For what inscrutable reason, I should like to know, has
the name: of Mr. Srinavasa Sastri been omitted from. the list of Indians invited to co-operate with the Select Committee of the two Houses on Indian Reform? Fourteen years ago I asked Edwin Montagu—just when he was drafting the Bill. based on his proposals—what Indian public man he regarded as the ablest and most effective co-operator with this country. " Sastri," he replied without a moment's hesitation, and despite the tensions and frictions of the last half-dozen years I would make bold to say that there is no man in all India whose counsel and co-operation the Select Com- mittee would seek with greater advantage. An article by his pen in a recent issue of his paper, The Servant of India, on the White Paper shows how' candid and at the same time how temperate his criticism is. Mr. Sastri was not invited to the Third Round Table Con- ference ostensibly on the grounds of his health, and the same excuse presumably does service still. I have reason to know that, so far from being too ill to come, Mr. Sastri had been assiduously—and successfully— husbanding his strength to enable him to discharge what might have been the crowning task of his long career of public service. It is both foolish -and unjust thus to disregard him.
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