23 APRIL 1932, Page 14

Letters to the Editor

,[In view of the length of many of the letters :Mich we receive, we would remind correspondents that we often cannot give space for tong letters and that short ones are generally read with more attention. The length which we consider most suitable is about that of one of our paragraphs on " News of the Week."—Ed. SPeceieron.]

ANIRITSAR

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,--MT. Edward Thompson, in the course of his surprising article on Amritsar, says that " General Dyer made his own legend of what he had done, and he imposed it on the world." Legends arc always interesting : let us glance at Mr. Thompson's.

He says that " General Dyer's tiny force was composed of British and Gurkhas." It was composed of Gurkhas and other Indian troops. lie says that " thirty people were reported to have jumped into the well and been drowned." This legend grew out of the credulity of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya who visited the Jalianwalabagh and reported to the Municipal Committee that there were corpses in the well. " On examination it was found that he had mistaken an earthen pot for the head of the corpse and a bundle of cloth that had been looted for the body:'—(Proceedings of the Indian Legislative Council, Vol. LVIII, p. 348.)

He says that " the official casualties settled down at 359 dead and 1,200 wounded " and further that the official figures must be accepted." His namesake, Mr. J. P. Thompson, Secretary to the Punjab Government, stated in the Legislative Council on September 19th, 1919: " Our enquiries show that the total (of killed) was 291 and I claim that any information which asks us to accept figures beyond this must be received with the greatest suspicion."—Ibid., p. 343. The number of wounded traced was under 600.

He quotes the inscription : " fifteen hundred innocent people were martyred " ; but omits to point out that it is false.

He speaks of " a five-foot wall lashed by massed rifle fire." The firing was not " massed " ; it was individual firing. The number of rounds fired was 1,650, and the force left the field with a reserve of cartridges still in their bandoliers. In the light of this fact it is plain that you, Sir, misreport General Dyer when you say, " he insisted . . . that if he had had more ammunition he would have killed more people."

Mr. Thompson says that General Dyer was an Irishman. He was an Englishman, born at Murree in the Himalayas, his father and mother both of Devon. Mr. Thompson reports a conversation with Mr. Miles Irving, which seems to me improbable. Dyer certainly was not " all dazed and broken up," but alert and vigilant after the shooting. As to the impression that " the crowd was nuissing to attack him," it was not " clean " forgotten but formed part of the written evidence both of General Dyer and Captain Briggs laid before the Hunter Committee.

Mr. Thompson's account of the Jalianwalabagh does not correspond with the accounts of those who knew the place in 1019. Ile evidently saw it after it was rearranged to suit Congress propaganda.

As to the effect on Indian opinion, the Amritsar citizens at a great meeting thanked General Dyer for delivering their city from the tyranny of a mob ; the Sikhs made him one of their brotherhood, and finally Gandhi himself (who should know) " expressed the opinion--General Dyer was a brave man. At Amritsar, with a handful of troops, in the face of a great multitude, he had judged it better to slay a few hundreds than to let loose a turbulent mob" (Dr. Norwood, Indiscretions of a Preacher, 1932).

Let Mr. Thompson, if he can, reconcile that opinion and these facts with his legend of General Dyer,—/ am, Sir, &c., [Mr. Edward Thompson replies : Mr. Colvin, if I were a fastidious person, puts himself beyond the pale by suggesting that I invented an interview. I named three witnesses ; address " Lahore " will find them all. I made a slip about British troops being present, because of a British orderly's remark, two days later : " It wouldn't have been so dreadful if we had been firing. It was awful having to stand doing nothing and seeing what was happening." The troops were 65 Gurkhas and 25 Baluchis ; 50 had rifles. I advise Mr. Colvin not to pursue the question of whether people were drowned or not. It does not rest on Malaviya's evidence at all. But thirty, I myself believe, was exaggeration. For the official casualties he quotes Mr. (now Sir) J. P.

Thompson against me. Let me quote him back. In his evidence before us, Mr. Thompson admitted that certainly 379 dead casualties had taken place, and that there was possibly still a small margin for more " (Hunter Report, p. 117). Three hundred and seventy-nine dead is the figure everywhere accepted by the Report. I am, I believe, the first writer to call the official figures too high (for which I shall presently be stoned from the other side) ; I questioned them mainly because of a long conversation with Sir .1. P. Thompson. Mr. Colvin says I " omit to point out " that the inscription's "fifteen hundred martyred" was false. This was made pikestaff-plain to any reasonably alert reader. The nature of the firing is a technicality. Massed or individual, it shot down sixteen hundred people in between five and ten minutes. If General Dyer " had had more ammunition, he insisted, he would have killed more people." My mistake. What he said (Hunter Report, p. 112) was that if he had got his machine-guns in he would " probably " have used them, causing more casualties ; and that, " if more troops had been at hand the casualties would have been greater in proportion " (p. 30). " I had made up my mind that 1 would do all men to death if they were going to continue the meeting " (p. 112).

In India General Dyer was (and is) thought to have been an Irishman, perhaps because his education, from the years of eleven to twenty, was entirely in Ireland (Colvin, Story of General Dyer, pp. 8 ff.). I do not know why so English a person was educated in Ireland. No one ever said that his impression that the crowd was massing for attack was clean forgotten. The obvious reference was to his far more striking first comment, " I never knew that there was no way out." As for Mr. Colvin's last paragraph, I have been so often in trouble, in America and India as well as England, for my alleged. " justification " of Amritsar, that I leave it with the remark that there are thousands of my countrymen, civilian and military, to whom my article will have conic as profound relief.]