LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
THE MONTAGU REPORT.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.") have read your issue of July 20th, and also the pamphlet entitled Indian Opposition to Home Rule from which you Quote so freely. Whilst agreeing with your deductions, I venture to think that you fail to make the most of the case which you espouse, for the pamphlet devotes itself principally to the resent- ment to the proposed reforms felt by the depressed classes and by many sections of the inhabitants of Southern 'India, but makes no mention of the important and poiverftl tribes of Northern India such as the Raj puts, Degree, 'Sikhs, and Jets among the Hindus, and the fighting motions of the Mohammedans In the Punjab, North-West Frontier and United Provinces. All of these people hold the unwarlike Bengali (for whose benefit Mr. Montage's Report would appear to have been written) in -supreme contempt. It was among these natives and the Mahrattas that the sovereignty of India was divided in the days of old, and it is among them that it would again be divided if we were to with- draw from the country. It must be borne in mind that not only the great mass of the population, but also the vast majority of the nobles and gentlemen, of the North 'ofIndia cannot speak English, and that these natural rulers of the people would on this account alone be disqualified from occupying any but very sub- ordinate appointments. It is, in fact, only in the educated Indian party, the most disloyal in India, and consisting principally of Bengalis, that men could be found with the education -necessary to qualify them for holding the posts which it is proposed to open to natives. The members of this party would in the vast majority of cases be aliens in the provinces which they would be ordered to administer, and would moreover be aliens of a despised and detested race. To subject loyal men of the tribes which have supplied our soldiers to Bengali government would
indeed be to add insult to injury.—I am, Sir, he., X. Y. Z.
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