The Press Friday, December 4, 1931. The Round-Table Conference.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20411, 4 December 1931, Page 10

The Press Friday, December 4, 1931. The Round-Table Conference.

The results of the second session of the Round-Table Conference on India are disappointing; but to call the Conference a "failure," as a section of the British Press has done, is to mistake its nature and its purpose. Ultimate responsibility for the constitutional future of India rests with the British Parliament.. The Round-Table Conference was set up in order to bring all sections of Indian opinion together in friendly discussion, and to get some idea of the state of Indian opinion taken as a whole. No conference that succeeded in bringing together representatives of British India, of the States, of the depressed classes, and, above all, of the Congress Party, can be called a failure. It was hoped that the Conference would be able to agree on certain debatable aspects of the proposed new constitution and offer advice to the Government, and although the cable news of to-day and yesterday shows that no agreement has been reached on the questions of communal representation and the conditions on which the Indian States will enter a federation, the general outline of a constitution has been sketched. That the communal question would not be solved was fairly certain at an early stage in the second session of the Conference, and Mr Mac Donald's statement seems to indicate that the British Government is prepared, in this matter, to act on its own initiative. The failure to agree on the terms of an All-India Federation is more' unexpected. Obviously the difficulties of federating two groups of States, the one accustomed to centralisation and the idea of democracy, the other to independence and oligarchy, were very great; but the conciliatory attitude of the Princes during the last few months had raised strong hopes of reaching a satisfactory formula. Disappointment will be correspondingly great. But it should not be imagined that the failure of the Conference to agree oil these or qny other issues will alter the ' determination of the British Government to give India a new constitution, based on the principles already laid down: an All-India Federation, responsibility at the centre as well as in the provinces, and the provision of certain military (and financial safeguards. Mr Mac Donald has made it quite clear that there can be no drawing back, whatever the Conference may do or fail to do, and whatever may happen in India, though of course the British Government will be anxious to secure as much Indian backing for its schemes as is possible. The work of devising a constitution is now to be transferred to India. A committee of the Round-Table Conference will go there to keep in touch with: the Viceroy on the larger issues. Three other committees, consisting of experts, will accompany it for the purpose of making detailed recommendations on problems of finance and the franchise. In the meantime the news from India suggests that the task of the Home Government and the Government of India is not going to be easy in the next few months; for they will have to play a double role, negotiating a new constitution and'upholding the existing law. Already it has been necessary to use extraordinary powers in Bengal, a course which Mr Gandhi professes to find inconsistent with the desire, expressed in London, to give India the freedom she wants. But, as The Times says, extinguishing this nonsense' with a dash of justice ''There is nothing 1 inconsistent be.- " tween the methods qf the Conference "and the suppression of murder."