Art. 11.-INDIA FROM CURZON'S DAYS TO THESE.

1. The Life of Lord Curzon. By the Right Hon. the Earl of Ronaldshay. Vol. II. Benn, 1928.

2. The India We Served. By Sir Walter R. Lawrence, Bart, G.C.I.E. Cassell, 1928.

3. India in 1926-27. A statement prepared for presentation to Parliament by J. Coatman, Director of Public Information with the Government of India. 1928. 4. The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent, G.C.B., from his Journals and Letters. Edited by MajorGeneral Sir Frederick Maurice, K.C.M.G. Cassell, 1928. LORD RONALDSHAY'S second volume of Lord Curzon's Life will not disappoint the most confident expectations. It is entirely worthy of its subject and gives a vivid picture of a time that has indeed fallen into the irrevocable limbo of the past,' but was marked by doings which have influenced profoundly the whole course of subsequent events. Sir Walter Lawrence who, after years of valuable experience in the political branch of the Indian Civil Service became Lord Curzon's private secretary, has thrown additional and supplementary light on those pregnant years.

Lord Curzon said truly that he had given to India 'all that was worth having of his spirit and strength'; and it was to India that he turned in the hour when life with its labours and disappointments was sinking from under him. In India he had worked with an intensity of courageous and whole-hearted devotion which has never been surpassed, and, despite disappointments and mistakes, had achieved much and shown the way to more. With all his defects of character; defects which neither Lord Ronaldshay nor Sir Walter Lawrence conceals, he left a deep and most beneficial impression on those departments of administration which most affect the security of the country and the lives of the people. To the rank and file of the civil Services, the stokers in the great ship, he was no transient vision, no benignant phantom-but a vivid and inspiring leader; the atmosphere for activity which had always been wide, he made wider; the sense of duty which was keen before, he made keener. He set an example of tireless enthusiasm

not only for the people and the present but also for the past of India, the Ancient of Days,' an enthusiasm which, on occasion, obtained recognition even from that Western-educated opinion with which he was so often at issue. At present this opinion is generally voiced by lawyers, men the substance of whose days is incessant contention. But things were not always so; and it is pleasant to learn from Lord Ronaldshay's page 390 that the late Gopal Krishna Gokhale, foremost among Lord Curzon's political adversaries and bred in the more reflective school of education, recognised unstintingly the impelling force which drove the Viceroy on. Before the National Congress in December 1905 Gokhale made 'a passionate and acrid onslaught' on all his doings. Six months later after receiving the news of Lord Curzon's great bereavement, he was writing to him in deep sympathy acknowledging the rare spirit that had lived for lofty ends and made a religion of all its work.' Gokhale felt that to Lord Curzon many things could be forgiven because of the main direction and underlying motive of all his days.

In a minute dated May 11, 1902, regarding preparations for the Durbar of January 1903, Lord Curzon observed that the thing most needed in India was the sense of common participation in a great political system and of fellow citizenship of the British Empire.' The Durbar, he said, was intended primarily to bring home to all the people of the Indian Continent the vital fact that they were partners in a harmonious whole. Yet he was anxious to assist the Indian National Congress to a peaceful demise,' and bitterly antagonised the 'new Nationalists,' especially in Bengal. To some extent this antagonism was the result of an unfortunate manner; but mainly it sprang from the natural conflict between his zealous reforming spirit and the impatience of Western control which was then beginning to show itself in India and Asia. His first offence was curtailment of the power of the elected element in the Calcutta Corporation, an arrangement undone in 1923 by a Bill piloted through the Legislative Council by Sir Surendra nath Banerjee, once Lord Curzon's stoutest opponent, and in later times, by a turn of fortune's wheel, a member of the Bengal Government. The undoer lived

