July 15.
THE story of the dismissal of Gen. Dyer, following the report of Lord Hunter's Committee into the circumstances attending the Amritsar shooting incident of April 13, 1919, is, perhaps, as bad reading as can possibly be imagined. And this not only because of the conditions which were shown to exist in the Punjab at the time, but also because there arises grave doubt as to whether Gen. Dyer has received that fair treatment to which every gallant and true servant of the Empire 1s entitled. The facts as found by the majority and minority reports of the Committee go to show that prior to April 13, 1919, there existed serious discontent in an area of the Punjab of considerably over 100,000 square miles. This was brought to a head by the deportation from Amritsar of two local politicians. Rioting began, and, as the majority report states "in the situation as it presented itself day by day to the Punjab Government there were grounds for the gravest anxiety.... It was difficult, probably unsafe for the authorities not to assume that the outbreak was the result of a definite organization. A movement which had started in rioting and became a_ rebellion might rapidly have developed into a revolution."
Martial law was declared, a step which the Committee found to be justified. On April 18 a crowd, estimated by Gen. Dyer to have been about 6,000, and put by the Committee at between 10,000 and 20,000, assembled at Jallianwalla Bagh, outside Amritsar, despite a proclamation by Gen. Dyer issued earlier in the day forbidding such gatherings. Upon his arrival with troops, Gen. Dyer opened fire upon the gathering, some 379 persons being killed and probably three times as many being wounded.
Such, briefly, are the facts upon which Gen. Dyer has been "'broken'', and, despite the very natural distress that must be felt that so many lives were lost, the question arises how far Gen. Dyer deserved the harsh treatment meted out to him. It is necessary, first, to consider the situation as Gen. Dyer could only have regarded it when he went out with his troops on April 13. He knew that the countryside was in rebellion, a rebellion which might have developed into revolution; be
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.