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it know well) that the Britisher is necessary. He will keep the Britisher at all costs, though things may grow more ominous before he consents to the cost. Nor should it be forgotten that one-third of the area of India is ruled by Indian princes and chiefs, whose loyalty to the suzerain Power is unswerving.

Fears bred by the introduction of the reforms have been aggravated by displays of irresponsibility on the part of some of the Legislatures. Such displays naturally attract an attention which they do not always deserve. When we consider the novelty of the system and the heady effects of newly acquired power, the wonder is that such displays have not been more frequent and more regrettable. On the whole, the work done by the Legislatures has been far from discreditable. They have acted with praiseworthy moderation in regard to various questions which it was confidently expected would arouse grave controversy. They have seldom sought to counteract the checks by the fulness of power which has been reposed in them. All this is the more satisfactory when we remember that the waters in which the reforms were launched boiled with disconcerting and dangerous currents. War sickness afflicted all classes; the country was a prey to particularly insidious forms of agitation; the paucity of funds hampered administration. This last fact alone endangered the reforms at once. For the position of the Ministers is greatly affected by their ability or inability to spend money on the beneficent objects which are their care. Yet the reforms were

not driven upon the rocks.

But what, says the objector, of the future of those reforms? They can only lead, he urges, to an ever greater transfer of power from the hands of British officials into hands less experienced, less firm and less effective. It is admitted that there may be some loss of efficiency; the gain to be set against this loss is regarded as more important. It is recognised that the path to be trodden will lead eventually to self-government within the British Empire; but the path is going to be a long and arduous one, and it is idle to talk as if the goal were within sight. It is inevitable that the position of the European and the character of his work should change; but that is no reason why they should be abandoned. There is still an interesting career before the man who chooses an Indian service, different from, but to many temperaments even more interesting than, that which was open to his predecessor. There is still, as in the past, opening for a great career for those who are gifted with outstanding ability. There are still vast problems to be solved, problems by no means confined to the field of general administration. There is still a great national task to be accomplished before we can say Nunc dimittis.

After all, agitation, stress and strain are not new phenomena. There were troubles before the Mutiny; there have been troubles since. In 1879 it was deemed necessary to pass an Act controlling the Press. The early 'eighties saw the agitation over the Ilbert Bill and the commencement of the National Congress. There have been crises fraught with danger and depression. Fortitude and firm belief in the justice of our cause have piloted India through them. But, it will be argued, we witness to-day certain new phenomena-widespread pessimism among the services, resignations, failure to recruit for appointments which only recently were coveted. The answer is that we are witnessing to-day new phenomena in every walk of life, many of which are bound to pass away. No wonder that the official, confronted by these phenomena, feels dismay! He sees bewildering changes and, naturally wedded to the old ways (which were good ways in their season), fails to realise that this is an era of social dissolution, and that he has to adapt and reconstruct his ideals and his methods. He sees agitation on an unprecedented scale, and forgets that the human field is still tainted by the breath of war and readier to produce unwholesome tares than profitable grain. He sees financial difficulties paralysing the work of administration, and ignores the fact that the unremunerative portion of India's public debt is small, and that the rigidity of her revenue is in no small measure due to world-wide stagnation of trade. He is himself affected by the long suspense of the war, during which his burdens and anxieties were unintermitted; and subsequent troubles have allowed him no respite for recovery. The mental malady which still afflicts a great part of the world has had its effect in India upon both the ruled and the ruler. In the former it has produced aggravated agitation and a fever of irrational impatience; in the latter it has produced a sense of bewilderment and pessimism on which the shock of novel forces and changes has fallen with irresistible weight. Each tendency has reacted on the other, producing a vicious circle, weakening the will to patient perseverance, breeding extremism of view on both sides.

When we have considered and discounted these passing waves of tumult, we can with confidence discern the calmer waters beyond. India can reach those waters in safety if she is firmly and skilfully guided through the whirlpools of the present. But a continuance and a replenishment of the great services, whose work in the past has moved the world to admiration, are essentially necessary for that guidance. This was clearly perceived by the authors of the Report on Reforms and by the Joint Parliamentary Committee. The Indian, too, it must be repeated, clearly perceives it. India is ever liable to be torn by internal

factions. There are differences of race, of creed, of interest. The collective neurasthenia of to-day has intensified that danger. The United Provinces and Bihar have in recent years witnessed interreligious outbreaks of a blood-curdling nature. The Moplah rebellion loosened a torrent of savagery which cost thousands of lives and rendered wide tracts temporarily desolate. Beyond her borders there are powers that would swoop down upon the plains of India were the strong watch removed. Never before did India so sorely need the firm hand upon her helm as now, and to these dangers is added the task of directing the reforms and adjusting the administrative machine to new circumstances. Truly did one of India's most enlightened politicians of the Liberal school, himself often in the past no sparing critic of Government, publicly declare the other day that India could not do without the assistance and guidance of British officials.

