In Fee
Essayez. By Lord Zetland. (John Murray, 28s.) LORD ZETLAND, who was Secretary of State for India from 1935 to 1940, is very discreet in his memoirs, but lets one or two cats out of the bag. For example he quotes a letter from the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, in the first year of the war After all we framed the Constitution as it stands in the Government of India Act of 1935, because we thought that way was the best—given the politi- cal position in both countries—of maintaining British influence in India. It is no part of our policy, I take it, to expedite in India constitutional changes for their own sake, or gratuitously to hurry the handing over of controls to Indian hands at any Pace faster than we regard as best calculated on a long view to hold India to the Empire.
This confirms the view taken at the time by many observers of the tenor of Linlithgow's viceroyalty. Lord Zetland also reveals indirectly how hap- hazard were some of the consultations between the home government and the government of India. For those who know the circumstances of the time, his book may add a few, but not many, interesting details. For the pon-specialist reader, it re-creates the atmosphere in which the Indian administration was carried on, both in the years when Lord Zetland was Secretary of State and also when he was Governor of Bengal.
GUY WINT
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