[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sra,—Some of the newspapers
in England seem to have confused the implications of the Congress resolutions at Lahore, no less than they misunderstood the motives of the Viceroy's pronouncemeM. For example, one paper has remarked : " The President's address shows all too plainly that the recent offers to placate extremists by references to Dominion Status as the goal of British policy in India have been in vain."
But, surely, the wisdom of a policy or of an act done in pursuance of it, is not necessarily disproved by a malcontent's subsequent efforts to obitruct it. It is reasonable to suppose that both Lord Irwin and Mr. Benn knew quite well that they could not reconcile' the irreconcilables : but they could remove certain misunderstandings from reasonable minds, and it is perfectly clear that they did so.
English leader writers in the press in England 'forget that
the situation in India is very different to-day from ten years ago. Then, Mahatma Gandhi had swept Moslems and Sikhs off their feet. The Khilafatist movement also was then in full swing under the Hindu Mahatma's aegis. Amongst the masses, he himself had a following, the like of which had not been seen in India before. Yet with all these great advantages the " Moderates," that is, the sober Mohammedan leaders and the Liberal Party, withstood him and utterly broke up the whole movement.
Non-co-operation, which produced only bloodshed and filled the gaols, was a miserable, abject and a confessed failure. Actually, the present temporary Governor of the Central Provinces, H. E. Mr. Tambe, was a few years ago a pledged non-co-operator. All went well, and the movement from the Left to the Centre continued until two years ago. The last remnant of non-co-operation would have been buried by Congress Resolution were it not for Lord Birkenhead's appalling perversity in appointing a Royal Commission to revise India's Constitution which contained no Indian Member. That was the Non-co-operators' windfall. The_movement from the Left was immediately checked.
- The. Moderates were dismayed and confounded, and a reverse movement to the Left at once set in.. However, what the Moderates did before, in far more difficult circumstances, they can, and will certainly achieve again now, on a far greater scale under the leadership of Mr. Sartoi, Mrs. Besant, and many others. But the European Community in India will have to join forces with all the sane and liberal elements of the Nation.
[Our correspondent must not forget that the Simon Com- mission is a Conunittee of members of the British House of Commons to advise Parliament. It was not possible, therefore, to have Indian members on it, but we think that much mis- understanding would have been prevented if some such body as the Round-table Conference which it is proposed to hold in the autumn, had been called into being simultaneously with the appointment of the Simon Commission.—En. Spectator.]
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