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Evening Star, Issue 14117, 21 July 1909, Page 4

Why intelligent Indians should want to celebrate the anniversary The Indian of the .Mutiny, to recall Boycott. the name of the "martyr " Nana Sahib, or openly to flout British sentiment by public demonstrations in honor of the inauguration of the Swadeshi movement; passes reasonable comprehension. What possible advantage would accrue to the people of the 6CO native States who talk in fifty different languages and to those silent masses who constitute 80 per cent, of the entire population were the British to obey the behests of the extremists, and clear out bag and baggage, is beyond the power of any exponent of Swaraj to tell. But many intelligent observers, and thousands of India's best friends, and much of the best thought of the day, on the other hand, have no doubt, in the words of Lord Morley, that " anarchy and bloody chaos would _ follow England's withdrawal." There is no national voice in India, says Archibald Colquhoun,, and India, left 'to the guidance of men of the Krishnavarma, La j pat Rai, and Arabindo Ghose stamp, would, beyond question, become what the Secretary for Tndia unhesitatingly predicts. "India for the Indians" may tickle the ears of the groundlings, but i'f would be better if men iii-st understood what is India and who are the Indians. The picked men, the powerful leaders, and the most cultured of the Mahomedans will have none of this Swaraj business. The secret of their prosperity and safely rests, as they have learned, "in the protection afforded them by British ride. What India is to-day she is by virtue of the self-sacrifice and the humanitarian policy which lias been mairtained in season and out of season by the Government of Great Britain and their servants. Faults, blunders, and follies ;.re admitted, but, 'regarded as a whole, the Empire! of India under British rule has no parallel in history and no rival in the world of to-day. For fifty y?ars the wealth and talent 'of England have been spent in her service. England has fed the starving, tended the plague-stricken, irrigated the sun-baked land, established industries and courts and schools. And for these things her reward to-day is the stupid demands of ill-balanced minds, the revolt of the men whom she has made competent to speak at all. the proclamation of anarchy, the preaching of assassination, the deification of nameless miscreants, the use of the dagger, the pistol, and the bomb, and the boycott of British products. Those Englishwomen who are known as eu.frar-etks. as distinMisspent gui«hcd from suffragists, Energies. are utilising much splendid material and talent ant? enthusiasm to no good purpose. If the iibilitie.s mid inventiveness that are now thrown away—even is the naughty child bleaks its toys in the belief thaMt'is paying out someone else—were concentrated and directed along rational and womanly I'iHvs. the suc:o<s of the cau.se thev profess toserve would not be far off. Quite twothirds of the present House of Commons a majesty of the Cabinet, and mar.v of the best-known men on the Opposition side were at one time favorable to an extension of_ the parliamentary .franchise to women. Whether they aie so to-dav is moie than doubtful. The tactics of'the Pankhursts and Drspards. of smacking policemen and shouting down and at Ministers, of disturbing meetings, and making voluntary Andromedas of themselves, have disgusted, not convinced. The charge—perhaps at bottom the most serious charge—frequently urged against the Irish Nationalists is that their own bitterly personal dissensions constitute an emphatic answer to their clairrt that they should govern themselves. Exhibitions such as those to which the, suffragettes have accustomed us neither win converts nor confirm the wavering. The pity that men are apt to feel for a, deli-cately-nurtured woman when subjected to prison fare and discipline disappears, or turns to anger, when he thinks of the causes that brought her there. The suffragettes have not succeeded in making the public regard them seriously; the pains and penalties they bear are self-inflicted ; there is nothing to warrant martyrdom, and the country declines to consider them as martyrs. Seriously regarded, the privilege (which Jry some is inaccurately termed a "right") of votes for women is not worth the shedding of blood. The causes which in the past have called upon men and women to face the stake, the sword, and the axe do not include reforms that arc bound to come in the natural ebuise of human progress. Mr Hennessy's argument that "a woman's place is in th' home darnino- her husband's childher" is, as Mr Dooley "truly remarked. - "a favrite argymint iv mine whin I can't think iv anything to say." Sensible people no longer use it in the restricted sense which commonly attaches to it. The majority probably endorse the demand that women should be granted the parliamentary franchise, but they do not approve the methods of the suffragettes, and untii. thev do their conversion and help cannot be looked for.

Had the forty members of the Wellington police who met on MonPartial day night to protest Judgments, against the proceedings of l ne Police Commission during its stay m this City exercised patience until they read the full reports in the Dunedin papers, they would have saved themselves from giving publicity to the following resolution:—"That grossly untrue assertions as to misconduct in the Wellington Police Barracks, etc., were made by Mr Arnold. M.P." We are not called upon to defend the member for Dunedin Central, as he ie quite able to take

care of himself, but we emphatically object to any body of men, whether in or .out of the Police Force, making assertions reflecting on the character of a public man that, from all the evidence available, are destitute of a shadow of foundation. Mr Arnold, from his place in Parliament, made several specific and definite charges, he has repeated these charges outside Parliament, and he reaffirmed them before the Royal Commission last .week. The public, therefore, are as well able to judge of the worth or worthlessness- of these charges as the forty Wellington policemen. And their verdict is not the verdict so rashly and, we regret, violently expressed by his accusers. A persual of the evidence as published in our columns tells a story entirely different from that assumed by the Northern police. Commissioner Dinnie, it is true, opened liis attack on Mr Arnold's credibility by requesting some sort of apology or expression of regret for the " extraordinary and surprising allegations that had been made without some little inquiry." But Mr Arnold made no apology. His charges still await a satisfactory explanation. This being the case, the resolution of forty Wellington policemen, that Mr Arnold had been guilty of ." grossly untrue assertions," reads very like grossly unwarranted impertinence. It will be noted that Inspector Ellison disapproves of the " informal meeting" of the men under his charge, and very properly sounds a note of caution to them, suggesting greater discretion on their part in relation to the police inquiry.