IT IS NOT A GIFT BY THE PEOPLE OF INDIA

The press comments on it, however subdued and timid and halting, leave no doubt about the real mind of India in the matter. The truth has been pointed out by the Manchester Guardian and the Nation. (Beg your pardon, sir, for mentioning the Nation again). The former, in its issue of March 15, remarked: "It is we, who govern India and not the Indian people. The initiative in all financial proposals necessarily comes from the government we appoint in India, and these cannot reach the light of public discussion in the Legislative Council or elsewhere until they have received the sanction of the Secretary of State for India here. For Mr. Chamberlain to throw off upon Indian people the responsibility for originating and devising the 100 million contribution is as unconvincing a rhetorical exercise as the House of Commons has witnessed for many a long day. The responsibility from the first to the last is his and that of the Indian Government. We have said more than once, and we repeat it that in our opinion a wise statesmanship would both find better uses in India for India's millions and employ India more advantageously for the common cause by using more of her manhood and less of her money," I will not quote the Nation, sir, which is on this point as explicit, if not more, as the Manchester Guardian.

Now, sir, you know that India has been very eager to fight for the Empire. She has supplied you with about 350,000 troops in this war, paying for their services and equipment herself. But 350,000 do not represent even a fraction of her man power, the whole of which she was prepared to throw in this struggle. While Australia and Canada and Ireland have either rejected conscription or are shirking, India has been clamoring for it. You can no longer say that you could not utilize India's manhood because of the prejudice of color. That shibboleth has been shattered by this war and, we hope, for good. The colored people of Asia and Africa are fighting in numbers alongside of the best European troops. Poor people! They believe they are fighting to make the world "safe for democracy!" You cannot say that Indians are lacking in fighting qualities, because the existence of them in a high degree they have proved conclusively in face of difficulties, by no means light and contemptible. That the Indian soldier can hold his own in Europe, even better than the European soldier in Southern Asia, has been established beyond the shadow of a doubt by the experiences of this war. Why, then, won't you use India's manhood and relieve her of this financial exaction which she can ill afford to meet, without suffering egregiously?

INDIA'S TEEMING MILLIONS WANT FOOD AND
KNOWLEDGE OF THREE R'S

The question for India's teeming millions is not "how to live well" but how to live at all. There is no question of comforts for them. What they want, and do not get, is sufficient and nourishing food and a knowledge of the three R's. Your Government is unable to give them the first, and persists in refusing to give them the second; yet when an Indian publicist loses patience and says "slavery has deprived Indians of wealth, honors and freedom, and has reduced them to destitution and starvation," your Viceroy in India cites it as an instance of depraved journalism and a justification for the gagging of the press. He complains that "there are papers in India which magnify the ills from which she suffers" and "which harp upon plague, famine, malaria and poverty" and "ascribe them all to the curse of an alien government." May I ask, sir, if it is not a fact that millions in India die of famine, plague, and malaria? Is it not a fact that the curses and the appalling effects of them, are directly or indirectly traceable to poverty? Many countries on the face of the earth do not grow food sufficient for themselves while India does. Why then should India alone suffer from famines when her food supply, once in a while, falls short of the ordinary year of agricultural "prosperity?" If even during famine years India can supply food to other nations by exports of wheat and other grains, why can't she keep that food at home and feed her own hungry children? Why should plague have stayed in India so long? Why should malaria exact such a heavy annual toll there? The reason is obvious. Because of the ignorance and poverty of the people.

Let us assume that India has not grown poorer under British rule, though there is abundant evidence to the contrary, that the masses have become poorer and are becoming poorer every day; let us also assume that in the matter of education India was worse off under native rule—i. e., before the introduction of the British rule—a period of history when no other part of the world was any the better. Is it not a matter of shame, that after 150 years of British rule, when most of the other national governments in other parts of the world have reduced their illiteracy almost to zero point, India should still have more than 90% of its population illiterate. Is it not a matter of shame, that of all the grain producing countries of the world India alone should be so miserably situated as to be unable to supply sufficient and nourishing food to her sons and daughters. Don't you think, sir, that the Indians have reason to feel sore when they see that the food grown by them is denied to them; that it is almost snatched from their mouths; that others should eat the food which is grown by them, that even in the best of years millions of them must be contented with only one meal a day, and that of the coarsest grain.

