THE COMMUNAL CLASH IN INDIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Stag---In your footnote to the letter of mine which you did me the honour to publish in last week's issue, you say :
" Mr. MacDonald, on the contrary, has stated quite defint,fl.V that if Hindus and Moslems cannot settle the communal question for themselves the British Government will settle it for them."
Did not Mr. MacDonald equally definitely, last autumn, teii ti.e delegates at the Round Table Conference that unless and with
the Indians could agree among themselves what they wanted it would be impossible to do anything? The one statement was quite as definite as the other and also the one contrary to the other.
• The object of my letter was to ask your readers, through you, which of these two contrarytatements they considered the more wise and statesmanlike?
I am afraid I must have expressed myself badly.
To force a settlement (?) on peoples so antipathetic to each • other would be equivalent to locking up two terriers and five wild cats in a cage and leaving them to light it out. The sight of the cage afterwards would be a very unpleasant object. Was not Mr. MacDonald's statement made at the Round Table Conference wiser than the threat made subsequently to force something down the throats (as it were) of two races, so much opposed to each other ? I trust I have now made myself clearer than your footnote to my letter indicates in my former [The statement quoted in our footnote was made last autumn (December 1st). (Inc correspondent does not state the date or context of the other alleged statement to which he refers.—En., Spectator.]
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