* * * * On the whole Lord Winterton's picture
of India was satisfactory and was accepted by the House with much less adverse criticism than we have been accustomed to in recent years. Finance was extremely successful in spite of a fall in the value, not the quantity, of cotton exported. Education was spreading steadily everywhere, even among girls, and notably among the outcastes. Railway development was continuous. Recruitment for the Civil Service, the police, and the officers of the Army was improving. The speech gave little opportunity for disparagement of British rule as holding down an oppressed race that struggled with unanimity to rise ; but Lord Winterton himself forestalled criticism from the opposite point of view by admitting doubts whether all this progress, as it appears to Western eyes, is really the quickest road to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of Indians.
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