The Press Monday, March 9, 1931. India.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20181, 9 March 1931, Page 10

The Press Monday, March 9, 1931. India.

Although the agreement between the Viceroy of India and MaJjatma Gandhi is the antecedent of farther dismission, this does not mean that their agreement has of itself bo value. It is of course immediately useful, because.it rdeasy a strangling grip on I™*"® allows revenue , to be gathered agaWi and if it does not stop mudt at least diminish the 'steady and increasingly dangerous spread of subversive propaganda; but it is of much greater moment that when discussion w renewed it will be on the accepted basis of the Bound-Table draft settlement, Further discussion there was . certain to be, as we explained a few days ago: what was so uncertain as to almost unlikely was that the intransigence of the Congress would be overcome and the most powerful political body in India, the only (and dangerously) well-organised body, co-operate in the task of building a workable Constitutiou out of the principles laid down, Had the Congress still held aloof, disoussion would have advanced no doubt to the point of complete agreement and to the drafting and passing of a new India Act, giving India a new status and a new Constitution and all the forms and machinery of a Federal Dominion Government; but the refusal of a large part of India to accept autonomy on those terms would have made it unreal, government would still have had to rest on force, however temperately used, and it is impossible to tell which would have down first, the attempt to lift India to self-government or-the resistance to it. It is impossible to say even now that danger is at an end. It is obvious, however, that at the worst there can be no new or greater danger, while the hope of swift and peaceful settlement is enormously increased and a new relation between Great Britain and India, more generous and more confident on both sides, has come suddenly near. The fact that Lord Irwin has drawn Gandhi to a helper's part in the continuation of the Bound-Table discussions is sufficient season for saying this, since he can confidently enter them, as he does, only If'he believes in them and expects, not to change their character and direction, but to fulfil them; hut there is perhaps a still clearer and better sign in a cable message to-day, which reports Gandhi's definite statement that Jndia's ideal of freedom is attainable Within the British partnership. This is the JBritish belief, in which British ftfttfiSipanship is willing to embrace ts of a great federalizing exand of surrendering to India, Vfithi transitional safeguards, the reo£ its own government, They »re great risks. But, to take what is an almost brutally practical view, the risks of standing still are yp| greater? pndjhose of reaction —of wh J at Lord Rothermere calls "the firm "hand in India," meaning the heavy hand" and-the high hand—are catastrophic. As Mr Stephen Gwynn wrote recently iu the Fortnightly, "If India is to remaia within-the, British Em- <' pire, the English must trust those "Indiana who desire that it shall so . „ There is no skfe half-. £ way house/ however ingeniously conDither England must govern |or<?e (a 44 i* that posor it must adopt the policy is proposed by its friends in If India is'to be a Dominion, mjist, be m Indian Dominion, as < ! i« Canadian." (Phose aFf bold Vords,. advocating a faith in the safety of :f cice 'rebuked by The Times the" Other- for the Morning Post and the it is a boldness has amply justified pefore "&• fibular extremities, of which a Recent, and very' moving reminded may bp jjdoted: It'. [the v South African hought it a rash and Jo. -TP could have the future, if I could lpt .divi&in with the ve* to-day, I should great act of u» li thought it, th* r- policy, but its comJfiaent. ,< That is the I wujd undo ft 'Vhafc great act,, that th, to the the races in /South* i the Union of gouth jvM.vorought -South' Africa into . i iw.j addefl. Garman Bast German S&utb-West Africa ■ rtaf^itush' territory. Jfew and again in afaifs of men there comes a j)fu4jßn#jp when.. Nome great act of laith, tW hearts and stirring "'the- of men, nchieyes the Irftiracle no irts of statesmanship ipan jtortMss. ; Such. a moment may he our ejee now as, we meet Those ;ww the whjch Sir of the Irish and reeanted'iiis opposition to the generous the War.