A disturbing compromise

TO us in India, the speech made by Lord Birkenhead in moving the second reading of the Government of India Civil Services Bill in the House of Lords is of interest not so much for what the Bill contains as for other and entirely different reasons. So far as the Bill itself is concerned, it is based on the decision of the British Government to give effect to the principal recommendations of the Lee Commission, as to which Indian opinion has again and again expressed itself with unmistakable strength, definiteness and emphasis. The speech is primarily of importance as showing how little trouble the Secretary of State has taken to familiarise himself with the trend of opinion in this country in this matter of vital importance to her, or how extremely indifferent he is to it. If there is one thing rather than another which all shades of opinion in India have made perfectly clear, it is that the Lee recommendations are a wholly one-sided affair, that if they are at all a compromise, they are a compromise in which all the give is one side and all the take on the other. And yet in his speech, Lord Birkenhead sought to defend the Bill on the precise ground of its being a legitimate compromise. “The Lee recommendations,” he said, “are aimed, on the one hand, at removing certain anxieties, financial and other, from the Services and on the other at satisfying India’s opinion that the principles underlying the Reforms scheme would be observed in service administration.” He emphasised that “the recommendations are a deliberate compromise between the Indian viewpoint and the service opinion.”