may not in the near future secure the approval of some British ministry cadging for the Labour vote.

Such a risk is all the greater in view of the present system of governing India. The Secretary of State, who possesses supreme authority and exercises it to interfere in every detail of Indian administration, is primarily a member of a British Cabinet. His political life depends on maintaining peace with his colleagues in the Cabinet and the members of his party in the House of Commons, and if the interests of India stand in the way of this primary need the interests of India are sacrificed. He usually has no first-hand knowledge of Indian problems, and as recent experience has shown-he allows himself to be guided by the advice of the permanent officials of the India Office, most of whom have never been beyond Whitehall, in preference to that of the India Council consisting of men who have spent the greater part of their lives in India. Neither source of advice is satisfactory, for the permanent officials have little or no conception of what may be called the 'atmosphere' of India, and the retired AngloIndians who serve upon the Council remember the India of their youth, which is not the India of their retirement. It is, if possible, even more important to diminish the work of the Secretary of State than to diminish that of the Government of India.

The greater part of the expensive establishment in Whitehall should be swept away. Its cost is a constant matter of complaint in India, and forms the one solid basis for native and Keir-Hardian rhetoric about the drain' of India's resources for the benefit of England. In particular, the Stores Department of the India Office is an absolute anachronism. The Government of India and the Provincial Governments are fully competent to buy all the European stores they require either directly from European firms or indirectly from firms established in Calcutta and Bombay. There is a widespread suspicion in India that the Stores Department of the India Office, with its expensive staff for which India pays, is maintained for no other purpose than to enable the Secretary of State to give preferential treatment to certain influential English firms. We are willing to believe that this suspicion is entirely unfounded. But the fact that it exists is alone a reason for abolishing the Department. England in her

relations with India must not only be just but must also appear so.

We have in a word to get away altogether from the traditions established by the East India Company, traditions derived from the fact that the Company was founded for the very purpose of earning out of India a profit for English shareholders. In place of this conception, which in theory disappeared altogether when Queen Victoria took over the direct sovereignty of India in 1858, we have to substitute the conception which regulates the relations between the self-governing Dominions and the Home Government. The relationship cannot be absolutely the same, for the stupendous racial and religious differences in India make democratic self-government on the Colonial model impossible. But the responsible officials on the spot, both English and Indian, aided and checked as they now are by representative councils and by a very active public opinion, are perfectly capable of carrying on all the detailed work of governing India without the assistance or the interference of Whitehall. It is a gross indignity to the people of India that decisions which have been reached on the spot by competent men with full cognisance of the facts, which have been thoroughly discussed in the public press as well as in official files, and which are purely local in their bearing, cannot be put into operation until they have been sent home for the scrutiny of some unknown clerk in a top room at the India Office, who in practice wields the authority of the Secretary of State.

In order to break down this vicious system and the equally vicious over-centralisation of the Government of India, a complete new departure is necessary. We are convinced that the only way of fully meeting the real needs of India, both governmental and sentimental, is to make one of the Princes of the Royal House the representative of the Sovereign in India, with a high official to act under him as Dewán or Prime Minister.

A Royal Viceroy or Prince Regent, a Khandáni ádmi, one of the blood, would stand out as the source of honour, the arbiter of social sanctions, the protector and champion of immemorial rights and privileges, which to the Indians are as the breath of life. There would be continuity, for the Prince Regent would remain, and the short uncertain friendships of the five years' tenure of Viceroyalty would give way to the abiding link of a

VOL. CCXVI. NO. CCCCXLI.

longer period. The Indian hates change and distrusts the stranger. He is dazed by the State kaleidoscope. It is too rapid for him. He sees the beauties of the rapidly succeeding Viceroys with blurred and unappreciative eyes. It would rest his vision if he could look on something more permanent, on someone whom he could claim as his friend, someone who knows him. More than half the unrest of India is due to the fact that the official changes are so frequent. India yearns for familiar faces.

