Passage from India

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 402, 7 March 1947, Page 5

Passage from India

at which events are moving in I cia that Mr. Attlee’s statement on the transfer of power has been accepted as calmly as the chai.ge of viceroys. Many are uneasy atid a few ask questions, but the questions are for party purposes more often than for information. The withdrawal itself is a fact that all parties accept and a substantial majority of members approve, and those who are excited about it are more likely to f-reizn than British. It is not clear that even the British ir. India are excited, whether they are officials or business men, though the officials know clearly enough that their careers have come to an end. It is only in its implications that the change remains dramatic, and to feel the force of it from that angle is difficult without a good deal of knowledge and some historical imagination. Th2 dullest hov-ever know that if the reasons for the withdrawal are legion and mixed, the strongest begin in Britain itself. It was the pressure of liberal and radical opinion, and the unceasing demand for the application of liberal principles, that prepared Britain through two generations for this half voluntary and half compulsory renunciation of authority that still confuses the rest of the world. Even Mr. Churchill, with his strong views about the preservation of the Empire, has attacked only the time and method of the withdrawal and not the withdrawal itself. To say that Britain could have avoided withdrawal would of course be humbug. But it is not humbug to say that withdrawal could have been delayed for some years yet with a very good appeal all the time to necessity and commonsense. The decision to hand over next year was made because liberty is a fact in British politics and not merely a slogan. The wheels statted to go round before Mr. Attlee was born. I: is an indication of the speed