ius of the very first order and amongst his Professors were Europeans of distinction. This is what he says: Imperialism is always an evil, but British and French Imperialism in its worst forms is a thousand times preferable to German or Japanese Imperialism. The English and the French are at least gentlemen in personal intercourse, and they have free institutions at home, which exercise a liberalising influence on their colonial policy in spite of themselves. The meanest English or French Jingo cannot abolish the Magna Charta or blot out the words, "Liberte, Equalite, Fraternite," but the Germans, have no tradition of freedom. The Prussian rules over all the Germans, and the Prussian is perhaps the most detestable biped on earth. He is selfish, avaricious, heartless, arrogant, unscrupulous and servile. A slave and a bully, he is cruel to the weak and obsequious to the strong. He understands only the law of Force, and worships Power and Rank. He is an upstart, and has all the vices of the parvenu. He suffers from incurable megalomania, to which political kleptomania and other serious disorders have been added during the last thirty years. He may be a patriot, a poet or a pedant, but he is never a gentleman. He wishes to exploit every one he meets, and his word cannot be trusted. All who know him despise and hate him. There is a good reason for this universal verdict against him. We should rejoice with exceeding joy that he has been humbled and thrown down from his high pedestal. I have lived in Prussia for two years during the war, and know what I am talking about. And as the world is infested with imperialists of every nationality, it is the part of wisdom for us not to tempt Fate, but to stay under the protection of the British fleet and army in our quiet, sunny home of Hindustan, and to make the best of our position in the Empire. We are not equipped for the deadly rivalries and fierce struggles of this age of iron Imperialism. Others will not leave us alone, if we once lose the shelter of the name and ægis of Great Britain. Exposed to the buffetings of chance and force, we shall have to suffer worse evils than those that now afflict us. Partition, forced conversion to other creeds, and similar calamities have befallen weak peoples in Asia and Europe even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Let us not jump out of the fryingpan of British Imperialism into the fire of who knows what? man. Now we all know that every nation that establishes itself over another speaks generally of its civilising mission,of the high aims and objects which alone it seeks to achieve in its conquest of brother Really, however, this claim is not always well-founded. We know that it marches side by side with self-aggrandisement, with the subjection, I think, at every turn of the other party, with exploitation of every kind-and in the case of the Power with whom Hardy had dealings, misdeeds of a far worse type. They say that it is unwise to inquire into the origin of rivers and Rishis. We are likely to come upon so ne ugly and ignoble things. We have to confine ourselves to the grand things that they do without making any attempts at knowing the source from which they arise. It is so with Empires. The man who seeks for righteousness in the origin of Empires seeks for things which do not exist, This is not, however, let me confess to you, an evil pertaining to Western Empires alone. We had an Empire of ours in the Past. We conquered Java, Borneo and other countries round about and history says that we came in also by conquest from the north, sometimes by peaceful exclusion of other people, but I dare say also very often by stern measures. Our books also speak of the ways in which the Empire must have extended itself. Let us not be oblivious to the spot in our eyes while we accuse others of infamy. We also gave very good names in our books to some things that those who lived there would not have called by those sweet names. We know how in modern times, when our Empire was extended it was usually through the missionary or the trader. The misssionary comes and by his aggressive preachings of religion, by insults heaped upon the religions of the heathens, gets beaten, sometimes killed and the Empire at his back steps forward and demands reparation, possibly a cession of territory. I do not think this would be a bad way of describing some of the ways in which our own Empire seems to have been extended in the remote past. We have read of the primary duties of a king being often described as the protection that he is bound to offer to the Rishis and the Munis, who seek to perform tupas in the confines of his territories. In contact with other civilisations, probably of the Dravidian tribes, when they would come and disturb them, and then these people go and tell the king, "We are your men, and yet we are disturbed by these enemies of ours; come and afford us protection"; and the king would go forth and do battle; and while the Saints and Munis were protected, the King's Empire had also been added to. The thing is not altogether unknown to us and I mention this only to show that it is the same with all humankind. There is no use judging other people by standards above which we have not ourselves