contrasted with the merely material realism of lamp-black and lightning, has indeed afforded poetry a new scope for the imagination; and particularly in the work of Captain Graves, Mr Siegfried Sassoon, and some of that of Mr Robert Nichols, it has produced verse of a quality which could not, perhaps, have found inspiration at all in times of peace and contentment. But it will be noted at once that it is a realism which depends, for its very essence, upon a transcendental interpretation. The war, in other words, has only furnished poetry with material, when Poetry has brought to its aid a secret interpretation which is, in effect, the very antithesis of War itself. The concomitants of War are noise, squalor, filth-the worst antagonists of the poet's art. So long as the poet is content with merely superficial pictures of noise, squalor, and filth, War affords him no adequate opportunity. Its entire world is too barren, too hard, too hideous to issue in poetry. Even Captain Graves goes artistically wrong with his bloated portrait of the dead Boche. The image is starkly repellent; imagination has failed to light it up. But directly imagination gets to work, it finds the soul beneath the surface, and then at last Poetry issues from the union.

A comparison of the spirit of this new poetry with that of the generation which preceded it would seem to suggest that War has most certainly not been without its purging influence upon the artistic soul of youth. For the new poetry is honest; it is strong; and it is often very beautiful. Decadence, at any rate, has vanished; triviality is no more; eccentricity has almost disappeared. And with these inadequate tricks of manner there has also disappeared a certain narrowness or selfishness of outlook upon the world around. The old formula of youth in the Ibsen period, the formula that clamoured for every man to live out his own life after his own fashion, has yielded before a realisation that no man's life can belong to himself, even for a moment; and that, when all is said and done, the individual life is of very little concern to the world at large. Sentimentality has been most healthily lived down; there is an almost universal distrust of conventional consolation. Religion, perhaps, has lost the vigour of its hold upon the imagination, and one can trace very little faith in any survival

of personality after death. But a larger and an austerer hope still finds the dead inseparable from every haunt of old association.

'Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,

I know that David's with me here again.

All that is simple, happy, strong he is.
Caressingly I stroke

Rough bark of the friendly oak.

A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.
Turf burns with pleasant smoke :

I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
Over the whole wood in a little while
Breaks his slow smile.'*

We end, then, with the conclusion that Poetry, in spite of many tribulations, is well justified of its supreme ordeal. It has gone down into the darkness, and has carried light in its hand. Our young men, indeed, have grown old, as befits those who have been face to face with death. It may be true that the war has made Stoics of our Hedonists, but in the process it has also made men. And, being men, they have not feared to speak the truth about the bitter discipline under which they have emerged into manhood. It is a terrible truth, wounding the speaker and the hearer alike; but it is a truth that may yet help to set free the soul of humanity for nobler victories in the years of peace.

ARTHUR WAUGH.

* Fairies and Fusiliers.' By Robert Graves.

Art. 8.-CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM IN INDIA.

1. Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms, presented to both Houses of Parliament. [Cd. 9109.] H.M. Stationery Office, 1918.

2. India and the Future. By W. Archer. Hutchinson, 1917. 3. Letters to the People of India on Responsible Government. By Lionel Carter. Macmillan, 1918.

4. India in Transition. By H.H. the Aga Khan. Philip Lee Warner, publisher to the Medici Society, 1918. 5. The Future Government of India. By K. Vyasa Rao. Macmillan, 1918.

6. India under Experiment. By G. Chesney. Murray, 1918. 7. The Evolution of Mrs Besant. By the Editor of 'Justice.' Madras: Justice Printing Works, 1918.

IN the Joint Report recently laid before Parliament, the Secretary of State for India, Mr Montagu, and the Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, have produced, together with an exhaustive survey of the existing structure of government and present conditions in India, a carefully reasoned scheme for carrying into effect the definite declaration of policy made on Aug. 20, 1917, on behalf of His Majesty's Government and in complete accord with the Government of India.

