Responsibility or Repression Sir Charles Innes, the late Governor of
Burma, made some very sensible observations at the Royal Empire Society on Tuesday on the subject both of Burma and of India. Responsibility, he observed, was the only real solution both of the Indian and of the Burman problem ; the alternative was probably repression, and that was no remedy at all. It would be difficult to state the situation better. Incidentally, Sir Charles considers that Burma's right course is to seek inde- pendence under the British Crown rather than a place in the Indian Federation. While the Select Committee's Report is in course of preparation it is to be hoped that full attention will be paid, as Sir Francis Younghusband and others urge in a letter in Wednesday's Times, to the memoranda laid before the Committee by such Indian Moderates as the Aga Khan and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, pressing for certain modifications in the White Paper scheme designed to take the sting out of the opposition the scheme would otherwise provoke in many quarters in India. The Indian Moderates have always been exposed to the taunt that their moderation, which forfeits them the sympathy of the more vigorous Indian Nationalists, does not even win them consideration at the hands of British politicians. So far as that criticism is just British politicians should determine by their attitude to remove the grounds for it.
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