The Report of the Commission quotes a very significant passage from Lord Milner's covering letter to a despatch of Sir Arthur Lawley's in 1904:

I think that to attempt to place coloured people on an equality with whites in South Africa is wholly impracticable and that moreover it is in principle wrong.

The viper of Indian sedition, which had for so long been cherished in the bosoms of Liberal politicians, stung its deluded foster-mother, through the medium of the public Press, in the following pregnant utterance (apropos of the Report of the Asiatic Commission):

We might at the outset inform both the Houses of Parliament that we (the British Indian Association) intend to appeal to the League of Nations regarding our rights and status as citizens of the British Empire, and being members of one of the signatories of the League of Nations, viz., India, if the laws affecting us inimically at present in the Statute Book of the Union are not repealed during the present session of Parliament.

RETIREMENT OF MAJOR-GENERAL SIR E. NORTHEY

Early in 1922 Mr. Winston Churchill submitted fresh Indian proposals which did not include restriction of immigration, and which threatened the immunity of the European Highlands from Indian settlement. These terms were not acceptable to the European community, and General Northey was summoned home to discuss the matter with the Secretary of State. The Governor managed to get them rescinded, and he returned to the Colony with the news that the subject was being reconsidered.

At the end of August, however, the white community was electrified by a despatch from the Colonial Office ordering all official members of the Legislative Council to vote as directed by the Colonial Office. If their consciences forbade them to vote as directed, their only remedy was to be the resignation of their posts as civil servants and the consequent loss of their means of livelihood.

As the officials are in a majority on the Council, this procedure meant simply that Mr. Churchill was determined to establish a one-man dictatorship from home, and that the maintenance of the so-called Legislative Council would in future be mere eye-wash to deceive and hoodwink the British public and Parliament. Having thus cleared the way, the Colonial Office autocrat sent out fresh orders on the Indian question under a ban of secrecy, and the colonists did not hear of their arrival until some months later; but meantime, in October, General Northey was recalled, and another Governor-Sir Robert Coryndon-appointed.

It is of course clear that General Northey did not see his way to enforcing the more than doubtful methods of the Colonial

Office to give effect to its policy of throwing the Kenya settlers as a sop to the Indian malcontents in order to stifle agitation among the politically-minded natives of India under Gandhi's banner.

It has been made clear by Mr. Churchill that he considers it the duty of a colonial official to resign his appointment if his conscience forbids him to carry out the orders of the Colonial Office; this view would be endorsed by most reasonable people, under normal conditions, as necessary to the most elementary discipline. But the circumstances in this case and the issues involved were anything but normal; the life of the community and even the integrity of the Empire were at stake.

Now, as regards the question of resignation in such circumstances. Suppose an official feels unable to carry out an order which he considers unconstitutional, and instead of tendering his resignation decides to put the onus on the Colonial Office of dismissing him from the service! In the case of a minor official it is possible that such a step might be taken without attracting an undue amount of attention or apprehension on the part of the public. But in the case of a Governor, and still more in the case of a Governor supported by a majority of the official members of the Council, such action by the Colonial Office would seriously disturb the public mind; awkward questions would be asked in Parliament, and an inquiry demanded, with results which might be inconvenient to the Secretary of State, and even to the Government. The financial position of the majority of civil servants seldom renders them sufficiently independent of their salaries to permit them either to resign or to court dismissal; but if the crisis be of such a grave nature as to render their position intolerable, they may decide to take their courage in both hands and face the issue. This is what occurred during the Ulster crisis in 1914, when the same Minister tried to force the Army into an adventure which the conscience of the Army abhorred. We do not know what view Mr. Winston Churchill's successor will take, but we may be permitted to hope that he will realise in time the gravity of the issues which are at stake.

Sir Robert Coryndon has been ordered to carry on the government of Kenya on the lines dictated by Mr. Winston Churchill. The new terms appear to give way to all the Indian demands, in spite of the promises of previous Governments to reserve the Highlands for Europeans. It was on the strength of these promises that the soldier settlers set out to colonise the country, and if the Indians be given equal rights with Europeans, Kenya will become uninhabitable for the men of our own race who have fought for our Empire.

It has been made clear that the Kenya Indians did not take a part in the Great War which entitles them to consideration on

the ground that they fought for the Empire, or even for Kenya. It is indeed the expressed intention of the Indian agitators to flood the Colony with Indians until they have complete control over it, and the policy of the Colonial Office is to assist them in this design. They have frequently stated that their aim is to fill the Civil Service with Indians, and they even speak of an Indian Governor! The whole agitation is engineered from Indiait is part of the propaganda and agitation of the Gandhi nonco-operators, who desire to secede from the British Empire, and in doing so to take Kenya Colony with them as the first Indian colony. Once the Indians are given equal franchise, the rest must inevitably follow. And the Colonial Office appears ready to grant it.

It seems incredible that a people who are admittedly not yet fit to govern themselves in their own country should be permitted to govern Englishmen in an English colony.

