The Princes and the Bill The summary in Monday's Daily
Telegraph of the report of the Government of India Bill given to the Indian Princes by their legal advisers in this country bears all the marks of authenticity. The report is signed by- counsel as eminent as Mr. Wilfrid Greene and Sir Jowitt, and its general conclusions are that the Bill as drafted, by contrast with the earlier White Paper, makes scrupulous provision for safeguarding the Princes' acknow- ledged rights. What is uncertain is whether the Bombay meeting of Princes and Ministers which on February 25th voted for amendments to the Government's Bill had the legal opinion in question before it. It is understood by the Daily Telegraph's correspondent that it had not, though the document had in fact reached Bombay on the 22nd. The existence of the report fully explains the conciliatory attitude of men like Sir Akbar Hydari, who recently expressed in an interview opinions very different from those- attributed to the States by Mr. Churchill and Lord Rothermere—whose predictions of a fissure between the Princes and the Government the opinion of counsel will go far to falsify. * * * *