The only true ground for pessimism is the existence of pessimism. For pessimism is not the spirit in which the situation should be met. A firm, cheerful and confident outlook will give courage and force to official colleagues, and to that great mass of Indian opinion which is well disposed and awaits only clear guidance to make its influence felt. Whatever voices may now say to the contrary, the Britisher will continue to be welcomed, respected, and well treated. So far as his personal interests are concerned, there may be present disadvantages, but there is no need to despond of the future. But if the British connection is not firmly maintained, if the British official class vanishes, if the British merchant deserts the shores of the Hooghly, then the future of India is dark indeed. Even were attractions wanting in the Indian career (though they are not, and though the work of the Royal Commission should make them greater), even if India did not still present the most fascinating problems to the administrator, the educator, the engineer and the medical man, would it still be useless, even in a material age, to stress the fact that Britain lies in this matter under a heavy responsibility? She has undertaken in India a mighty task. She has carried it out in a manner which has moved foreign observers to wonder. She has conducted India to a highly critical stage in her political development. She has prepared a path and has set India's feet upon it. It is admittedly an arduous and involved path, the traveller in which needs the guidance of the hand that brought her to its commencement. Is that hand suddenly to be withdrawn? Is the task to be abandoned when its last and most difficult stage has just been entered? So sorry and tragic a close to a great endeavour is unthinkable. Let us be true to India and to ourselves.

HENRY SHARP.

1923

IRELAND TO-DAY.

THERE is a good deal of controversy as to the prospects of the Irish Free State. There is, of course, no dispute about the horror of its actual conditions. It is quite evident to those who read such newspapers as choose to report the happenings in Ireland, still more to those who have Irish connections, that these are worse than in any nation of Europe outside Russia. Than Russia they are not worse, because starvation has not yet been added to other miseries. But they are not to be matched elsewhere, nor probably, as regards security of life, even there. The controversy is between those, probably interested in their prophecies one way or the other, who declare they see a glimmer of light on the horizon, or who declare that the country is enwrapping itself in gloom deeper and deeper; that the only light is that of flames, which are no light, but rather darkness visible. The problem resolves itself into the question, Is there sign that the Government of Mr. Cosgrave is making progress in its task of pacification? It is on that that all turns. No good talking of the desires or the sentiments of the majority of Irish people! In a land where no public opinion has ever had force unless formed and directed from above, where public opinion is less effective than at any time in living memory-certainly not a tithe as effective as when the Truce was signed-the Government must win or Irish civilisation must lose. Are the Government and Irish civilisation winning, or even holding their ground?

The question is not easily answered. Basing one's verdict upon a general impression, one would at once answer it in the negative. Every day brings its new death, its new burning, its new tale of destruction. But a general impression from the perusal of such daily disasters may not be quite trustworthy. It is naturally the bad which appears in the Press, not the good. The papers give us an idea of the appalling chaos in the counties Sligo and Leitrim, for example, but they do not reveal the comparative order of Limerick and Meath. They tell us that whole districts of the south and west are cut off from the world, without communications, but they do not explain the astonishing fashion

in which the value of land, or at least good grazing land, is maintained. To reach a sound verdict, we want figures, and figures are extraordinarily difficult to obtain. As regards loss of life they are unobtainable; nor would any published, from what sources soever, be trustworthy. This has always been the case in Irish civil strife. In a raid upon a small Ulster village before the Truce, when the attackers were beaten off by the inhabitants, it was estimated that several of the former were killed. Then gradually it began to be noticed that So-and-so and So-and-so, of the neighbourhood, were no longer 'about the place.' It is pretty certain that they had been secretly buried. The same is true of many other cases. Nor are figures of other natures easily got. It happens, however, that a good many figures have been provided during the past few weeks in the Dail Eireann, and through the annual reports of the directors of the Irish railways. It may be interesting to examine some of them.

The figures that emerged from the debates in the Dail were by far the less precise and valuable of the two sets. But there was one interesting figure supplied by Mr. Cosgrave as an estimate. The subject of the debate in which he spoke was the Criminal and Malicious Injuries (Amendment) Bill. The President had to meet attacks in the Chamber and Press against alleged injustice in his scheme for compensation; and indeed there appeared to be some grounds for complaint. Under the scheme there is to be no compensation for loss of life or personal injuries, none for any form of consequential damage,' such as loss of livelihood or employment, none even for loss of cash stolen.

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If [said Mr. Cosgrave, defending this last provision] a person kept a huge sum of money, it was only an invitation to the irregulars to come along for what they could get. . . . When the keeping of it provided the irregulars with an excuse for continuing their methods, the person who did keep money in the house deserved to lose it (Irish Times, February 28).

The President's general line of opposition to these claims was sounder than this. He stated that it was simply beyond the power of the State to meet them. And then he produced his startling estimate of their amount. It was 40,000,000l.

That is, indeed, a serious figure, having regard to the small population of the Irish Free State, to the short period which it covers, and to the fact that every day it is growing at least as fast as at any time during that period. I have good reason for belief that it is considerably under, rather than over, the mark, because there is a great number of claims which have never been even whispered, nor can be under present conditions. In many cases those who have a right to make them hold it better to lose their money than to lose their lives and money too. However, as we

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