LORD READING'S GREAT TASS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 May 1921, Page 4

LORD READING'S GREAT TASS

(By Lovat Fraser, in London Daily Mail). Lord Reading leaves for India this week charged with one of the greatest Imperial tasks which have ever been entrusted to any Briton. His true work will be to convince the peoples of India that their own best interests and their own ultimate security depend upon their remaining ] willing citizens of the only great Empiro j now loft in the world. | It is an undertaking which will call j •for the most exalted qualities of states- j manship. It will demand far-sighted ■ vision, high courage, great patience j and forbearance, and v6ry deep human sympathy ahd insight. If Lord Reading succeeds, as I believe he will, then he will have accomplished something ivhich will entitle him to lasting remembrance] ***** People in this country have been a little surprised that the King-Emperor s Aioice of Lord Reading as his viceregent has been received with such general approval in India. There is really no mystery about it. Next, to the quality of sympathy, of which they have peihaps known too little, the peoples of India prize justice. 1 They have not vet lost faith iff the essential characteristics of British justice. The quick imaginations of the educated classes have been touched by the announcement that Lord Reading has relinquished the high and honourable office of Lord Chief lust icq of England in order to fill the hard, solitary post of Viceroy. They see in the appointment a proof .: at the British people are looking at ;ke affairs of India from a new angle. r>ev see, too, that wc fire sending them of our best, ft is greatly to the rood that Lord Reading will find in India an atmosphere which, although •lmrged with unrest, is highly favourthie to himself and to his purpose. The British in India are equally disposed to offer a cordial welcome to Lord Reading. Their great fear was that this critical juncture we might send tc r ndia a little man or a feeble man Their doubts are now allayed.

In the past we have sent to India as Viceroys great soldiers, great administrators, great diplomatists, and now uid then men who had no greatness and not much claim to competence, though the average has been high. We have never until now sent a lawyer, though nice the choice has been made it leaps to the eye that it is entirely right.

India is just entering upon a new constitutional era, in which the leaders of her own peoples will have much to do vitli the shaping of legislation and policy. There could, he no more suitaide Viceroy than a lawyer who is familiar with Parliamentary usage, whose mind has been mellowed In the exercise of the serene impartiality of the Bench, who has a great knowledge of the world, an immense capacity for hard work, and some acquaintance with technical diplomacy.

Vet I think India will find that in Lord Reading’s Vieerovalty intensely human qualities, and not the attributes of the lawyer, will he uppermost. His jiast training will serve him well, but it lias never mastered his receptive mind or moulded him into an inflexible rigidity .of thought. It has clothed him with dignity for great occasions, hut has not dehumanised him or wrapped him in red-tape. Always there lurks about him a .touch of the questing spirit, the eager adventurous outlook of his boyhood. It is just this touch which attracts most.

In the difficult years which lie ahead it is extremely important that India should have a Viceroy who will not he easily discouraged or depressed. Lord Reading is such a man. Though too wise for senseless unvarying optimism he lias the temperament which never fails to look on the best side of things. He knows how to face reverses with calmness, and he has pluck, quickness of decision, and when necessary the willingness to lake risks, qualities which may all be needed in the next five Years.

At a private gathering the other evening Lord Reading made a very moving speech, and if in the minds of any who heard it there may have been doubts about his consciousness of the loftiness of his mission, they must have been resolved. One phrase sticks in my memory, for its meaning is profoundly true. “In the past,” said Lord Reading, “I have been concerned with the administration of law. In my new task I shall he concerned with the administration of equity.” A Viceroy who embarks for the East with that great principle colouring the very texture of his mind cannot go far wrong.

My own knowledge of Tndia extends hack to a period when the country and the people had changed very little in essentials since Crown control began, and when unrest and discontent were almost unknown. T have very slowly come to the conclusion that while in the past the basic attitude of the Government of India was right and justified, the time has come when it must be adjusted to a new standpoint. The only way to ensure the permanent eontinuaneo of Tndia within the British Empire is to encourage the Government of Tndia to identify themselves more exclusively with the interests of India and her peoples. Both the British and the Indian members of that Government must in future be, first and foremost, the outspoken champions and defenders of Indian interests. The British administrators must no longer lie under the suspicion, sometimes justified, that they think of Great Britain first and Tndia afterwards.

They must take up a position analogous in spirit to that occupied by the Governments of the over-seas Commonwealths. Because Australia says “Australia first” and Canada says “Canada first,” that does not lessen their attachment to the Crown, to the Imperial cause, and to each other. So it must be in India, The Government of Tndia must he the Government of Tndia. Only by such a change of spirit can Tndia be kept permanently within the Empire. That is the secret which the British have still to discover, and it is the whole secret. Remember that the fault does not lie with the British members of the' Civil Service in Tndia. They need no conversion. The fault lies here, in this

country. It lies in the Press, in Parliament, and in unwise public speeches. It is inherent in the obsolete conception that we hold India by the sword rather than by the willing acquiescence of her peoples. It finds expression in such demands as that now' being made in Lancashire that the countervailing cotton excise duty, which is morally indefensible, should be increased. It ought to he* abolshed forthwith. *****

The Viceroy who first grasped the great truth that lie must champion India interests first was Lord Hardinge of Penshurst. When he went do" nto Madras and protested vigorously against the disabilities suffered by Indians in South Africa he touched a chord which never ceased to vibrate. Vho in England knows of the affection in which Lord Hardinge was ever after held in India for that courageous act? It grieves me when 1 see the work of past Viceroys in India belittled. Each one had different problems to solve, and each deserved well of his countrymen and of India. .It is the fashion in some quarters nowadays to sneer at Lord Curzon’s Viceroyalty. No Englishman ever had a deeper love of India and the Indian peoples than Lord Curzon. It penetrated, and still penetrate;, into the very fibres of his being; and portions of his work in India "ill endure just as surely as we can trace tile impress of Rome in our own land to-day.

The reforms instituted by Lord Minto and Urd Morlev have been most unjustly slighted. They were the outcome of Lord Minto’s tenacity of purpose and of Lord Motley's keen perceptions, and at the time they were entirely sufficient. Lord Hardinge guided India through the world-wide convulsions which followed the outbreak of the Great War, and even to-day our people do not know how great was his achievement.

No Viceroy of India need ever expect much thanks. The \ iccroyalty is the hardest, the most anxious, and the loneliest post on earth, for men who into fill it adequately. Its burdens are enough to crush all .but the most resileut spirits.

It is so engrossing that no \ iceroy ever gladly laid his burden down, and yet 1 believe no Viceroy, except perhaps Lord Lansdowne, who was specially fortunate, ever filled it without passing through periods of sorrow and anguish and tragic trial of which lie licvei dreamed when he set sail.

Rightly undertaken, it purifies and ennobles. No man who has ever woke up dailv to think that he is in supreme charge of three hundred millions of human beings can ever he quite the same again. It is both an uplifting and a chastening experience, and invariably it .leaves marks on mind and heart which can never afterwards he effeed.

Lord Reading goes forth with the warm good wishes of his countrymen, lmt lie needs our sympathy more. It is for this reason that I have dwelt chiefly on the personal aspects of his appointment, leaving ior another time a discussion of the controversies by which India is now perturbed.