Successor to Sir John Maynard

NOW that the term of office of Sir John Maynard as a member of the Punjab Executive Council is approaching its end, the question as to who should succeed him is naturally engaging the attention both of those with whom the appointment lies and of the public. In this connection, it is rumoured at Lahore and Simla that it is not beyond the range of possibility that JP Thompson, late Chief Secretary to the Punjab Government and now Political Secretary to the Government of India, will be brought back to Punjab and appointed to this post. For our own part, we give no credence whatever to the rumour. It is unbelievable that either the Government of India or the Punjab Government could have forgotten within so short a time the circumstances under which it was felt necessary to remove Thompson from Punjab and provide him with a billet in the Government of India, circumstances which in their essentials continue absolutely unaltered to this day. Thompson was not only the right-hand man of Sir Michael O’Dwyer and as such associated with all his doings as Lieutenant Governor in the never-to-be-forgotten days immediately before and during martial law, but there was no one among the officials who surrounded that erratic and imperious ruler who was universally believed to be so profoundly in sympathy with those measures and that policy for which O’Dwyerism is the compendious name. Nor was this belief based, as such beliefs sometimes are, on mere suspicions. Thompson himself made no secret of his sympathy.

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