Even more important is the gratification which such a change would give to Indian pride. In a fitful way India is longing to come within the comity of the nations. Her Princes come to England to be welcomed in the best society, admired for their dignified manners, their splendid horsemanship, their gorgeous dresses, and they go back as some Mahomedans go back from Mecca. Much of the resulting disappointment and bitterness of heart would be avoided if there were a Prince Regent who would serve as a link between India and England, who would act as the great social interpreter between two civilisations moving in such widely different shades of thought. This work cannot be done by the officials of the Government of India. They have accomplished much; they have made fine and lasting bricks with very little straw; they have made the continent safe and prosperous. But they have had no time for the social side of life. All their work has been official, and though Indians and Englishmen work splendidly together both in the army and the civil service, there will not be an adequate sense of social and civic comradeship until India has a Prince Regent as the visible embodiment of the fact that Englishmen and Indians are subjects of one sovereign. If we, prosaic, dull Englishmen, need a King or a member of the Royal Family to start a Hospital Fund, to inspire a University, or to vitalise a charity, a thousand times more do the Indians want a social leader and a guide.

No Viceroy has been or can be such a guide. He has no leisure. He is an official hemmed in and guided by officials. He looks upon his visitors mainly as the outcrop of official files. He has no time for anything but the formal visit and the begrudged return. He is thankful to get it over, and to shake off the scent of the attar and to hand the pán to the corrupt

lictor in red. It is a pitiful waste of time and opportunity, but the Viceroy has to get back to his files and his secretaries. And so the weary five years pass and bored India wonders what the next Viceroy will be like. He will be very much like the others. It is merely a choice between King Stork and King Log, and both are uncomfortable.

The substitution of a Royal Prince, with quasi-permanent tenure of office, for a flitting Viceroy would produce at once a complete change, not only by satisfying the legitimate and entirely worthy desire of Indians for fuller social recognition in their own country, but also by improving India's outlook upon the world. A Prince Regent would act as the champion and interpreter of the growing desire of the East for toleration and fair play in the West. He would plead with greater force than any official, however distinguished, for the removal of the racial stigma which now rests upon the kindly and courteous peoples of India. We cannot of course expect that economic jealousy would necessarily disappear, but it would no longer to the same extent as at present be overlaid and disguised by expressions of race prejudice which are all the more bitter to bear because in many cases they are a mere cloak for other motives.

The black cloud of unrest that had been hanging over India for five years, ever gathering in deepness, disappeared in an instant before the sunshine of Delhi. But it may return if the legitimate aspirations of the peoples of India are checked, and their self-respect persistently wounded. The King has prepared the way for peace and good feeling. He has given an immense impetus to the idea of decentralisation, by recognising the necessary revolt from a too highly centralised Government, out of harmony and out of touch with Indian sentiment. The decrees at Delhi involve the creation of strong Provincial Governments, whose existence will render possible the healthy and varied growth of the widely different elements which make up the great continent of India.

Finally, the King's visit may fairly be regarded as the first step towards the great constitutional reform indicated in the preceding pages, the appointment of a Prince Regent as the King's representative in India to discharge the social and ceremonial functions of the Viceroy's office, with a Dewán or Prime Minister to carry on the Viceroy's

administrative work. The Prince Regent will be in close contact with the chiefs and leading families of India, and on his frequent tours he will learn the opinions, the hopes, and the ambitions of the various provinces. He will save the Prime Minister from the fatigue of the long journeys and from the dislocation of work which is caused by the present Viceregal tours. And at the same time, he will bring back with him to the capital first-hand information which will be of great value to the administration; for it will be information given freely and unofficially. It will be the business of the Prime Minister to correlate the activities of the Provincial Governments, to control Imperial finance and Imperial legislation. But, with the change that is coming, legislation will tend to become provincial, and laws of Imperial scope should become the exception.

We believe that the change of system here sketched out is the necessary consequence of changes in thought and circumstance which have been rapidly maturing, and which, unless their course be guided, will sweep over India with the destructive force of a river in flood.