risen. The "Is it on test by which we judge an Empire is the whole beneficial; is the overlordship of the inhabitants, taking good and evil together, on the whole, for the benefit and improvement of the subject people?" If your answer taking the rough and the smooth together, for there is plenty of rough and smooth in all human transactions, if your answer on the whole is 'yes' we have to be content with the statement that the Empire is a civilising agency. There is no other sense in which historically we can justify these things. Now I think if we apply this comprative test, this very human test, we should say upon the whole that the English have done well in India. I know you will urge against this several disabilities under which we still labour. I know them, I will enumerate them by and by. We Take the domain of law which above all is no respector of prestige of persons or of the race to which they belong. Now, in this very domain of law there is a special immunity afforded to the European which is denied to the Indian. He has the right to claim that he shall be tried by a European Judge or if not by a European Magistrate by a Jury of his countrymen. have no such right. On the contrary, in our big trials, for sedition for example, we have known our people being tried by juries on which the majority were Europeans. Now I mention this to show how in this very matter of law there is a glaring disability still maintained in this country. But, apart from that, I am constrained to remark on what every lawyer who practises in the High Court knows-1 am taking the High Court and not the Lower Courts because that is supposed to be a place where the even-handed character of justice may be perceived. Now here it is more apparent than in the disposal of patronage by the Government. I am informed a good many of the legal appointments go to inferior Europeans, while the Indians with far superior qualifications and in the enjoyment of much better practice are denied preference. I am not aware that there is a statutory rule in this exercise of patronage. But I suppose it is necessary to keep the hungry European Barrister somehow or other alive. But you can see this sort of thing in other spheres as well. we I take next the sphere of religion where again ought not prima facie to be face to face with any disability; even there however, we find that missionaries, in various walks of life, enjoy certain facilities not open to us. When they open schools and are in rivalry with schools managed by indigenous agencies, the latter go to the wall. But above all that, there is at the present moment a serious privilege which they enjoy, to which I have for some years been drawing attention and which I consider to be illegiti mate. The Protestant Christian Mission have in their schools enforced the teachings of their religion on children who seek secular instruction. I do not dwell upon it further, except to show that even in this case when we want a conscience clause it is upon the footing that that is the only condition on which we can reconcile the existence of these missionary institutions in the future system of education. It is for the purpose of giving them a stable and welcome permanence that we desire this measure. I take next the Press. The European editors transcend the ordinary laws. It is, I think, axiomatic that they are not dealt with in the same way in which Indian editors are. I mention the fact in no spirit of cavil. I know Mrs. Besant frequently saying and writing: "I write in this fashion, and I know I am not touched kecause I have a white skin." That however represents a fact which is borne in on the experience of all who take part in any way in journalism in this country. They get above all a certain advantage in the matter of news, they enjoy precedence in this respect over others, and the fact that you cannot say that this proceeds from this particular rule or that particular rule makes the evil of this preference all the greater and the more subtle because you cannot attack it. Sometimes these advantages come to them by the mere fact that they are Europeans, not because any special rules are made on their behalf. Rules are made for big things-and certain small things happen without the operation of any special rule. In the economic sphere our disadvantages are varied and those who have had any experience of commercial transactions, those who have had any experience of banking, will need no facts to justify the broad proposition that in the sphere of economic interests the European by virtue of his race and political supremacy enjoys a very, very great advantage over the Indian competi tor. I need not expatiate on the services with regard to which it is an open sore that we have had during the last 85 or 100 years. Big commissions that stir up political and racial feelings come and go and very little has been done to ameliorate the situation. Now, above all there is another matter to which although it is a little more recondite, attention must be drawn. There is the question of the personal 'prestige' which it is required should be maintained in the case of the European. John Stuart Mill called attention, from his experience of the way in which Indian officers are adn.inistering