Lord Irwin on the eve of his departure from India
has made some memorable comments on the situation. At a farewell dinner given by the Chelmsford Club on Thursday, March 26th, he said that those who saw in the present stirring of thought in India only a move- ment engineered by a negligible minority were guilty of a superficial diagnosis divorced from all reality. It was easy to say that sedition should never be condoned, and that a " firm " Government could bring India back to the good old days of paternal administration, with populous markets reserved for British trade. But the fact was that the growing intellectual consciousness, or rather self-consciousness, of India was the equivalent of Nationalism. In regard to the safeguards suggested at the Round Table Conference, he said that lie assumed that Indian opinion was not less anxious than British opinion for ample security to be provided in the sphere of credit and finance. He repeated what the Secretary of State had recently said in Parliament, that the Govern- ment held financial safeguards to be " essential." If, however, better safeguards than those already proposed could be produced, the Government would give them careful consideration.
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