The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1909. THE QUESTION OF INDIA.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13979, 14 August 1909, Page 4

The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1909. THE QUESTION OF INDIA.

If: is very difficult to "think' .Imperially.". The author of this phrase found it difficult to gain acceptance ior it at Home in the particular direction lie most wished to see it applied—preferential trading-within the Empire ; and it gained only a grudging and ineffectual acceptance in the oversea Dominions. In other directions it has been proved to he difficult to think Imperially.. If Defence is, as Sir ■Joseph Ward said the other day, the substructure of the Empir®\ we lind the several portions of the Umpire taking local views regarding it. Lord Morley, says the Times" the. other day, commented on the comparatively small attention given to Indian problems at the Imperial Press Conlerence. Perhaps Lord Morley himself falls short of thinking Imperially in the eompletest sense, and as Secretary ol State lor India takes a limited view of the Empire. At all events lk> declared that " after all is the only real Empire." This remark is quoted by a special Commissioner of the "limes" who has spent some months in going to and fro in India, engaged in an inquiry into the real political feeling in that vast- section of the Empire. We tells us that it is not easy to think collectively even about that one section: he knew only two persons. Lord Morley and one other, who- habitually thought of India as a whole. JTow

tlicn can the ordinary person think of tlio Empire as a whole:' When Lord Morley said that "India is the only real Empire," Australasians, for instance, must fool that ho was not thinking Imperially—" collectively " of the all-red portions of the map of the world, and must .suspect that he was not ahle to do so. There is reason to believe that the Defence Conference now sitting in London to nniiv the substructure of Empire will have very great difficulty in making a homogonour lorro-eonerete foundation and base-' incut, upholding each and every pari, interlocked in an invulnerable, whole, secure against attack I'rom without and against disruption from within. The "Times" Commissioner';-; conclusions regarding the condition of that country indicates that at the present moment India is the real danger point; and it is not difficult to avoid agreeing with him, when he savs that a right solution ol the grave issues steadily arising in India is "almost as vital to the continuity of the Empire as the maintenance of naval supremacy in the North. Sea." It is admitted that the loss of India- would mean such a loss of prestige, a loss of what the- Maoris . call

"mana," that the British Empire would soon become a matter of history. "India is the keystone of the Imperial odiliee. Y\'o recovered from the loss of America because we wore then building up the Empire, and the acquisition of India redressed the balance. Itut". we should never, as a great nation, survive the loss of Tndia." And today, says the '"-investigator, "wo aI •' face to face with the antagonism, open or veiled, of a very large proportion of the Indian peoples. Our ride is disliked, not because it is bad, but because it ' is alien. . . . It is not our good works, but our presence that is chiefly resented." So far, he points out, the disturbances tliat have vexed the liritish government, of the great peninsula have been due to the Hindu's; but the Mahohiodans, who , have kept- clear of tl.iem, ,'are undoubtedly being .stirred by that ■wa »•<> of reawakening ambitious which is passing . through the whole. Mahometan world." A lVmindor, this, of the recent revolutions in Turkey and 'Persia, and of what wo lately heard regarding a patient propaganda .of disapproval <l' Mohamoclau subjugation by the Giaour wherever it exists. A lew niontl\s ago " Indian ' unrest " was the topic of the hour. The German scare displaced it, a.s a topic, but has not. displaced it as a fact; and to "think Imperially" requires that this fact be kept in view.