Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, JULY 25, 1924. POLICY IN INDIA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10168, 25 July 1924, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, JULY 25, 1924. POLICY IN INDIA.

Of all the countries which compose that great Commonwealth of Nations known as the British Empire, two —India and Egypt—give cause for great anxiety. Cablegrams this week bearing* on a debate in the House of Lords disclosed that British opinion views the position of affairs in India rather gravely, on account of the threat to British prestige. It must be confessed that, in face of a delicate situation, the statements of the Labour Prime Minister, Mr Ramsay MacDonald, afford some consolation. One of his earlier speeches, as head of the Government, contained the following: “I can see no hope in India if it becomes the arena of a strug*gle between Constitutionalism and Revolution. No party in Great Britain will be cowed by threats of force or by policies designed to bring* government to a standstill, and if any sections in India are under the (delusion that it is not so events will sadly disappoint them.” That statement was a plain indication to the extremists that the new Government in Britain, from 'which, possibly, it hoped much, was not to he bludgeoned into a policy destructive of Empire interests or harmful to India. The recent release of Ghandi, on grounds of

health, lias been seriously criticised. Gliandi is no friend of i the British Empire. His pemici&ias activities have involved the sacrifice of many lives. It is msec much more than two years ago rince corpses were heaped on the blood-stained altar of Swaraj -as a result of Gliandi propaganda. How many lives have paid for his treasonable activities in the past would be a difficult and tragical sum to compute. And there is more than the lives of .individuals at stake—there is the peace, security, and prestige of the BritishEmpire in India. If Gliandi and his followers succeeded in spreading* the Swaraj virus it might become a raging epidemic. Gliandi is bent on reducing the

new constitution in India .to a mass of inefficiency. His followers have for some time been blocking legislative measures, even those most plainly devised for the good of the people in India. Under the Government of India Act, 1919, the whole question of autonomy for India is due to he reconsidered in 1929, the present system being meanwhile on trial, and the British Government must not allow itself to he dragooned into granting anyanytiling more at the moment than India is capable of assimilating. Any premature with-

drawal of British rule might react disastrously on millions of people.