BIRKENHEAD ON WARPATH

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 814, 7 November 1929, Page 9

BIRKENHEAD ON WARPATH

STATEMENT OF VICEROY OF INDIA GRAVE DANGER DISCERNED British Official Wireless RUGBY, Wednesday. In the course of a debate on the Indian question in the House of Lords yesterday the Earl of Birkenhead, exSecretary of State for India, who followed Lord Parmoor, brushed aside contemptuously the idea that the Viceroy’s statement was not intended to suggest any change to the people of India. It was plain, said Lord Birkenhead, what was intended. It was intended to appease Indians because of the grave threat which had been made to a subservient civil Government in India. It was because there was a menace at the end of last year of a campaign of civil disobedience that it was thought an announcement of this kind —misleading ill its scope—would avert the threat to law and order. The speaker said he had drawn one deep lesson from his study of Indian history in the past six years, namely, that the way to discharge Britain’s fiduciary obligations to India was never to yield to threats —“never, never,” he repeated. “CRUDE IGNORANCE” Proceeding, Lord Birkenhead asked: What did Dominion status mean? It did not mean now what it meant five years ago. No one knew what it might mean five years hence. Yet here, with crude ignorance, the Government had flung into disputatious India an indication which officially had never been made -before, namely that Dominion status was the goal. No sane man could essay any approximate date on which he could conceive of India attaining Dominion status. What man could see the time —even in 100 years—when the people of India would be capable of taking such control of their army, navy and civil service as had been assumed by the self-governing Dominions? The result of the Viceroy’s pronouncement would be that the people of India would say they had been cheated. The Government had mishandled the situation in every conceivable way at every stage. NEWSPAPER COMMENT The opinion is expressed in Conservative circles that the debate has cleared the air by eliciting from Lord

Parmoor the statement that the Viceroy’s pronouncement does no; mean any change in policy as regards India on the part of the British Government. “The Daily Telegraph” accepts that assurance, but says the effect in India of this be-

lated frankness has now to be seen. “The Morning Post” says that as Lord Birkenhead pointed out, Dominion status has not been defined. It may mean one thing this year and another next. It; is used in the Irish Free State as a euphemism for independence. Such a definition, if applied to India, would mean the destruction of that Empire. The “Daily Chronicle” says the Government merely states that it has reaffirmed old promises, but that is not what India understood by Lord Irwin’s statement.