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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 189, 31 July 1908, Page 2

INDIAN AFFAIKS. Viscount Morley, Secretary of .State for India, was the principal guest, on 11th Julv, of the Indian Civil Service Dinner Club. In the course of a speech he said that this vear was a meiuoraolc anniversary. It was fifty years, withm a month or two, since the Crown took over India from the East India Company. Whether that was a good or bal move it would not become him to discuss. At the end of fifty years we had arrived at a critical moment. It wan true that in that fifty years we had had to deal with a situation in India such as the British had never before had to face. What was clear was that heavy clouds had arisen on the horizon, and they we're now sailing over the Indian skies. That could not be denied. But having paid the utmost attention that one could, he did not for a moment feel that the discovery of a secret society, or a secret organisation, involved any question ol | an" earthquake. He .preferred to look upon it as a passing cloud. He did not say that they would not have to fa;e pretty strong measures of one sort or another if they wanted to remove Hint bank of clouds. In the state of things with which they had to deal, they lni'L. the rather painful fact that there a certain estrangement and alienation of races—("No, no") in ludia. Let them bear with him patiently, lie was living to feel his way through a most diilieult problem and situation, lie was dependent upon information,.and as lie read it there was, if they liked- ,h<hoped it was so—a superficial alienation. That was the problem they had !d deal with. . . . The first duty of

:\:w Government was lo keep order. It would be idle to (U'liy I.lml i*rc had boon for sonic lit tic time past, a living mov'iii"iit in lliu minds of those people for wlio.si they were responsible, anil :i movement for'what V For objects wliicli we luul always taught them to think desirable objects, and unless we, somehow or another, reconcile those objects and aspirations with the satisfaction or those ideals and aspirations, the fault would not lie theirs, it would be ours. No one, believed that wc could enter upon an era of pure repression. They could not enter at the. present day, with public opinion watching, on an era of repression, and he did not think tint. anyone really desired any such thing. They had seen attempts of repression in Europe, and in days not altogether remote in this country. They had all failed. Whether we, with our enormous power and resolution, would fail, he did not know, but he did not think there was anyone in thai room who desired an era of pure repression. Speaking oi : those on whom responsibility rested in India, Viscount Morlcy said he had a great admiration for the self-command and freedom from anything like pane that had hitherto marked the European population of Calcutta and some of the places in Tndia. Tie had said to himself that if there had been in London bombs in railway carriages, and in the Prime Minister's house, they would have had scare headlines and all the other phenomena of panic. In India all ranks and classes had exercised that noble virtue of self-command.