What makes the position more unjust, and this especially applies
to Mr. Montagu, is the fact that nothing was said by General Dyer's accusers about the local situation. One would imagine from Mr. Montagu's speech, and generally from the speeches of those who supported his view, that General Dyer had descended upon the peaceful and loyal city of Amritsar, and in order to give India a sharp lesson, had arranged the massacre of a certain number of inoffensive citizens as the Jacobins arranged the September massacres—all as a matter of policy. As a fact, however, on the day before the Amritsar affair the mob, and to a large extent the same mob, had murdered the bank managers in the most horrible way, and left an unfortunat3 Englishwoman half-battered to pieces. There was every reason to believe that the mob at the Jallianwalla Bagh would, if not prevented, behave like the mob of the day before. If they had done so there would have been no white man or white woman left in Amritsar. These being the facts, when Mr. Montagu lays down a general abstract proposition condemning frightfulness to which all reasonable and right-thinking people agree, we are left completely cold.
