‘The silver lining’

WE confess we are not able to see the silver lining which the Right Honourable Srinivasa Sastri has found in Lord Birkenhead’s speech. Sastri admits that the virtually unanimous condemnation of the speech by leaders of various sections of public opinion in this country and their organs in the Press is deserved. He also refuses to attach any importance to that part of the speech in which several other Liberal leaders, including Sir Surendranath Banerjea, have found and asked the country to find ground for hope, the part in which the Secretary of State seemed to invite India to frame a Constitution for herself. “One glowing passage in his lordship’s pronouncement,” writes Sastri, “came near to uttering a world of hope; but to the disappointment of the late Prime Minister and his party, Earl Winterton interpreted it as little more than flummery. The idea of presenting a new Constitution or Bill to the present Cabinet may, therefore, be dismissed as a wild goose chase.” The part of the speech which does seem to Sastri to open the door of hope is that in which his lordship declared that “wise men are not the slaves of dates, rather are dates the servants of sagacious men,” and laid down the condition on which he and the Cabinet were prepared to reconsider the question of appointing a Royal Commission before 1929. For our part, we attach no greater importance to this part than to the part which Sastri rightly dismisses as unworthy of serious consideration, but we owe it to him to examine his position as stated by himself.