The Report begins by reciting that declaration, which it rightly describes as 'the most momentous utterance ever made in India's chequered history.' Certainly, never since Queen Victoria's proclamation in 1858 has there been any utterance of such grave import to the future of India and the British connexion as the announcement that the purpose of British policy is not only

'the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration,' but also 'the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.'

This statement was followed by the reservation that

'the British Government and the Government of India, on whom the responsibility lies for the welfare and advancement of the Indian people, must be judges of the time and measure Vol. 230.-No. 457. 2 D

of each advance; and they must be guided by the cooperation received from those upon whom new opportunities of service will thus be conferred and by the extent to which it is found that confidence can be reposed in their sense of responsibility.' Nevertheless it was made clear that the declaration of policy was not to be a mere enunciation of principles.

"They [His Majesty's Government] have decided that substantial steps in this direction should be taken as soon as possible; and that it is of the highest importance, as a preliminary to considering what these steps should be, that there should be a free and informal exchange of opinion between those in authority at home and in India.'

For this purpose Mr Montagu was himself to proceed to India, in response to an invitation addressed originally to Mr Austen Chamberlain and extended, after his resignation, to his successor at the India Office.

Within the space of this article only the merest outline of a Report which covers 300 octavo pages can be given, and a few of its main features selected for not unfriendly criticism. The policy which it proposes to carry into effect is surely, one may hope, beyond recall. It went forth to India a year ago, unchallenged by a single responsible statesman in this country, with the im primatur of a Government in which at a great crisis in the history of the Empire every school of political thought was formally represented. To go back upon it now would be regarded, and reasonably regarded, in India as a breach of faith which would do more to shake the foundations of British rule than would the worst consequences which its gloomiest critics foresee from persistence in it. Those consequences, should they ensue, can be dealt with and corrected in due course, but the consequences of a breach of faith would be irreparable. The policy itself, moreover, may well be regarded as an inevitable corollary of the principles for which the British Empire and its Allies have committed themselves to a life and death struggle. India herself is bearing no mean part in that struggle; and her admission at the hour of the Empire's peril to partnership in its supreme councils would have been but a hollow pretence, had it not been followed by a genuine attempt to train her

peoples in the principles of government upon which the unity and strength of the British Commonwealth of selfgoverning nations have been built up.

Long before the war led to any wide recognition of the need for such a policy, Sir Alfred Lyall, whose profound knowledge of India and of the Indian mind still stands unrivalled, had already outlined it with a prescience and authority which the authors of the Report have wisely called in aid at the head of the chapter they devote to 'The Conditions of the Problem.'

'It may be affirmed that the moral and material civilisation of the Indian people has made more progress in the last fifty years than during all the preceding centuries of their history. Yet it has inevitably come to pass that the differences of wealth and learning, frequent intercourse with Europe, and the saturation of the educated classes with Western ideas and political axioms, have stimulated the desire for a larger share in the government of their country among the leaders of native public opinion. An efficient administration no longer satisfies them; on the contrary, it has created ulterior hopes and aspirations. We began with great organic reforms. Latterly we have undertaken the gradual intro duction of representative institutions ... we are seriously preparing for the devolution of local and provincial selfgovernment.

'But the task of building up any substantial edifice of constitutional government in India is by no means easy, for all wide and uniform measures of reform are hindered by the immense area of the country, and especially by the number and diversity of its population; . . . It must certainly be conducted within the limitations necessary to preserve undisturbed and indisputable the fabric of British sovereignty, which is to the political machine what the iron rails are to the locomotive, the foundation and permanent way upon which all progress must move. Nevertheless some solution of this difficulty is demanded; for, now that the English have accomplished the building up, after the high Roman fashion, of an immense polyglot empire, the stability of the structure must depend upon a skilful distribution of weight, because excessive centralisation is radically insecure, and supports are useless without some capacity to resist pressure. The solution of these problems requires the sympathetic insight as well as the scientific methods of statesmanship, supplemented by the goodwill and the growing intelligence of the Indian people' (Report, p. 108).