It is the deliberate opinion of the British settlers that the proposed action of the Colonial Office is more provocative than that which caused the American colonies to make their Declaration of Independence and defy the attempted military coercion of the British Government. The settlers are unanimously determined to oppose the equal Indian franchise to the last gasp. Should the Government try to force legislation through, they are prepared to take the government of the Colony into their own hands. Should the Government attempt to coerce them with military force, they are ready to take up arms in defence of their rights and their homes. The settlers feel confident that if the Government try to use force the situation at the Curragh in 1914 will be enacted over again. There can be no question as to the secret sympathy of all British officers and officials with the attitude of the settlers in Kenya; but this is not all, for any attempt at the coercion of Kenya would set the whole of South Africa in a blaze, as the whole of the Union and Rhodesia undoubtedly share the sentiments of the settlers in regard to the Indian question.

Will the Government of George V. commit the same tragic blunder in Africa that the Government of George III. committed in America a century and a half ago?

And there is a wider aspect even than this. If the East is permitted to penetrate Africa, and the trusteeship of the vast native population be transferred to other and alien hands, then gone for ever is the dream of a series of Christian African States created and linked together by the genius of British colonisation. Is England to be branded with the betrayal of the African native to Eastern rule and the proselytism of a debased religion? It is not an inspiring outlook.

F. G. STONE.

INTERNATIONAL MANNERS

It is nowadays often said, almost as though the truth of it were self-evident, that modern facilities of travel tend to do away with the misunderstandings between nations by making them better known to each other. The statement involves two assumptions which are highly disputable. The first is that closer knowledge means better liking. The second is that intercourse between nations is not only more easy but more effective than in the days when floating palaces, trains de luxe, and personally conducted tours were unknown. Now it is very untrue, generally speaking, that the more people are thrown together the better they like each other. To think such a thing is, indeed, part of the false sentiment of the age, which rings the changes on that blessed word 'social' without any clear idea of its implications and limitations. The limitations are fairly well defined for us in the old proverb ' Birds of a feather flock together'; the implications may be suggested by the fact that any bird of another feather who blunders into the flock is likely to have a poor time. In other words, all societies-be they clubs, or churches, or nations, or what not-exist only by reason of a certain community of ideas and manners which distinguish them from other societies, and all resent the intrusion of alien and unsympathetic elements and seek to extrude them. Usually they live at peace with each other owing to a tacit understanding that there is to be no such intrusion. Attempts of well-meaning people to break down the barriers, in the supposed interests of human brotherhood,' mostly end, after a prolonged period of irritation, in fresh lines of cleavage and more rigorous segregations. Talk about 'our unhappy divisions' and the need for Christian union has always heralded the establishment of new sects. The breaking down of the barriers of the exclusively aristocratic 'society' of mid-Victorian days has not produced fusion, but confusion, a dozen' societies,' founded on less respectable principles of exclusiveness, having taken its place. Out of the cosmopolitanism of the French Revolution sprang the nations of to-day, with their exaggerated self-consciousness, rivalries, and hatreds.

Physically the world has been drawn closer together; but in all that makes for true community of sentiment in the things that

matter its parts are probably more widely separated than ever. Communication in the Middle Ages was difficult and dangerous, but Europe had then, in spite of feudal anarchy and dynastic wars, a common consciousness and a common life. The universities were cosmopolitan, though the quarrels of the 'nations' in them led at times to a certain liveliness. The crowds of poor students who begged their way from one to another gained perforce an intimate knowledge of the manners, customs, and points of view of the peoples through whose countries they passed; and these students either settled abroad or returned to their own countries as lawyers, priests, or teachers; in either case they acted as missionaries of mutual understanding. The same is true of the merchants who undertook long journeys for gain, and also, though perhaps in a lesser degree, of the soldiers of fortune who sought service wherever there was fighting to be done. In time—as, for instance, between France and England towards the close of the Hundred Years War-national consciousness and international hatred developed, but they never attained the exclusive force and the bitterness which have characterised them in recent years. So late as the eighteenth century, indeed, they were still quite subordinate. Sterne, when he set out on his Sentimental Journey, did not remember till he reached Dover that France and England were at war. Even then the realisation of the fact did not interrupt his journey, and during his stay in France he found that his good manners and address were a sufficient passport. For wars in those days were between princes, not peoples: they were fought by professional armies with due regard for etiquette and the rules of the game; and they by no means altogether interrupted personal and trade relations between the nationals on either side. Even Napoleon's armies, though by this time the national spirit was awake, were clothed with English cloth and shod with English boots.

Nationalism in its more recent developments has revived the ferocious spirit of the primitive tribe, which carried on wars of extermination in order to preserve or extend its hunting grounds. The principle of self-determination has all but destroyed the fine conception of the State, as a society founded on broader and more catholic principles, and has substituted for it a series of communities whose whole raison d'être is their insistence on qualities that differentiate them from their neighbours. Moreover, in order to preserve these qualities, these national communities have to cultivate an exclusive spirit wholly alien to the old unnational State. Thus the very babies in their cradles have become potential enemies, and men speak with a shudder of weapons which in the wars to come will exterminate whole populations.

VOL. XCIII-No. 555

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