The situation in the Indian Central Provinces Legislature tinctly interesting. The elections at the end of December gave the; Swarajists a majority and. their! Toader, Dr, Moonje, was invited to form's Ministry, which, while thanking the Governor for his constitutional usage, Dr. Moonje. refused to do—just as the Swarajists in Bengal declined a similar offer.
however, Dr. Moonje and his friends are doing their utmost to. make government in the Con-teal Provinces impossible, blocking all bills and informing the Governor that his Ministers do not enjoy the confidence of the House. Nobody, of course, will feel any surprise at the behaviour of Swarajiste or any other breed] of Indian Nationalist, But. what] is the Government of India going} to dot It i ible for the well being of 3 lions of defenceless "cannot tell their right hand from their left" as the Old Testament tersely puts it, and even the} neademicians at Westminster, who have been doing their best for years past to throw away the Indian Empire, hardly suggest. that ithe British Raj should abdicate just yet. Inasmuch, then, as the! Swarajists will not' govern. themselves and thwart everybody else Who tries to do so, they must simply be over-ridden. The Central Provinees Government must carry' on in defiance of the Legislature—which indeed would -be an excel-Tent lesson for that unnecessary and wasteful body. 'The question is whether the Government will have the courage to take the only' practical, even if unconstitutional course, and whether the -House of Commons would support it. With The Arctic lee fields The "New York World's" merry gibe to-day at the Am hoxationists who propose to eoiquer the Arctic icoficlds by morns of the airship Shenandoah isn perfectly ood pices of criticism, Tundging by what happened to an: other spot in the Arctic circle the airship. might proceed to plant the Stars and Stripes all over the place, but wrdess a physical occupation followed it is unlikely that future generations, if they wanted these icofivds, would al-Tow such a claim to annexation The precedent is the case of Spitz bergen. In the reign of James 1 a pany of Scotsmen proceeded thither and annexed the place, and then probably finding it too cold for their comfort. departed and nobody seems to have wor-riod much-about it anti] the war, Then, however, at certain seasons of the year the British Navy paid some attention to it in pursuit of the blockade. and certain, histor-Jans raked up the story of its being a British possession. There are large deposits of coal there, and suggestions were heard of a com: pany being formed to exploit them. When, however, it came: to treaty making at the close of the war the fact. that the Scandiavian countries had all the interests worth having at Spitzber: gen proved too much for the annexation dating back to James I, and the place went way or Sweden.
Britain worried very much about s doing so, and the capital that was to have gone into the coal mines went into something sise. Tu view of all this the probability that unless: thera are long-range guns to. protect. the Pole? which the "New Yorw World" suggests, by the time the Arctic iodelds Have a ral com mercial value somebody else wil Probably be in real possession.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.