THE INDIAN SITUATION

Hokitika Guardian, 14 July 1930, Page 5

THE INDIAN SITUATION

PRIME MINI STEP'S R INFERENCES

(Official Wireless.)

(Received this day at 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY, July 13.

•Referring to the situaiTon in India in a speech'at the Crystal Palace last liiglii., the Prime Minister, Mr ivamsay MacDonald, said the state of India to-day was serious. What was ■happening was only adding to India’s .difficulties and was n,ot advancing, India’s chance of reaching a dominion status. “Men with whom we ; >vish to co-operate have had to be arrested for actions which they themselves had been responsible for pure]yv.< The India Government, faced with conditions such as those they have created recently, would have been compelled to arrest the people responsible for those conditions. The whole of this is a melancholy thing which is unnecessary and foolish. .Men who are going to be governors of States and responsible for administration, ought to look ahead . and .understand, the conditions under which ailone evolution and change are possible.” A passage in the Prime Minister’s speech was . devoted to the policy of Empire Free Trade. There ;was not a single dominion that was developing on nationalist lines its own industrial economic evolution and no Government whatever its majority may be in this country, could force on the Dominions an economic policy in which the Dominions did not believe the implication that the Labour Government had no interest in the Dominions and no influence, upon Dominion opinion. “Against that I jay that if the Dominions are going to conie with us in economic cooperation, if the Dominions 1 and ourselves are to devise an economic and industrial policy, which will be beneficial to all of us, then,, the Labour Government Inis a better chance of bringing abopt that agreement than the Government of any other party in this country. In j the Im'perial Conference in September we are going to do everything that can be done by the British Government to come to economic arrangements with the Dominions that will be a benefit to the working clases of this country.” , INDIA CONFERENCE. (Received this dav at 10 a.m.l LONDON. July 13 ‘‘TheiObserver’’ demands that every party in Britain must be represented at the India Conference. The Dominions are directly concerned a nd the whole future life of Australia and New Zealand is deeply affected.