Do you remember, Mr. Lloyd George, how bitter you felt against the capitalist, when you yourself in your boyhood, felt the pinch of want? Have you forgotten all that you said in the Lime-house speech? I repeat that the sufferings of the British laborer and workingmen, the trials of the British poor are nothing compared with those of the Indian ryot and the Indian workingmen and the Indian clerks in your employ in that country. Yet you have no feeling to spare for them, and those that have, you and your Government brand as malcontents and seditionists. Don't you think, sir, that the Indian ryot and the Indian poor are being crushed under the weight of two capitalisms superimposed upon each other—one foreign and the other indigenous? When we ask for freedom to manage our own affairs you say we are not fit to do so. But what can we do to ourselves which will be worse than what you have done us? If left free, we might bring to book the indigenous capitalists whom, in the interests of your own capitalists, you have been supporting and fattening. But even if we fail to do so, we shall at any rate have upon us the burden of only a single weight. Your colleagues say that in refusing self-government to India they are actuated by devotion to India; that they do not want to hand over the millions of India to the tender mercies of a small minority of educated and wealthy men in whose hands the government will inevitably drift. Supposing it does, it will be easy for the masses to keep the minority in check. They can revolt and rebel, but under your Government the bureaucracy is all powerful. The truth is, sir, that the condition of these very millions, in whose interests, you say, you are reluctant to give power to the educated and the wealthy few, is a standing condemnation of your government there. The educated minority and the wealthy few are fairly well off under your regime. It is the ignorant ryot and the millions of workingmen and women who suffer. In the words of one of your distinguished writers (W. Lily), they do not live but just exist.

Recently the Times said that the British were "the trustees of the welfare of India's millions." Who are these millions for whom you are trustees? Are they those homeless, educationless millions who get only one meal a day or are they those who have benefitted from your schools and are wealthy? If the former, you have failed in your trust. If the latter, they are quite fit to manage their own affairs. It was only the other day that Mr. Austen Chamberlain was reported to have said (Times, London, March 30) at a luncheon given to him and the India's so-called representatives at the Imperial conference (one of whom was a Lieutenant Governor interested in extending India's sphere of subjection) that "India will not remain and ought not to remain content to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for the rest of the Empire." Noble words these, full of hope and encouragement. But what a sad and a crushing acknowledgment of the present helpless condition of India. It is a truthful statement for which the Indians ought to be grateful to Mr. Chamberlain. At the present moment India is a mere "hewer of wood and a drawer of water" for the rest of the Empire. Against that her sons protest, and will continue to protest, as long as the wrongs of the country are not redressed, your press act, your sedition laws, jails and prisons notwithstanding.

The position, Mr. Lloyd George, is pathetic. When we ask for more outlay on education, you say, no, the condition of the finances will not permit of that. When we point out the way to find finances, you say, "no, further taxes are impossible and retrenchment in public expenditure in other departments undesirable." When we say, "give us the management and we will do it," you say, "no you are unfit." The result is that you will neither educate the masses yourself nor will you let us educate them. Yet you hold their ignorance a valid ground for refusing us our right to manage our own affairs. When, however, you want money for Imperial purposes you raise loans, impose taxes, and reduce public expenditure on education and public works. You have done this not only now, for the purposes of this bloody war, but you have done so in the past in building railways for your merchants and to fight your wars in Africa, in China, in Afghanistan, in fact, all over the old world. It is true the present is a trying time for you and you may have a pretence of justification in this crisis in your Imperial life. But so long as you refuse the conscription of wealth in your home islands, what right have you to impose this conscription of India's money resources? You have not forced the dominions to make monetary contributions. In fact you have advanced them over £140,000,000 from your own funds. You have not so far called upon the British capitalists to pay even a fraction of their wealth. You have simply taxed their excessive profits. Why should you have made an exception in the case of India? India is the poorest part of the Empire. Yet it is she who has been selected for this exceptional treatment. She had already made lavish gifts of money and provisions and equipment. Her gifts were in entire disproportion to her means. Compared with your dominions' resources and their money sacrifices India's contribution stood higher than those of the former. Yet you selected India for this compulsory money contribution because India is the only part of the Empire which you could thus treat. India is the only part of the Empire which has been forced to give $500,000,000 as a free gift. Even the fabulously rich United States which have made huge war profits from you and your other allies have not thought of a national gift. Yet imperial sophistry represented by your imperial publicists and officials, represents that Great Britain exacts no tribute from India and makes no profit out of her connection with India and that she rules India simply out of philanthropic and humanitarian motives.

WASTE