The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, May 6, 1909. THE STATE OF INDIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 457, 6 May 1909, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, May 6,1909. THE STATE OF INDIA.

Lieutenant - Colonel C. E. Massey, late Commissioner in the Punjab, takes a hopeful view of the outlook in India, in the course of an incisive article in “The Nineteenth Century and After.” He holds the opinion that the masses in India will never resort to a general rising, unless their religion is interfered with. They will make no organised effort to overthrow the British rule simply in order that the educated classes may find employment in administration. The contributor believes that things will remain quiet if the recent special repressive Acts are promptly extended to any tract in which disloyalty shows itself active. “My readers have my assurance,” writes Lieuteuat-Colonel Massey, “for what it is worth that the recent measures of repression will deal a death blow to open agitation, provided they are fully made use of and without hesitation or delay in any portion of India showing symptoms of getting out of hand. I do not think there were at any time deep laid plans (except in Bengal) for the upsetting of the administration. The discontented were fairly astonished at the commotion they created. But they now know their power, and only if checked in good time will they refrain from starting another scarce.” The contributor, whose long experience in India gives value to his recommendations, suggests that at least one quarter of the annual recruitment for the India civil service should be made by nomination in each province of educated local men of good social position, belonging to well-known families, whose members have stood by Britain when there have been troubles in the past. “This will not content the agitators, who spring for the most part from the money-lending and socially lower classes, but the measure would be popular with the land-owners, whose support in an agricultural country is politically far more valuable.” The Hon. G. K. Gokhale, prominent as an Indian Nationalist, writes in the ‘ ‘Contemporary” on the constitutional reforms in India. He has no love for Ford Curzon. Although he does not mention him by name, he alludes to him unmistakably when referring to “a vice-royalty, which, however brilliant in some of its aspects, has left great bitter-

ness behind, and a task of unexampled difficulty to his successor.” Mr Gokhale eulogises Lord Morley as an honoured teacher of liberalism, and rejoices that the reforms which have now been announced vindicate the Liberalism of the Secretary of State for India, whose term of office by the irony of fate had for the most part been years of violent repression in Indian administration. “Happily the long night seems to be over,” says Mr Gokhale, “and we already see the faint streaks of a new dawn.” He adds that the task of pacifying the country—and such pacification is necessary as much in the interests of India as of Kngland—has been rendered sensibly easier since the announcement of the reforms.