2 MAY 1931, Page 2

Elsewhere in these pages we give our welcome to Lord

Irwin on his return home. Outwardly, at any rate, India has passed an uneventful week. Mr. Gandhi's pronouncements on the subject of missionaries, made public last week in Young India, are chiefly important as emphasizing the fact that his attitude has been mis- represented. His attempts to explain exactly what that attitude is consist of some not unreasonable general- izations about missionary methods, divorced—perhaps intentionally—from any true comprehension of the historical relations between Christianity and India. In his references to the boycott of foreign cloth, which, according to him, has not been directed against English cloth any more than against that of other nations, his economics are acted off the stage by Imperial Exploita- tion as the Wicked Uncle, and by the spinning wheel as the Fairy Godmother. Probably the most significant event of the week was the revelation, in a speech by Sir Geoffrey de Montmorency, the Governor of the Punjab, that the conviction is growing in high places that the Government cannot be expected indefinitely to observe the spirit of the Delhi Pact while Congress takes every opportunity of flouting both the letter and the spirit too. Lord Peel initiated a debate in the Upper House on Wednesday. Lord Snell, answering for the Government, was reassuring but not illuminating.