HINDU PROPAGANDA IN A MPRICA.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—May I bring to your notice the propaganda being con- ducted in this country by " The Friends of Freedom for India," a Society whose headquarters are located in New York? The spirit of the organization is indicated by the circular which I enclose. It is not reassuring that one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society should be Mr. Frank P. Walsh, whose activities in Ireland we have reason to recall. It seems so desirable in the interests of the world's liberties that the friendship between Great Britain and this country should continue to grow that I have the hope that British periodicals of influence may publicly protest against such systematic attempts to destroy the mutual goodwill of the Anglo-Saxon nations. Protests would do good if they led to discussion of the matter in our leading American papers.—I am, Sir, &c., WALTER M. PATTON. Carleton College Library, Northfield, Minn., June 24th.
[The nature of the poisonous stuff which our correspondent encloses may be gathered from these extracts. The heading is " Dynamiting Women and Children in India." The signature is "Hindustan Gadar Party," at San Francisco :- " Not content with shooting down those who object to the tyrannical rule of the English capitalists in India, the military government of that unhappy land has now resorted to the use of the bomb to terrorize its opponents. Some of the inhabit- ants of that English dependency have been so foolish as to take the doctrine of the 'self-determination of peoples' in earnest and reached the ridiculous conclusion that they had a right to select their own officials and make their own laws. Of course, the ` uppah class' has no desire to relinquish its power of gouging the poverty-stricken Indians. In spite of the fact that no native of that country is allowed by law to carry as much as a stick for self-defence the movement for self-rule became so widespread that martial law was declared in some provinces and the military fired on the people. An Associated Press despatch of April 15th stated that airplanes had been used to bomb the protesters, and a later cable asserted that there had already been hundreds of casualties. What has happened in the last few days is unknown, as all news from that quarter is apparently censored. Accompanying this Nationalistic movement is also a great labour unrest. India has always been notorious for its poverty-stricken working class. Over a hundred thousand of these workers in the cotton mills of Bombay struck a few weeks ago. Other labour uprisings have occurred. Will American labour stand idly by while its brothers in another land are put down in this ruthless manner? Remember, if the airplane and the armoured tank can be successfully used against the strikers in India, they can, and they will, be used against the strikers in America. Already the capitalistic masters of this country are planning their use. . . . Raise your protest everywhere against the use of bombs and the slaughter indiscriminately of innocent women and children. Demand that the purposes for which you euffered and gave your sons shall be carried out. Self-rule for India, Egypt, as well as Ireland, and the right of the workers everywhere to control the conditions of their own lives."
The closing reference to Ireland raises suspicions which are confirmed by the appearance of the name of Mr. Walsh, on the title-page of a tract misrepresenting the Rowlatt Act, as Vice- President of "The Friends of Freedom for India," of New York. Not a word is said, it will be observed, of the fact that the Hindu mobs had murdered Europeans and natives and done great damage to property before the troops were called out to scatter them.—ED. Spectator.)
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