the country, to this very great evil in India-adventurers and two or three classes of men, generally of no great repute, coming from the west and surrounded naturally with certain facilities attaching to the European dominant race and by reason of those facilities conducting themselves in a very objectionable manner, behaving insultingly and aggressively to the great material prejudice of Indians and often admonishing their own master. He said that their duty must be to put down this sort of European adventurer. Another great writer, Sir James Bryce (now Viscount Bryce) in one of his earlier essays mentions a curious experience of his. He went from one of the capitals of this country on a long expedition into the remote country partly, I suppose, drawn from love of sport but partly also because of his desire to see the races inhabiting the country. It was a wonder to him how he was treated wherever he went and he regarded it as proceeding from a certain knowledge that European authorities had taught frequently these half-civilised races that if one of them molested a European the punishment will be prompt and condign. An ordinary Indian who travelled in that way would have been exposed to grave risks. The European was a charmed person. Let him come and go but no one would molest him or deal with him as they would have dealt with a man belonging to the brother races of India. He mentions this as one of the ways in which the Britisher always maintains his supremacy stopping short a very little indeed from the unconscious delusion of personal prestige and strength of his race and visiting any one daring to question this with all the punishment that his great power can bring to bear. Now we know how in daily life this thing has happened. Outrages by Europeans used, some years ago before the enactment of SEC. 153 A., to be the pabulum of our newspapers. Now after the enactment of this section we only mention this and pass on leaving every body to make his own comments. Whoever heard of a European who committed an outrage of that kind receiving his due from the process of law? But there are two or three things which in ways somewhat more obscure have come to my knowledge, in which with a little effort you will discover this same preternatural anxiety to maintain racial prestige, and as it is not always coming out you will see the greater force of it. It came out in a recent discussion in the Imperial Legislative Council when I attacked the predominance of the European in the Indian Medical Service. Amongst other objections that they raised to the introduction of perfect equality they mentioned this thing, and they mentioned it without the slightest blush on their cheek although they knew it was not always as they put it. They said European ladies would object to be treated by Indian doctors as if every European lady in India has this racial consideration. They further said that European gentlemen also feel some such repugnance to Indian Doctors. That was by no means always the case. They went further even and said, the recruitment for the other services, Civil, Educational and Police, will also become difficult if the members of these services were not assured that the services of a European Doctor would be at their disposal. Well, the thing has only to be mentioned for you to realise the extent to which racial prestige is likely to be carried when Indian opinion is still weak in the affairs of the nation. Then the members of the Indian Civil Service who recently raised such a cloud over the Reform Scheme said in their Memorandum various things to which you would object. One of the things was that it would be derogatory to the members of the European race to serve under Indian Ministers. They themselves are never tired of saying that a third of the area of this Empire is under the rule of Indian Rajabs and a fourth of the population lives under such rule; and a great many Europeans are in the service of these Indian Rajahs and not only are there but seek such service. Now it is most extraordinary that when they wish to oppose reforms the Europeans say: "We are dead opposed to these reforms because we know that when India is administered purely according to Indian ideas the old world notions will come to prevail once more. We are opposed to 'caste' and to all 'privilege'." At the same time, however, they ask that their own special community, the 'white caste' of the European, should be maintained at an unapproachable level far above the rest of the community, should be preserved by guarantee of law and administration in the enjoyment of these privileges. Then they say, "you are a community torn and rent into divisions" and yet they are the most enthusiastic advocates of communal representation in the Legislative Councils. It is they that stir up the other communities: "You go and ask for Communal representation and we will back you up." Then they have developed a most extraordinary attachment to the 'voiceless masses of India': and yet when we speak of free and compulsory elementary education as a thing which above all else is necessary, they raise a hundred objections. They object also to allowing the labouring classes to associate themselves into unions for the asser tion and