More threats by Europeans

A CLASS of Europeans in India is evidently becoming more and more reckless in its speeches. We have already referred to the speech of Mr Carr at the annual meetings of the European Association in Calcutta, which even The Times of India has felt constrained to condemn. Another European gentleman has just expressed similar sentiments at a meeting of the Motor Trades’ Association, also in Calcutta. Almost alone even among Europeans, this speaker condemned the release of Mahatma Gandhi, which he did not compare to the release of “a homicidal maniac” only because the danger involved in it was, in his opinion, far greater than that involved in the latter. That single statement gives one a far greater insight into the measure of common sense, of the sense of proportion and of decency itself, with which nature has gifted this speaker than almost anything else could do. But we are prepared to treat this part of his effusion with the scorn it deserves. Our concern is with the concluding words of the speech in which the speaker reiterated exactly the threat which Mr Carr had indulged in during his speech at the European Association. “If the elemental safeguard to the Reforms, namely their modification only after 10 years, was gone back upon even by a hair’s breadth, there would,” he said, “have been perpetrated against them a breach of faith on the part of the Government,” and he maintained that every European in this country would be “completely and honourably absolved from participating in the Reforms and in the face of such betrayal, they might hold themselves free to act exactly as it might seem best to them.”