Services or reforms

NOW that Lord Reading is engaged in discussions with the Secretary of State on certain vital problems of Indian administration, the Press in England is busy writing about Indian matters and offering its own solutions for the various problems that face the Government in India. The most important question requiring immediate attention, according to a large section of the British Press, is that of securing an undiminished supply of British recruits to the Services. The next question relates to the further instalment of reforms, which must be dealt with in such a manner as not to affect the British element in the ICS and other Imperial Services in India. The two questions are treated as interconnected with each other, and a hue and cry is being raised that any attempt at giving a substantial measure of constitutional reforms to India now or in the near future will mean irretrievable disaster not only to England but also to India. It is pointed out that the reforms of 1919 and the agitation that followed were responsible for the drop in the number of British recruits to the ICS. The Times says: “A belief grew up after the war that the work of Britain in India was nearing its end. There were some who imagined that the initiation of the reforms had already lost us our ‘dominion’, or that, at any rate, their speedy development to the climax of full self-government would soon make our presence in India unnecessary.” Writing in the same strain, the Saturday Review says: “Young men of a certain type can be persuaded to go out to Indian as missionaries of the new faith, according to which the whole duty of the Englishman is to make himself superfluous wherever his ancestors made themselves indispensable.”