to see substantial reason for regretting his achievement. Lord Curzon's next offence was his Universities Bill, which came too late and ran too sharply counter to popular prejudices and vested interests to do much more than point the way to better things. Next came the unfortunate passage in his speech at the Calcutta University Convocation, which, it is safe to say, would never have found utterance had Sir Walter Lawrence been still at his elbow. His last and greatest offence was the partition of the old unwieldy province of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, in such a manner as to split Bengal itself into halves, creating two new provinces. Had this measure not been preceded by the highly contentious period of University legislation, and had it not synchronised with the thrill which passed through Asia on the close of the Russo-Japanese war, it might not have been so violently resented by Bengali Hindu sentiment as it was, a resentment which was heightened and sustained by the apprehensions of powerful vested interests. Psychologically the line of division adopted was unwise; but no one then suspected that it would afford a welcome opportunity to a band of revolutionary conspirators, or that when the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam came into being, it would lose its first LieutenantGovernor within a year; would be for some time financially and administratively starved, and would be abolished when it had begun amply to justify its creation. Its abolition only temporarily placated Bengali Hindu sentiment; it annoyed the Muhammadans and weakened their trust in British stability of purpose. Extremist hostility in no way relaxed. The stream of subterranean revolutionary conspiracies flowed on in Bengal.

Sir Walter Lawrence says that Lord Curzon did not attempt to forecast the distant future of India. From Lord Curzon's own words we would gather that he made such attempts and desisted, not arriving at any satisfactory result. Whither was Britain leading India? What was it all to come to? What was the goal? The future of the Indian race was 'the most hazardous as well as the most absorbing of speculations.' He did not think that it lay with the Nationalists representing as they did only certain castes and professions, always apart

ars he hereditary rulers of bygone days s were expanding: their numbers

zer zmpers were not improving; and Steel is the British democracy in persuasive To hi & parle. Unable to avoid prete eme be turned for relief to the gres: Turmp the welfare of the millions which Comstraale presents, to foreign defence and LIZONTLINE. As Lord Morley afterwards

outrome the fzal outcome of British rule Zum & prictable study for the musings of - minc But we are not here to muse. We of -any to perform. We have the tasks spread out before us."

Brush Government in India, Lord Varren Esstings and Dalhousie above all -Ys & Biministrators and rulers of Sa perlade hardy fair to Wellesley, to whom, Ler says be possessed a more than ja meem "Jahre, and dwells more sympathetically VINE Character and fortunes were not

E DOLL it may be said that where they na's pertain hardness of texture which - from making sufficient allowances for 11es and wesknesses of others,' and that The equanimity which was the glory One certainly cannot imagine TRE TORSIDE Irough trials at all comparable in ▼LICÈ beset that much-injured man PS I The evening of his life, writing calmly had a handsome letter from the Last India Company and of more un

than was ever written by or in urf Directors. I have answered it ... my setting seem all too vivid.' the Severnors-General was the first.

psed between Lord Curzon's and the coming of the Great War. Hindu and Congress antiby conflicts between would-be pient i rish goods and Muhammadans mampuanı and desired to be left alone.

der cover of the general ferment associations of young volutionaries in the two new provinces developed their ins, and began a long intermittent campaign of robries, bomb outrages and murders. The atmosphere was isoned by seditious newspapers. The Congress split to Moderates and Extremists, in spite of its formal loption of Swaraj (one's own dominion) as a watchword hich was designed to rally all its adherents. The most rominent Extremist leader found his way to jail. A uslim League was organised to secure the Muhammadan osition in a time of constitutional change: the Morleylinto reforms were enacted, and after long delay a 1uch-needed Press Act was sanctioned by a very reluctant ecretary of State. The whole atmosphere then improved onsiderably, and India was visited by their Majesties he King and Queen. The capital was transferred from Calcutta to Delhi, and Bengal once more became one province. But Muslim sentiment was alienated by the alteration of the partition and by the Balkan war, and the Muslim League formally declared for the attainment of the system of self-government suitable to India." Hindu revolutionists were busy here and there, and the Viceroy was bombed on the occasion of his State-entry into the new capital. Lord Hardinge's calm courage under this ordeal produced a profound impression; and in spite of all political discontents, when the Great War came, the country was quieter than it had been for some years; trade, commerce, communications, education were rapidly expanding; the enlarged legislative Councils were working well. Lord Morley, and after him Lord Crewe, had emphatically declared that they were not meant to lead to the establishment of a parliamentary system; but by abandoning official majorities on provincial legislative councils, Lord Morley stultified his own declaration.

At the outset of the War the ruling Chiefs set an example of enthusiastic loyalty to the whole country. The martial castes and races rendered invaluable service, and the politicians followed the initiative of one of their leaders who moved in the Imperial Legislative Council that India should be allowed to share in the financial burdens which the war must bring. In spite of the efforts of the Extremist Tilak to organise obstruction with 1