The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARK INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, APRIL 5, 1926. THE VICEROY GOES HOME.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 79, 5 April 1926, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARK INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, APRIL 5, 1926. THE VICEROY GOES HOME.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the torong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

After five years of successful administration Lord Reading has left India on his return to England, and his successor, Lord liwin, lias been welcomed at Bombay. The retiring Viceroy had a very difficult tas kto perform; his work offered a great test of his capacity to adapt himself and the whole system of government in India, to rapid and critical changes in the administrative methods, and to exercise supervision and control during a period of wonderful progress in the country's march towards complete nationhood.

"East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet," said Kipling, but the Occidentalisation of the Orient, and of India in particular, has become a fact, and during Lord Reading's tenure of office the customs, culture, and methods of the West have been assimilated with a rapidity which is simply amazing. For centuries the debt was on the side of Europe. "From the East light." said the Latin proverb, and derivation of our earliest civilisation from Asia is undeniable. But in the post-war period the process has been reversed; the revolution which has been going on in India affords undeniable proof that new wine has been poured into the old bottles.

From the day that the Crown took over India from the East India Company in 1858, until the outbreak of the war began to work vital changes, the chief task of the Viceroys was to consolidate the Empire from within and defend it from without, to raise the standard of the native races, to extend internal communications, to provide against famine by irrigation and other methods, and to gradually develop the capacity of the peoples for self-government. When Lord Reading went to India, however, the seed of vast changes had been sown. The Montague-Chelmsford scheme, in which Secretary and Viceroy cooperated to secure a definite measure of autonomy, modelled on British lines, had just been inaugurated, and a general election in which five millions were enfranchised, gave the peoples of the country control over most branches of administration.

A new phase of British rule had thus just begun when Lord Reading landed, and all through his term the process of reform has been continuous, if gradual. It was his task to assist in the cradle days of this new nationhood, and thus he had to improvise a new technique for his office, to lay the foundations upon which Home Rule could build from precedent to precedent, until the nation is ready for complete self-government. As Sir Rufus Isaacs, before his elevation to the peerage, the incoming Viceroy was a great jurist, p and he evidentlyanticipated that his principal task would be to uphold the law, for in his first speech he stated that justice would be administered with rigorous impartiality, a policy which he unflinchingly pursued. He had not been in India long, however, before he found that politics must be his chief concern if the Montague-Chelnis-ford scheme were to be saved from disaster. He ross to the occasion, and though peril threatened on every hand he unfalteringly carried out the spirit and intention of the new Act.

Trouble began early with the disunion in the Punjab and the Khalifat agitation. Then followed Gandhi's non-co-operation programme and the revolt of the Moplahs. Firm administration and an inflexible determination to uphold the law, and effective measures against its opponents, gradually subdued the worst elements, and by the use of the legislatures and the leaders of public opinion Lord Reading has produced an atmosphere which is much more favourable to ordered progress than that which existed when he took office. He has attempted no constitutional changes, except those provided under the new system, but has taught the people of India the value of moderation and of the methods of political evolution. He has not discouraged hopes of future complete autonomy, but has taught the value of the instruments already fitted to the hands of the people. He lias discouraged the attitude of suspicion of many of the leaders, and has assisted to restore friendship to a degree which can only be regarded as remarkable in view of the outlook when he first landed in India. There are problems enough ahead, but the new Viceroy has a less difficult task than that which faced his predecessor in 1921.