maintenance of their rights. There is always fresh recruiting of labourers and labour is recruited with the object described by impartial people as service occupying a position little removed from slavery. I well remember how in the time when Lord Morley was Secretary of State for India the merchants of Lancashire came up with a proposal to diminish the competition of the Indian textile trade, upon the ground amongst others that the Indian textile industry was built up on undue restrictions of labour and that labour was unduly sweated in Bombay and they wanted the Indian labour conditions to be made stringent. Lord Morley administered a severe rebuke by telling them not to add hypocracy to selfishness but to admit frankly that they shrank from the competition of the Indian manufacturer, He told them that they were moved in this matter not by the humane consideration of protecting the Indian labourer in the Indian Mills. One is tempted to repeat to them this rebuke when they speak of their overpowering love for the Indian masses and concern for their interests. I would ask those amongst them who have not done so to read with care the report of the proceedings at the Savoy Hotel entertainment to Lord Sinha and especially the speech of the Maharajah of Bikanir. No more patriotic, nor more powerful utterance was ever made within the hearing of Englishmen. Every passage in it is replete with sound common sense. He rebuked the Indo-British Association started under the auspices of Lord Sydenham pursuing their nefarious tactics in every possible way, either fair or foul. He called their proceedings mendacious and unscrupulous-strong words to come from the lips of such a man, but they are stamped with the hallmark of truth. The mendacity and unfairness of such a compaign is nowhere more conspicuous-and that is saying a great deal than in a pamphlet of the Association, under the title of 'Danger in India: Sedition and Murder,' an annotated epitome of the findings of the Rowlatt Committee. You can imagine how eagerly anti-reform capital is made therein of those findings. Lamentable and serious as are the outrages dealt with in the Report, they relate to nefarious activities of an infinitely small number out of a loyal Indian population of 315 millions, constituting one-fifth of the inhabitants of the globe. * * * # * And let me say frankly that Indians, Princes and people, indignantly resent the abuse to which Lord Hardinge, Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford have been subjected. Now there are two allies with whom the IndoBritish association are working hand in hand. One of them is the party represented by that or gan of public opinion called Justice' in this city. They are powerful allies in conducting this campaign. I do not know what to say of people who think nothing of ranging themselves under Lord Sydenham whom the Maharajah has thought fit to denounce in these indignant words. Then you have got a very powerful body, the European Association in India, which has been recently formed and placed on a basis of greately increased strength and financial position. Their opposition to the Reforms is rooted and exceedingly bitter. Their campaign is persistent and their antipathy to the educated classes of India is something which may only be described as a menace to the peaceful progress of this country. And you will find among other things that Madras has an unenviable prominence in this matter. The European Association is for all India. It ought therefore to deal, with all matters of general interest to the European Community. And yet if you read what their recommendations are you will find it strongly charged with the prejudices of a person whose experiences proceed almost entirely from Madras. He airs widely his Madras experiences and the antipathy to the Brahman which is a feature of Madras public life, and through the agency of the European Association is spreading it throughout that community in India. Now I have frequently asked my European friends, "What is the strength of this Association; some of your people seem to be so very reasonable and gentle and yet you allow the European Association to speak, write and agitate in your name in this way." course, I was then remembering myself how often these European monitors of ours counsel us to repudiate the Extremist teachings of our own. people. They say "Why do you not disown Mrs. Besant and the people with her?" Then I say "Why do you not disown the European Association. It is certain you do not agree with its ideas." They say "We do not sympathise with its doings." Of This tendency to allow a person who overstates your case, who colours and exaggerates and makes it a point to accentuate racial feelings -this tendency to be represented by such a person is not altogether confined to Indians. It is equally to be observed among the Europeans. I suppose they feel that they should be abused by their community as doubtless some of us would be if we repudiate or disapprove of some of our own people's opinions. Now there is, however, one redeeming feature, and I must lay emphasis on this aspect because cases it is part of to day's talk which I have mostly devoted to the darker side. While I realise as fully as any of you