Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1930. MR. CHURCHILL'S SPEECH

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 144, 16 December 1930, Page 10

Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1930. MR. CHURCHILL'S SPEECH

It is not easy to believe that Mr. Winston Churchill's address to the Indian Empire Society—a non-party organisation which was formed in July by Lord Sydenham and other ex-Governors of Indian Provinces— was really, as Mr. Ramsay MacDonaid describes it, "mischievous from beginning to end." It is only necessary to quote the beginning and the end of the speech as briefly reported on Saturday in order to justify this scepticism: The truth, was that Ganhdism sooner or later would have to toe grappled with and finally crushed. . . . The loss of India would consummate the downfall of the Empire. He said that weakness has encouraged the Indian extremists. The Government's duty was to promote wise and good administration instead of raising false hopes of speedy political changes. This is a point of view which is not only entitled to a hearing, but emphasises aspects of the truth which have been seriously obscured in a haze of goodwill and sentiment and fine phrases. When Mr. Churchill spoke in the same way apropos of the Government's unfortunate decision to exclude Sir John Simon from the Round Table Conference, the speech excited no violent outcry. It is very wrong, he said at Minster, Thanet, on the 20th August, to encourago false hopes in the minds of the Indian political classes. They are only a handful compared to the vast Indian masses for whom we are responsible, but they arc entitled to be treated with good faith and sincerity. It would be wrong to lure and coax them over hero with vague phrases about Dominion status, when it is quite certain that these Indian politicians will not obtain Dominion status in their lifetime. . ' But argument is one thing and tone is another. Logic to which nobody has any right to object may be rendered highly offensive by the rhetoric with which it is adorned. "The nasty way he said it" may make all the difference. Between the top and the tail of the cabled report of Mr.' Churchill's address to the Indian Empire Society there are mistakes of emphasis and of phrase which fully account for the stir that it has made. As to the first point, the stress laid upon the criminal aspects of Nationalist agitation and "the lurid porphecy that under Dominion status an army of white janissaries, officered, if necessary, from Germany, would be hired to secure the armed ascendancy of Hindus." ■ may have acquired a disproportion" ate prominence in a condensed report. But even standing alone in a verbatim report extending to three or four columns, that single .phrase which has stirred the wrath of the Indian delegates to the Conference would probably have attracted more attention than all the rest of the speech combined. That is the price which politicians have usually to pay for their indiscretions.- Mr. Baldwin's rare lapse from good manners in a policy speech of great importance about six months ago provided Mr. Lloyd George's indignant virtue with material in comparison with which all the weighty matters in the speech was negligible. Logically, it might be difficult to explain why Mr. Churchill's figure of speech should have been so fiercely resented by the Indian delegates. It was not to any party represented at the Conference, but to the extremists who have boycotted it, as they have boycotted every other attempt at a peaceful settlement, that he referred when he said that it was no use trying to satisfy the tiger by feeding him with cat's meat. Why should any of the delegates be offended by a comparison which was not aimed at them but at the Congress leaders whose counsels they have defied by coming to London? And ought not the Congress leaders themselves to feel rather proud to welcome their arch-enemy's suggestion that they will not be fobbed off by cheap and nasty substitutes for the real thing as a tribute to their sincerity and their strength? It might, indeed, be easy to prove that nobody either in India or at the Conference has any right to be hurt by Mr. Churchill's words, and yet it is probable that in India as.at the Conference they have given great offence to men who have no sympathy with violence or non-co-operation or civil disobedience, and are not ill-disposed to the British connection. Nor is it improbable that, though we might not be able to stand cross-examina-tion on the reasons, most of us, if the positions were reversed, would feel as they do. As we were informed yesterday, "impertinent and insulting," is how many of tho Indian Bound Table Conference members describo Mr. "Winston Churchill's "cat's meat" comparison. They declare that the whole speech is indiscreet, especially coming from an ox-Chancellor, and hopo that it does not express the Conservative Party's view. The most serious aspect of the indiscretion is touched in the last point j —the question where it does represent the mind of the Conservative Party. All the recent by-elections point to the probability of a Conservative victory when the next appeal is made to the country, and the aggrieved delegates naturally feel that if tho Conservatives were in power when tho India Bill comes into Parliament, its fate would bo sealed. Indeed, thorn would be little uso continuing flic Conference. It is, of course, by no means clear

lliat in rejecting any India Bill that the present Conference might approve, Parliament would not lie doing the right thing. But it would be a national disaster if the party which has hitherto done more for the Empire than either of the others were definitely marked as hostile to the reasonable claims of India, and even as regarding them with that contempt which has probably more to do with the present bitterness of Indian discontent than any specific grievances. It is, however, pointed out by the "Times," which is almost as severe on Mr. Churchill as the Prime Minister himself, that Conservatives, no less than Labourites and Liberals, are co-operating with the Indian delegates in the endeavour to evolve a workable scheme, and that Mr. Churchill must be regarded as speaking for himself alone. He is no more representative of the Conservative Party, says tho "Times," than the assassins of Calcutta represent the Indians assembled at the j Bound Table. And his speech will have just as little influence upon British policy towards India. That the "Times" may have been too sweeping, and that Mr, MacDonald certainly was, is suggested by the comments attributed to some of the minority representatives on the Conference. , The speech depressed the Nationalists, but several representatives regard it as reassuring, especially in its references to the necessity of safeguarding the minorities, about which the Sikhs, Europeans, and Anglo-Indians were most nervous. On these and other unreported points Mr. Churchill's speech may have been of real service, but it is only in this incidental way that the possibility is indicated.