NEWS OF THE WEEK
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THE very remarkable speech which Lord George Hamilton delivered at Turnham Green on Tuesday will show to any careful reader precisely the strength and the weakness of our Indian Administration. The Secretary for India, who, of course, does not wish to create panic, admits that seventy-two millions of people are now " affected " or " threatened " with dangerous scarcity, but he thinks that the Government has .some prospect of dealing with it successfully. Full reports come from every district, an elaborate "Famine Code" has been introduced into every province, and so perfect is the machinery of relief that last year in the North-West alone the Government paid three hundred thousand persons on relief works without the bulk of the population knowing what was going on. The people have sunk one hundred thousand wells with Government money, heavy imports of food are for the first time pouring into India through the ordinary channels of commerce, and the Government is satisfied that the Viceroy, Lord Elgin, and the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West, Sir Antony Macdonnell, are the very men to deal with the calamity. All that is most satisfactory, bat old Indians will read with a sigh of impatience Lord George's long account, almost half his speech, of the splendid provision made for supplying—statistics. There is the Indian trouble. It is impossible to dispense with information and " checks," and more than half the energy of a Service which is barely suffi- cient in ordinary times, and is terribly undermanned for emergencies, is used up in providing them. All will be done, it is clear, that can be done, but we fear the wide area of this disaster ensures a black time in the social as well as financial history of India.
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