Brigadier-General Dyer opened fire upon an unarmed mass of about
5,000 people who were holding a meeting in a sunk garden at Amritsar, and did not stop firing till he, as he said, " ran short of ammunition." We do not wish in any way to come to a final judgment upon this matter. It is still in a sense sub judice because the Report of Lord Hunter's Committee has not yet been received. In fairness to General Dyer, it must be remembered that many acts of extreme violence and many murders and outrages had been committed, and for all he knew the Punjab was giving a signal to the whole of India to rise and enact another Indian Mutiny comparable with that of 1857. Moreover, it must be remembered that he had with him only a tiny force—the troops who fired are said to have numbered only fifty natives—and that whatever he did he must put some policy into force at once. He must not hesitate. The comparison of his action with the so-called massacre of Peterloo which is made by the Westminster Gazette is irrelevant, as before the meeting at Peterloo there had been no trouble, whereas General Dyer was hemmed in by troubles which he may have been perfectly right in regarding as the sign' of a deliberate and far-reaching rising against the Europeans.
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