soul. Resolution V. of the last Congress will ring down the ages when our bickering and fussily nervous statesmen will, with their words and points, have long been forgotten.

This Congress, while fully recognising the grave provocation that led to a sudden outburst of mob frenzy, deeply regrets and condemns the excesses committed in certain parts of the Punjab and Gujerat resulting in the loss of lives and injury to person and property during the month of April last.

Is there another nation in the world that, after Amritsar, could have arisen to such loftily serene heights? Is there a nation on the globe's surface that will not be forced by this uplifting example into a spiritual examination of its inner self and a re-valuation of its own morality? Only a people at the same time extraordinarily humble (in the finest sense of the word) and extraordinarily proud could have so trampled on baseness and extracted from it the fragrant purification and balm for her own wounds that India has done. She has made an infinitely noble gesture of sacrificial and generous penitence before the bar of the world. And the world has to respond to it.

The first response is due from the people of Great Britain. The words quoted are a spiritual

challenge to every good man and woman here. The deeply-injured Indians, who have suffered a thousand times more than did the Anglo-Indians, have yet sense enough of justice to regret and to condemn whatever of wrong-doing in them led to the brutal retaliations for which we, as a governing nation, are ultimately responsible. How can we meet this beautiful soul of the true India?

Does it not shame us into confessing how, from the very bottom of our hearts, we too regret and condemn all that happenned from our side? Will not the sunshine of a mutual forgiveness reconcile all that has parted two nations that seem to have been made for mutual love, and melt all mistrust? The sacred memories of bloodshed in grim and gloomy Flanders ought for ever to have welded our hearts and minds in one harmonious whole. These things can still be if England resolves that her sun of chivalry has not yet set and that, come what may, she will do justice to India-that rather than let the cries of her fosterdaughter remain unavailing echoes she will disown the wicked offspring of her own blood. Deep calls unto deep in this transcendent disavowal of India. It is for us now to set our house in order and to show that our repentance is piercing, truthful, and

self-slaying of the evil within us.

culprits who have betrayed our

The responsible

honour must be

tried and justly sentenced. The concealers of the truth, from the highest to the lowest, must be dragged into the day and punished.

Finally, India must be made as free as human wit and will can make her. No delays, no compromises, no half-loaves. Flanders, Mesopotamia, and Amritsar have bought her citizenship in no mean Empire at no mean price.

Every resolution passed at the Congress will repay deep and careful study. That this one has been singled out for especial emphasis is no mark of any lesser importance in the rest. But it is this which puts us upon our honour. If by justice and firm dealing with our minions we do not vindicate that honour, the old England which we knew and loved, wherein our pride was centred, will have died. Lhe England of Sir Philip Sydney, of Howard, of Elizabeth Fry, of Wilberforce, will have passed away. Let us hope that the contrary will be shortly proven, and the tarnish scoured from the shield. "There lives a soul of goodness in things evil Would men observingly distil it out."

The glory is to India in this resolution. The task is to Great Britain.-February 13, 1921.

II

THE PRICE INDIA PAYS*

WHATEVER criticisms may have to be brought against the India Office and the present Secretary of State for India, for one achievement notable credit is their due. Mr. Montagu has issued Blue Books and White Papers in such unparallelled profusion that it is much to be hoped that the pedestal of the statue to be erected by his admirers in India will be modelled in the similitude of a pile of such refreshing productions, just as Venus rises from the waves or Clytie from the sunflower.

Cmd. Paper 595, otherwise an Explanatory Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India, alias East India: Accounts and Estimates 1919-1920, is a further effort in this line. It is not light reading in any sense of the word. In penetrating its jungles. the sunlight of optimism and hope nearly vanishes.

The Indian Budget for 1919 to 1920 is presented upon page 4, the burden of taxation upon page 7, expenditure upon Military Services upon page 20, and upon Civil Departments upon page 21. There are 32 pages of statistics and more or less lucid

* The 1921 Budget has supplied its own commentary upon the contentions advanced in this article.

explanations in this Command Paper, all of great value and importance, but for the moment comment is more particularly directed to the pages cited above. The Net Revenue of the 1919-20 Budget is estimated at £87, 968, 200 and the Total Net Expenditure at £87,299,600. So far so good, especially if the 'surplus' be realised and not developed by the cruelty of the to-be-accomplished fact into a large net deficit some six million pounds lower, than the Budget Extimate, as was the sad case in 1918-1919.

The next statement to be noticed is the size of the Army Estimates. The world has been made safe for militarism, and the Indian Budget acknowledges this dismal fact by Military Service Estimates amounting to £41,195,000, a decrease of only some 2.7 millions upon last year's costs, and well on the way to nearly double the amount shown in the 1917-18 accounts! In short, the expenditure upon militarism is to absorb five-elevenths of the revenue! Presumably the suggestion will meet with not too cordial a welcome, but the meaning of the tables on page 4 would absolutely jump to the eye and mind if the items under expenditure could have plainly indicated by each one of them what fraction they represent first of the total revenue, and second of the total expenditure. The average publicist is a