TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE REAL VOICE OF INDIA. THE abuses of publicity are very great. During this war the British nation has been introduced to the great uses of publicity in waging war—publicity in these days is an essential weapon in the conduct of war—and nobody recog- nizes its value more heartily than we do. The reverse side, and the bad side, of the case is that the channels for conveying in- formation may also be used unfairly by those who control them for forming opinion. We do not know altogether what may have been going on in the business of popularizing the Montagu Report on Indian Reforms, but we do know that the chorus of approval which is chanted by a large part of the Press has all the appearance of having been prearranged. It is certain that there is an enormous volume of opinion in India against any such reforms as Mr. Montagu proposes. Yet people in this country have little or no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the extent and intensity of the protests that have been made. The responsibility upon those who believe, as we do, that the British nation is being entirely misled, and that India, so far from being saved from a danger, is being threatened with a disaster, is all the stronger to make known here the true voice of India. What is happening is that the Government are fol- lowing the policy already made familiar by their dealings with Ireland ; they are trying to placate the clamorous few by sacri- ficing to them the interests of the mass. We cite the case of Ireland because that is very near and plain to us all, but we might indeed go much further and say that Mr. Montagu's policy is a kind of Bolshevism. With the best intentions, of course, it proposes to remove, or at all events to reduce to impotence, the power which has held the scales between all the warring elements of India. In Russia the Government of the Tsar was no doubt a very bad Government, but when it was removed the whole structure of Russian life collapsed like a house of cards. The risk that the same thing will happen, and that quickly, in India if Mr. Montagu is allowed to have his way is very great. It is all but a certainty.
Mr. Montagu would not commit himself in form to the heresy that India is a nation, but the effect of his Report is to assume that she is, and the British people, who know very little about India, are being encouraged to believe that it is safe to act on that assumption. But what is untrue of Ireland is a thousand times more untrue of India. We all know what has happened in Ireland as a result of the Government policy, and if we apply that policy to India we shall bring about a still greater ruin. At present all the signs indicate the corre- spondence between the two policies. We are invited to believe that the clamorous few in India really must be appeased, and that the interests of the vast majority—most of them strong loyalists—may safely be ignored. The loyalists are thrown to the disloyalists. It is taken for granted that what is being offered will actually appease the extremists, though there is no evidence whatever that it would do so, while there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. And all the time we are being told in effect that an " atmosphere " favourable to the success of the proposed reforms must be created, and that resistance to the Montagu Report is an extreme kind of mischief-making and unpatriotism. Our answer is that the responsibility for any trouble which may occur in India lies upon the authors and originators of the Montagu Report. Trouble there may be, but the trouble will be infinitely greater if the principles of the Report are put into operation. We hold, therefore, most earnestly that it is nothing less than a patriotic duty to remind or inform our countrymen of the deep alarm that has been caused among the helpless masses of India by Mr. Montagu's principles. Information on this subject can be found nowhere set forth more succinctly and more clearly than in a pamphlet published by the Inde-British Association, 6 Broad Street Place, E.C. 2, entitled Indian Opposition to Home Rule : What the British Public Ought to Know. In the course of our work we have had to read innumerable pamphlets, but we say de- liberately that this pamphlet is the most convincing and im- pressive political argument published by any Society that we have ever read. It is convincing and impressive because it is not an outburst of angry rhetoric. It is simply a compilation of the various protests against the idea of Home Rule ill India, and moat of them were addressed to Mr. Montagu while he was touring India in the interests of his scheme. Every patriot concerned with the great traditions, and the still greater destiny, of the British Empire ought to buy this pamphlet, which costs only sixpence, and read every word of it. No Englishnian has a right to accept Mr. Montagu's plan of Home Rule till he has most carefully pondered all that is to be said on the other side. The most wonderful fact brought to light in this pamphlet is that the " untouchables " (those who are condemned by the mere accident of birth to live all their lives, quite irremediably, as outcasts), the ryots and the true Moslems, have at last found their voices after too long a period of inarticulateness in face of the Brahmin politicians. These people are terribly agitated—every word which they use rings true with the sincerity of a genuine distress—at the prospect of being handed over to the awful tyranny of the Brahmin literati. Our Government have an extraordinary aptitude for throwing down apples of discord. They threw one into the Army and another into Ireland. But the Montagu Report throws down a whole orchard's crop.
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