a scheme of reforms to be laid before the British Government, the Indian elected members of his Legislative Council, to the number of nineteen, agreed, at the instigation of the more advanced spirits amongst them, to draw up their own recommendations and to submit them to the Viceroy. So far they were altogether within their rights, but they forthwith proceeded to publish their recommendations-some of them perfectly sound, others very crude, some quite impracticable. As soon as they were published other still more fiery spirits caugh: hold of them and were determined to go one better. So the Congress, in which the Extremists had regained the control they had lost in 1907, passed a series of drastic resolutions at the Lucknow session at the end of 1916, for which the recommendations of the nineteen served as the jumpingoff ground. Mrs. Besant, who had long helped to swell the ranks of the Extremists by her extravagant glorification of Hinduism, though she had formerly professed to have nothing to do with politics, had now assumed their leadership, and started her Home Rule League. She promptly seized upon these resolutions, asserted them to be the very minimum that would satisfy the demands of India, and at the next Congress session at Calcutta over which she presided at the end of last year gave them, with a final twist, the shape of an ultimatum to which her own eloquence lent an almost minatory note. Thus many members of the Congress who would have been quite content to await patiently the results of the Pronouncement were rushed into committing themselves to a policy which deliberately ignored and was intended to frustrate the careful limitations of the Pronouncement.

By these resolutions the Congress traversed the right which the British Government have specifically reserved to themselves, as responsible for the welfare and advancement of 'the Indian peoples, to be judges of the time and measure of ' each advance,' and to be 'guided by the co-operation received 'from those upon whom new opportunities of service will 'be conferred and by the extent to which it is found that 'confidence can be reposed on their sense of responsibility.' For the Congress lays down in great detail the nature of the constitutional reforms by which alone, in its view, the demands of the people of India can be satisfied and must be satisfied without delay, and though it does not purport to formulate a

scheme for immediate Home Rule on the lines of Dominion self-government, it recommends a series of measures calculated to produce such a paralysis of government that the only remedy would (very soon be either to restore its autocratic character, which would then mean a counter-revolution, or else to make a headlong plunge into Home Rule, which in the circumstances would have all the revolutionary characteristics of an enforced surrender. The crucial proposals which alone deserve attention would vest all legislative power, including the power of the purse, in large popular assemblies with an overwhelming elective majority. The executive power on the other hand would be vested in a Governor and Council, half of which would be British and consist of men appointed from England with no Indian experience, and the other half would be Indian and elected by the popular assemblies. Yet an Executive composed of men thus deriving their authority from two different sources, and bearing in its composition all the seeds of potential conflict, is neither to be armed with any power over the assembly but that of a delaying veto, nor compelled to hand over the reins of government to an opposition all-powerful to signify its will but powerless to impose it. The most striking instance that occurs to one's mind of the deadlock which such conditions are bound to produce is the Period of Conflict' between the Prussian Government and the Prussian Legislature between 1862 and 1866, which Indians themselves would least of all consider a happy omen. To put it mildly, the Congress scheme aggravates every defect which experience has shown to be inherent to the Morley-Minto reforms and converts all their weak points into real danger points. It might pave the way to Bolshevism, but never to peaceful democratic evolution.

If we were driven to believe that a policy making straight for conflict were the only one that would satisfy Indian educated opinion, and that the raging and tea ing campaign for Home Rule, hot and strong, with open threats of passive resistance if denied, meant more than a nefarious but sterile attempt on the part of the Extremists to wreck the Pronouncement before it bears fruit, we might well despair of the future of India on any lines of peaceful democratic evolution. But there are some indications to show that we need not be driven to such tragic conclusions. The Congress itself wisely decided,

though by a very narrow majority, not to follow up its resolutions with the immediate despatch of deputations to England for purposes of aggressive propaganda in this country, and when the Home Rule League declined to consider itself bound by that decision and sought to steal a march upon the advocates of greater patience and prudence by proposing to despatch its own deputations, disapproval was widely expressed, and in no uncertain terms, before the British Government took the strong step of cancelling the passports already issued to them by the Government of India. Not a few prominent politicians are stated to have actually withdrawn from the league, and Mrs. Besant's influence, though not her violence, appears to be waning. The ignominious collapse of Russia has had a sobering effect, for the revolution had been greeted in India with rapturous enthusiasm as the death-knell of the AngloIndian as well as of the Russian bureaucracy.' The more thoughtful Indians now see how powerless even the Russian intelligentsia, relatively far more numerous and matured than the Indian intelligentsia, has proved to control the great ignorant masses as soon as the whole fabric of governmenteven one so honeycombed with corruption and treachery as that of Russia-has been hastily shattered. The critical stage upon which the war has once more entered is in itself bound to revive the warm community of feeling and of effort with the rest of the Empire which marked the first impact of German aggression, for the great issues for which Indians realized that the war was being fought are still trembling in the balance.

