that one important condition of its independence permits the State of Nepal to manage its own internal affairs, and a feature of the State policy has been the strict preservation of this "splendid isolation." Poised on the natural bastions of the Himalayas, entered only by a few tortuous mountain
