THE AMRITSAR TRAGEDY.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR ."1
Szn,—Parliament have now before them a grave issue—the manner in which General Dyer suppressed disturbances in Amritsar kit April. That is a question which the House of Commons can thoroughly understand, and it can be trusted to do substantial justice in any resolution passed. We know that General Dyer went to Amritsar to suppress an outbreak against the British power, in which unspeakable things had been done. There is no need to enumerate these, but the act which would provoke more indignation than any other among us Englishmen was the murderous attack upon Miss Marcella Sherwood.
Miss Marcella Sherwood has written to the Times a straight- forward account of the attack which nearly cost her her life. She was Superintendent of the Mission Day Schools for Girls with 600 -scholars. The English ladies of the Zenana Mission Hospital were also threatened. The mob went to the above hospital with intent to burn it, but desisted through the good offices of Hindu and Mohammedan neighbours. Miss Sherwood owed her rescue to the parents of her girls. That is Miss Sherwood's most honourable account of the doings of the mob on the one hand, and of respectable Hindus and Mohammedans who deterred the mob from the hospital that they were going to burn, and rescued her from the hands of the mob who would have killed her. It is women of Miss Sherwood's sort who uphold our prestige in India, who are known to and looked up to by the residents. All honour to her.
General Dyer probably knew nothing of these things, as the civil authorities could not find five minutes' time to acquaint him with the real situation. He found a meeting going on in a walled enclosure, which had been prohibited. He rightly poured volleys into the midst of them, killing and wounding a certain number. The assembly then completely submitted. There should then have been an end of the volleying. But then, instead of giving the command "Cease Fire!" General Dyer continued to pour in volley after volley, till he had killed and wounded upwards of 1,500 persons. The Times has very properly described this further action as a massacre. Subse- quently he ordered that no one should pass down the street where Miss Sherwood was nearly murdered except on hands and knees. This order we might have expected from a Chinese General. It was given by an English officer. This happened in April last. The fact is elicited and 'published publicly in England in the following December. There is no more excuse for the nine months' delay in publication than if it had occurred in regard to a most important transaction of the British Ministry in Great Britain.
Now the question is : Did Mr. Montagu know of the true facts before he was questioned in the House of Commons in December, or not? Undoubtedly he did. Sir Michael O'Dwyer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, has been at home some time, and so has Miss Sherwood. Of course he learnt the true state of affairs from them. If he did not take the trouble to consult them, be is no more fit for his post than the crossing- sweeper at the India Office. And now your readers will see the strange spectacle of Mr. Montagu in December pleading for further delay before forming a judgment. Mr. Montagu was rolled in the mud when he tried conclusions with Sir John' Hewett to get him muzzled by the military authorities in Baghdad. He does not seem to mind mud, as he will have another roll before the few members of the House who are interested in getting at the truth. Conspicuous among these are Colonel Yate (who was administering a native State when Mr. Montagu was at school) and Professor Oman, an exact historian.
Now let me turn for one moment to the debate in the House of Lords on Mr.•Montagu'a Bill. The speaker who knew the position far better than anybody was Lord MacDonnell. As A. P. MacDonnell, of the Bengal Civil Service, he got passed the greatest measure of tenant right that the Bengal cultivator has ever known. His whole career in India and Ireland is well known for stern fighting for the cultivator's privileges. and to give him some measure of power to protect himself Lord MacDonnell said :—
" Had any real effort been made to reconcile the interests and the status of the Indian Civil Service with the new dispensation? The extremists in India knew that the Inditie Civil Service was the first bulwark of British rule, and they made it their deliberate purpose to smash that bulwark, because their object was to smash British rule."
Lord Ampthill, who has acted as Governor-General, said "that everything he read or heard forced him to the conviction that very few people in India desired the kind of innovation that was proposed by the Bill . . . a storm was brewing, and could not be calmed by pouring oil on the troubled waters, and a murderous revolt was ready to break out at any moment. He was profoundly convinced that those who supported the measure would bitterly regret their share in supporting the measure. The whole future of India was placed in ser:ous jeopardy. To that position we had been brought, when engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Germany, by the adroit collusion of schemers in this country with schemers in India."
There is great truth in the last remark, for can any one have any doubt that Lord Curzon's consent was obtained solely because of the state of affairs that attended the German War? All he could say for the Bill was that " the life of the Indian Civil Servant would be more difficult and less attractive in the future. He should not quarrel with any one who used the term 'a daring experiment.' Would India be better governed than it had been in the past? He did not think it would be so well governed. The standards would tend to fall." He justified his consent to the Bill on the ground that it was much more important that the people of India should govern thou- selves—even though they might not be so well governed—than be better governed by others.
A suitable comment on the last argument is contained in the speech of the Hon. V. J. l'atel at the dinner given to him and his co-delegates at the House of Commons by the Labour Party. Please observe that they are delegates from the Indian National Congress, the only so-called representative body in India. Mr. Patel said that the new Act gave them not an iota of control over their Central Government, and left them at the mercy of autocratic Governors. Given a reactionary and unsympathetic Viceroy, surrounded by bureaucratic advisers of a like nature, the Punjab horrors could be repeated again for all the new Government of India could do to prevent them.
Finally, let us notice that Mr. Montagu gets his usual luncheon party and tells them what a fine fellow he is, all duly reported by his faithful supporter the Times.
Please note that I have no quarrel with Indians like Lord Sinha, Surendra Nath Banerjia, and other honest supporters of the change. We have agreed to differ.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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