Con tinuit y in India B RITISH POLICY in India was
carried a stage further on Monday, when the participation of the Unionist Party in the Government's general plan became assured. We have often expressed our concern at the possibility of the Unionists being left out. There would be nothing of the persistent co-operation with Indians which is necessary for starting their new Constitution if British policy in India were to be subject to the ups and downs of Party strife here. What one Government did the next Government would want undone. If any enterprise more than another needs continuity it is British policy in India.
And it is not only for India herself that continuity is essential. An overworked House of Commons would be choked and strangled if the affairs of a discontented India, always trying to set one British Party against another, as the Irish used to do, were placed upon its shoulders. The one way, indeed, for the House of Commons to reduce the complicated business of a demo- cracy to manageable proportions is to withdraw as many subjects as possible from controversy. South Africa, not long after the Boer War, was settled by what seemed to be the acceptance of a risk ; Ireland was settled by a policy of discretion exercised boldly ; India must be similarly settled. If the principle of continuity can be introduced into several more matters at home, democracy, which sometimes looks like breaking loose, may be brought under safe control. We have in mind particularly those services involving huge financial expenditure, which are now the occasion of bargaining with the constituencies. It is for the health of all parties, as well as of the nation, that financial benefits should be determined by a calm economic scrutiny. This is, however, by the way. All that we want to insist upon is that Indian policy is unquestionably one of those subjects which must never be allowed to congest and bewilder Parliament.
The debate of Monday was remarkable first of all for the committing of the Unionist Party to a unanimous policy, and secondly for the intervention of Sir John Simon. Sir John Simon was too insistent, for our taste, upon the difficulties of building the new Indian Constitu- tion, and not expansive enough on the greatness of the ideal. For, after all, the debate was in the nature of a second reading debate (or one might say of a first reading debate if there were such a thing), and not of a Committee stage debate when details are the crux. In considering, however, whether we like or do not like the speech of Sir John Simon we are only dealing with a question of emphasis. Everything that he said was true in itself. No one can dispute that the Round Table only sorted out the subjects upon -which agreements are necessary. Yet what could have been more impressive than the appearance of that solid willingness to agree ?
Much was said in the debate about the inversion of normal methods in dealing with India. Sir John Simon remarked that the British Constitution had developed not by passing from the general to the particular, but by framing particular solutions until the general plan was complete. All the same, most thinking persons here have come to admit the urgency of frankly recognizing that Indian habits of thought are different from our own. The first step must be to convince the peoples of India 'that our aim is the full satisfaction of their sensitive pride. We have to jump over intervening stages, as we should ordinarily regard them. And Indians are not unique in cultivating what seems to British people an inversion of the natural order. In the United States it is not uncommon for an important new subject for legislation to be raised to the dignity of being mentioned in the Constitution before the details have been thought out.
Mr. Churchill's speech was a die-hard oration, very eloquent and extremely clever, but it opened up a gulf between him and his Party which will not very easily be bridged so long as Mr. Baldwin is there to apply his doctrine of continuity. George III, as Mr. Baldwin Said, might have made such a speech if only he had been able to speak with the tongue of Burke. Colonel Lane Fox said outright that Mr. Churchill's speech would work much mischief in India, but we fancy that the Indian delegates while they were still in London under- stood pretty clearly the position of Mr. Churchill, and that they will not now pretend that a fresh complication has been introduced.
Any reasonable analysis of the debate leaves Mr. Baldwin's speech pre-eminent. He went noticeably further than Lord Peel and Sir Samuel Hoare had ever gone. He said most plainly that nothing could be done without unanimity. " Break up that unanimity and no man in this House as Prime Minister or Secretary of State has any chance of coping with the government of India." Mr. Baldwin's firm attachment to continuity is a great fact. He feels about it as Shakespeare felt about degree, or priority, in the social structure :- "Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows I each thing meets In mere oppugnancy : the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe : Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead : Force should be right ; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite ; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, This chaos, when degree is suffocate, Follows the choking.
And this neglection of degree it is That by a pace goes backward."
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