this side of it and in some have also seen the worst form of this European domination, I must at the same time recognise, what perhaps some of you do not to the same extent I must recognise the existence along side of this tendency to self-aggrandisement a tendency also to elevate the class over whom they are placed and by whom they are supposed to be doing their duty. In the first place, I will only draw your attention to three important matters in which Indian opinion has within recent times prevailed against the opposition of European opinion. These I mention as exceptions to the general rule of subservience and neglect of Indian opinion. But the exception ought to open our eyes to the existence of the principle of progress somehow or other embedded in Western Civilisation, in this genius of the British people for governing other races. There is for instance, this great question of the Reforms which you know under every shade and variety of European opposition has taken shape so far and may actually fructify unless something untoward repeating in Indian history happen to baulk them. There is then the question of the abolition of Indian indenture against which the colonials fought all they could. Then there is the very recent instance of the Viceroy of India rebuking Sir Michael O' Dwyer, the "strong" ruler of the Punjab for offering an open affront to the Indian politicians in the Legislative Council. Now, remember, in every one of these three cases-and I mention only these-in every one of these three cases European opinion was adverse to the step taken. The men that were responsible had to face much unpopularity and odium. And although along with a genuine desire for progress and justice, motives not so clear, not so moral, might also have been mixed up, none of you will I think have the un-charity to deny that a genuine desire for the betterment of our people is present in this mixture of motives in the interrelation of races. The principle of progress always subsisting is not always, however, openly seen. It has occasions of strength and intensity during which its operation is visible above the surface. But every time such a thing happens it is always opposed most violently. You may remember how when the Bishop of Lahore (subsequently Metropolitan) spoke of the desirability of showing charitableness in times of trouble he was severely rebuked as a person who had no place in politics and should not have intruded into that sphere. He must preach and do no more—as if politics must be kept rigidly aloof from religion, from the sway of the spirit of religion. Doctor Whitehead, the Madras Bishop-with whom we are all well acquainted, some of us at least-had a similar treatment. He was also spoken of as a person who intruded into the domain of politics and brought Christian charity, Christian love, Christian equality into the treatment of questions which in these things ought to have been kept out. Now, when Mr. Montagu is devising a great scheme of reform, he finds the greatest opposition coming from the trained Indian Civil Service. But like an astute Parliamentarian he does not-as you and I in somewhat freer positions may do-he does not turn round and denounce them. He cajoles them, occasionally also he bribes them and the sister services. But he always tells them the cardinal truth of the new situation. He says to them in words as plain as possible: "Your position in the future of India cannot be the same as it has been in the past. You must reconcile yourself to the change in the situation." A warning of that kind uttered by the Secretary of State and not altogether for the first time is however resented by these people. The announcement of the 20th August 1917, promised the transfer of responsibility. From whom to whom? To the people of India from the Civil Service of India. (Cheers). If we said to the Civil Service to-day that their political position will be the same in the future as it has been in the west, the announcement of H. M. Government becomes meaningless. (Hear, hear.) For the past ten years I have been in close association with the Home Civil service. Is their position un endurable? Is there any doubt about the great Imperial services they render because they are subordinate to the policy laid down by Parliament? There is, believe me, for the Indian Civil Service an indispensable and honourable part in the future of India. The pronouncement of eighteen months ago meant nothing unless it meant that the political destinies of India are to be gradually reposed in the people of India, and gradually taken from those who have gloriously built up India as we know it to-day. (Loud cheers.) Although any talk of reform in any country brings out of retirement those who walk, dangerously as it seems to me, with their heads over their shoulders, gazing & dmiringly, I do not know that there is any Civil Servant in India who thinks (though it is sometimes claimed on their behalf) that the appointed destiny of the country can be delayed or altered in the interests of the service. (Loud cheers.) Now that is as clear a statement as we could desire with regard to the character of the coming Reforms. But even he has been obliged, as I told you, to conciliate the opposition of the |