How difficulties melt away when Indians and Englishmen can be brought together to discuss even burning political questions in a calm and dispassionate spirit is not the least valuable contribution to a study of the present situation in India which Mr. Lionel Curtis has made in publishing in this country, with a special preface for British readers, his 'Letters 'to the People of India on Responsible Government,' which originally appeared in India. Just as in South Africa he had helped to steer the Act of Union into port, Mr. Curtis succeeded in India in lifting the discussion of the Pronouncement of August 20th out of the quicksands of racial controversy by inducing a representative group of Britons and Indians in Calcutta to agree on the principle, and even on the general outline, of a scheme for carrying it into effect, and to embody NO. 465.

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the results of their conferences in a joint address submitted by the signatories to the Viceroy and the Secretary of State. The principle is that of specific devolution. As Mr. Curtis himself remarks:

'A dozen draftsmen working on that principle might produce as many different plans for giving effect to it. These particular proposals are not submitted as offering the one key to the problem, but only because a principle of government cannot be properly explained nor thoroughly tested by discussion until it is expressed in some scheme and developed in considerable detail.'

The salient feature of this scheme is that, whilst maintaining throughout the various stages to be travelled before the ultimate goal of the Pronouncement can be reached the general structure and the paramount authority of the existing provincial and central governments responsible to the British Government and the British Parliament, it contemplates the immediate creation within smaller areas of new Indian executive organs, invested with such powers as can safely be devolved upon them and responsible to an Indian assembly and an Indian electorate. If it is essential to make those powers and responsibilities real and palpable within the agreed limits of devolution, those limits must be clearly defined so as to avoid the danger of friction, inevitably greater where racial differences come into play. They can be, and should be, capable of expansion at stated intervals, if the event justifies the transfer of power and responsibility to Indian shoulders, just as, if the event should fail to justify them, they should be suspended or even withdrawn altogether. The risk of failure if they are drawn too wide at first, and the opportunities for incessant agitation if they are constantly open to modification, must be as far as possible excluded. Whilst self-governing institutions must be based on the broadest possible representation, the lines of cleavage in India are so many and so deep that important minorities and special interests can scarcely be safeguarded otherwise than by some form of separate representation until the sense of national unity predominates. The educative value of representative institutions lies in bringing home to the widest electorates in any way qualified for the franchise the nature of the power conferred by the vote, and in India, where political

education has scarcely yet made a beginning, the surest and quickest way to bring it home to the elector is through his pocket. India is so largely rural, and Indian taxation falls so largely on the land, that even an illiterate electorate, so long as it has some stake in the land, will probably learn sooner than many people expect to hold its representative responsible for the effects of legislation and administration in those simple spheres of government activity which can be most readily made over to Indian control without endangering the more complicated or vital parts of the State fabric. That we must be prepared for some loss of efficiency during this period of elementary political training Mr. Curtis is too honest not to admit. We may even have-temporarily, at any rate-to stand by and witness cases of hardship and injustice to inarticulate and helpless classes we have hitherto made it our business to protect, until they shall have learnt to protect themselves. This is, indeed, the gravest objection to which any transfer of the powers and responsibilities we have hitherto assumed as trustees for the people of India must always be open, and it underlies the reluctance of many British administrators to recognize the necessity for any such transfer. Mr. Curtis, however, and the Indians with whom he has been co-operating, have wisely tried to meet this objection by insisting that 'the government of India must ' have the right to recall powers which have been abused or 'neglected.' Subject to this safeguard we are, they hold, justified in beginning to take steps for the gradual determination of a self-imposed trusteeship which has ceased to command universal assent. For though there are few educated Indians, unless blinded by racial passion, who believe that India is ripe, or can for some time yet be ripe, for the same measure of self-government that the Dominions enjoy, the great majority believe that she is ripe for a first instalment and entitled to demand it.

Even so conservative an Indian as the Aga Khan, strikes no uncertain note on this point. His position is as remarkable as his personality. His Highness is the spiritual head of an important Mohammedan community, and ten years ago he was the political leader of the Indian Mohammedans in opposition to the Congress movement. He is not a ruling chief, but he enjoys one of their most cherished privileges, namely, the