ROYAL TOUR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18512, 24 March 1922, Page 5

ROYAL TOUR

THE PRINCE AT COLOMBO. DEMONSTRATIVE LOYALTY. Pleas Association—By Telegraph—Copyright DELHI, March 24. Tlie demonstrative loyalty of Colombo was again shown this morning, when, in boiling heat, the Prince of Wales inspected the island infantry and presented the colours. When the ceremony was over, thousands of Ceylonese rushed eagerly around him, cheering wildly. When the car drove off to Queen’s House, the crowd ran after it, still shouting for the King and the Prince, and waving Union Jacks. There were the same signs of universal loyalty last night, when the streets were packed with slow-moving processions. The spectators, many of whom were in motorcars, rickshaws,- and carts, surged around Queen’s House with their flags and asked for the Prince.—A. and N.Z. Cable. REVIEW OF THE TOUR. VOICE OF SEDITION SILENCED. An interesting survey of the first half of the Prince of Wales’s Indian tour was contributed to the London Daily Telegraph by Mr Perceval Landon in January. “In point of importance, if not of time,’' he wrote, “one-half of the Prince of Wales’s tour has now been completed. Five provincial capitals—-for the United Provinces boast of two —and five Indian States'have been visited. Now, perhaps, it will be useful to make a general survey of the character of this Royal progress, upon which so many hopes and fears have been baaed. From one point of view, which one encounters at every turn —though, in the writer’s opinion, it is a serious misreading of the real situation—the Prince of Wales has already secured a great, and in the future will achieve an even greater, triumph over the seditious forces in India. It is a misreading, because never has the issue lain between these, and I trust it never will. Bift of that later. It is true that the Prince’s personal charm, combined with the instinctive loyalty that hostile propaganda neither of five nor of 50 years can uproor,, have unquestionably shakerr to the core uie attitude of sullen boycott advised, ordered, and wherever possible enforced, b- Mr Gandhi and his colleagues. Calcutta, by common consent, was to have been the test. CRUCIAL TEST IN CALCUTTA. “Up to the Prince’s visit to the old capital of India the situation remained in doubt. His travels through the territory of the native States had been nothing short of a triumphal progress —and anyone who thinks that in these States the disruptive influences of Gandhism are unknown has misread, indeed, the recent history of the Peninsula, for ‘Where the devil cannot- go he will send.’ On the other hand, in British India there was no such clear evidence. The brilliant and enthusiastic reception at Bombay masked tho serious trouble in the native quarters of the city. Lucknow proved its loyalty. But Allahabad, Benares, and Patna betrayed the strength of the terrorist, and not impossibly bad faith among certain pro minent men, to whose lip-loyalty credit in high quarters had been too easily given. There remained Calcutta. “No on© who knows Calcutta could describe the condition of the streets at the time of the Prince’s arrival as anything but a disappointment. The occasion was, of course, an enthusiastic triumph in Dalhousie square and fair crowds were present near each end of the bridge and opposite tho entrance to Government House grounds, out by no standard could the seen© be regarded as creditable to Calcutta, But this frigidity broke down at once. That very afternoon the races began the process, and a night of illuminations saw the city in open and joyous-hearted mutiny against the extremists Mr Gandhi had suffered a serious set-back in Bengal. “But this, though, the obvious and as I have said tlie almost universal standpoint, is one to be regretted. The fight now going on is between the Executive and the rebels alone. Most unfairly the latter have dragged the Prince of Wales into the con test; nay, at one time it seemed possible that tho Executive would follow suit; but better counsels prevailed, and the only conceivable aspect of the Prince’s tour —that of the visit of the representative of a Sovereign and a principle above all politics—has been, maintained. LOYALTY BREAKS THROUGH DAMS. “Never for a moment has the Prince de viated from this dear conception of nis purpose in visiting India and of his status therein. Steadily, and with his own characteristic charm, he has done his Imperial work. Never, by even a hint, has he admitted that he is affected by the ‘malice domestic’ which is seething under India s surface to-day. His presence has silenced the open voice of sedition, though in places it has not been able to overcome the bar rier which sedition has attempted to lav continually beside his path. He has scrupulously and with dignity maintained his aloofness from all political issues. There is no reason why his great reception during the latter part of his visit to Calcutta should make one iot-a of difference in his attitude for the rest of the tour, and I am confident that it will make none. He lias always assumed—and rightly assumed—that ;he hearts of the mass of Indians were with him. and whatever the extremists may no* decide to do, the Prince can do no other or better than he has already done. “The Prince can but go on as he has begun. Tlie crucial test of terrorism began in Calcutta, when the tide of lovalty broke through the dams that Mr Gandhi had constructed. It is to the Prince that the credit for this triumph of liberty is to ho given, but it would be a cardinal mistake to represent that success as in any way involving his personal interference in Indian politics.”