TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. MONTAGU.
IT has been said that we gained our Indian Empire, and so achieved our greatest success in the work of civilisation and humanity, in a moment of unconscious- ness. Alas ! it looks as if we should lose it also in a moment of unconsciousness. That which came like a dream seems destined to pass like a dream. The British people are asleep, and at the moment do not realise what we are doing, or rather failing to do, in a crisis which concerns the happiness of three hundred million people. When our people do awake we have not the slightest doubt of what will be their mood. When they understand that they have lost India and ruined there the patient work of four genera- tions they will be as angry and as indignant as they now seem indifferent. At present their mood is that of the old agricultural labourer, "Why shouldn't the people of India choose for themselves, as long as they behave their- selves?" But if they don't behave themselves, what then ? "Why, then we will just make 'em."
. That is an illogical—nay, if you will, a cruel and fatal way of looking at the problem ; but unquestionably it bodes ill, when the crash comes, for those who have brought it about. The British people are a very ugly people to deal with when they find out that they have been deceived. In that mood they know neither fear nor pity. This will be discovered not only by Mr. Montagu, but by Mr. Lloyd George, who, after all, cannot escape his share of the responsibility. There was nothing in the least inevitable or necessary about sending Mr. Montagu to India. He did not even help to get Mr. Lloyd George into supreme power. When the unseating of Mr. Asquith took place Mr. Montagu for a time stood by his own chief and backed the wrong horse. Very likely he thought Mr. Lloyd George would fail to make a cabinet. When Mr. Lloyd George succeeded in making a stable Cabinet, a still small voice at his elbow asked, Did you hear that heartfelt cheer in the last round of your splendid fight ? That was me." The sending of Mr. Montagu to the India Office was an act of gratuitous folly on the part of Mr. Lloyd George, or if not of folly, then we can only say of political and personal convenience. He evidently wanted Mr. Montagu's support for the Coalition very badly. Why he should have wanted it so badly is very difficult to understand, for Mr. Montagu has no great following in the House of Commons, no great power over it as an orator, no great Parliamentary knowledge or judgment. We can only suppose that for some reason or other Mr. Lloyd George felt that .Mr. Montagu's presence in the Cabinet was necessary to his political welfare, and appar- ently the power to rule India was the price, and that price was paid. Therefore Mr. Lloyd George, unless he very quickly divests himself of Mr. Montagu's help, must bear the responsibility of Mr. Montagu's acts. Every month that Mr. Montagu remains at the India Office is a renewed endorsement of the Montagu ." reforms," and fastens the responsibility for what may happen in India upon the Prime Minister. Mr. Montagu is a loss which a wise politician will cut as soon as he can.
To make a long story short, Mr. Montagu must leave the India Office, or, to use the language to which Mr. Lloyd George has accustomed us, Mr. Montagu must take his viscountcy and go. And go, remember, not, as some of the Lobby gossipers tell us, to India as Viceroy, for that would be ruin ten times distilled, but either out of the Cabinet altogether, or, if that is too great a break with the Lloyd George system, then to some office where his abilities will be less dangerous to the Empire. We do not like the kicking-upstairs habit, but if Mr. Lloyd George is too addicted to it to give it up we must tolerate yet another example of the gentle art of shunting friends and colleagues.
"Why must Mr. Montagu go ? " will be the question put to us by many persons who in the distraction of the times have not followed Indian events, and so have been either browbeaten or cajoled into believing that Mr. Montagu is acting in India the part of a humane and far-seeing payer of Danegeld, a kind friend to the Empire who is very adroit at buying off trouble in a moment of difficulty, a buffer between the preoccupied and distracted John Bull and a pressing political creditor. We demand Mr. Montagu's resignation or removal first of all on his Indian record. Anyone who knows the facts knows that what- ever has been done to stabilise the position, social, political and moral, in India has been done not only without his help and encouragement, but against his will. All that has happened—and, alas ! this is far the bigger side of the account—to injure men's confidence in the good faith, the power, and the lasting qualities of the Raj, is due to Mr. Montagu's incorrigible timidity. His inability to say " No " to traitors and conspirators, his refusal to stand by anyone who gets into a tight place, and his fawning upon the Indian agitators—which, though it may be regarded as mere folly in England, in Asia is reckoned as the first sign of political collapse—all point the same way. Mr. Mon- tagu has shaken the pillars of the Empire in India as they have never been shaken before. We do not say this merely because he has allowed the Indian Government, military and civil, first to endorse General Dyer's rough and ready action, and later, when that action was placed in an unfavourable light by General Dyer's want of skill under cross-examination, to throw him to the wolves. Although no one could think worse than we do of the way in which Mr. Montagu has managed the Dyer incident, it is of the general spirit of his administration, not merely of this particular instance, that we complain.
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