INDIA AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 February 1919, Page 3

INDIA AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

To tlie EditorSir, —i,.i need for co-operation is now recognised as the great ideal to which humanity should inspire. That it has merited success is now undisputed, as witness our co-operative dairying industry. To see its expansion iu amalgamation of local bodies for the purpose of economising the raising of finance for local self government; and in neighboring Dominions in the formation o£ a Commonwealth, it is quite an easy step to the formation of a co-operation of a league of nations. The question afises, Which nations are to he recognised at the round table, and which are to he looked upon as unworthy; So far as India is concerned oue cannot doubt that she has won her place by the supreme sacrifice of her valiant soldiers. It has been said, "The condition of India's loyalty is India's freedom,"' to which may be added, ''The condition of India's usefulness to the Empire is India's freedom." Mr Montagu. Secretary of State for India, has sajd, "For equipment in war a nation needs freedom in peace" Great Britain, from which we obtain the term "British," embodies, though as yet but partially realised, the ideal of freedom, of ever increasing self-government; of peoples rising into power and self-development along their own lines; of a supreme government broad based upon the people's will, of fair and just treatment of undeveloped' races, aiding not enslaving them; it embodies the embryo of tlie splendid democracy of the future; of the new civilisation, co-operative, peaceful, progressive, artistic, just and free—a brotherhood of nations, whether the nations be inside or outside the woTld Empire. The breath of this freedom has penetrated the hearts of all her subject peoples and Dominions, with the result that the people arc filled with discontent, divine discontent, for they see the ideal, and seek to realise it. India lias had awakened her "national selfrespect," winch was asleep, and thousands of her educated men feel that to be content with being a "subject" race is a dishonor Education, it will be seen, was the inevitable cause of the so-called "unrest in India," the spread of ideals of democracy through exchange of thought between east and west through the Japanese victory over Paissia. To quote Lord Minto, when he recognised frankly and publicly that new aspirations were stirring in the hearts of the people, that they were a part of a | larg-r movement common to tlie whole East (as witness China and Japan), and that it was necessary to satisfy them to a reasonable extent by giving them a larger share in the administration. And what does India wantl To be free in India as the Englishmen is free in England, to be governed by her own men freely elected hv herself, to make and break Ministers at her will, to have her own army and navy, to levy her own taxes: make her own budgets, educate her own peoples, irrigate her own lands, to be a sovereign nation within her own borders, owning tlio paramount power of the Imperial Crown,' and sending her sons to the Imperial Council. She wants no hybrid representation by an official cla.ss that see not eye to eye with the people, but men "leeted by lier people advancing laws "hasod on the people's will" The 9Weet reasonableness of her claim is found in being willing to accept this au-1 tonomy in stages graduated np to 20 years hence. Thus she would be one of t.lie League of Nations, and thus would Britain vindicate her • claim as the champion of the subject peoples, making the captives free and at the same time placing a diadem in the Imperial Crown that would shine to her eternal honor-—I am, etc., J. H. FORD. Stratford. Gtli February.