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No Briton' outside the Home Country, very few, one may hope of the educated classes within it, fails to take an interest in the welfare of India and the anxious outcome of democratic ideas on Western lines which the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme seeks thrust upon her. So there should] be many readers for the article "Toilers in the Vineyard," which we reproduce to-day. The writer is in the melancholy position of being able to say, "I told you Seven years ago he prefed that the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme would prove a failure and plunge India in chaos, and his prediction has been but too truly realized. The scheme has failed because, not only did it respond to no single need of the peoples, but it was dead their "tried wisdom" ie tually contemptuous of! their marked characteristics and vigorous prejudices." Even the ""Anglicized Babus," whose artificial clamour, wholly unrepresentative of the real India, the scheme was meant to placate, would none mediately responsible for the chronic:
order that swiftly followed dian reforms, (says "Zeres"), be necessary for the reader 4 visualize some sort of parallel circumstances in England. Imagine, for example, the whole British Constitution suddenly changed both in principle and detail,, so {that institutions and offices, hitherto important and powerful, lost all significance, while others, previously obscure, leaped into sudden and unusual prominence. imagine also this change to be effected, not by the will of the British ' people through some catastrophie revolution, but solely the whim of an experimentative young Chinese mandarin, and then some faint idea may be obtained fof India's sudden social and pol tical disruption by Mr. Montagu.
Precisely the same thing has been happening in China. By some inscrutable decree of Providence, Dr. Sun Yat-sen's personality appeals to the Chinese mob with a magnetic force that miraculous. Yet he is not really a Chinese. He was born in Hawaii, has spent most of his ife outside China and at one time! claimed American citizenship And thus he brings to China no! political thought that answers to her true nature, has not succeed-of when they discovered, a8)/ed in one single piece of con-Sir Patrick has explained, structive work and appeals, how-_ that its intentions were sol ever greatly in this direction, entirely democratic that caste only to the mob, to the novi was to be over-ridden and a|homines and the tagrag and bazaar-sweeper politically to become the equal of a Brahmin, The twin reformers, Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford, set out} "deliberately to disturb the pathetic contentment of the.
Indian people" with so much success that "within two years contentment had fled from every! province, and blood flowed as freely as any apostle of divine content could desire." For, says the writer, with bitter but bobtail of the—office-hungry younger mandarinate. Because! this leadership has foundered in an arid, unprofitable desert, we find the wilder spirits going even yet farther from the habits of: their ancestors, to seek for nourishment in' the unfruitful works of Bolshevism, which have! already destroyed one country ind can only live by destroying, others.
In one respect India is better off than China. There is still When legislating for Indian needs the British democrat suffers from 8 chronic delusion that he belongs to a civilization morally" and tellectually superior to that with which he is dealing.
He is apparently of opinion that Western civilization is of so high and ultimate an order that its unique blessings need to be embraced forthwith by a benighted Asia, Strange to say, Asia, at heart, shows no desire whatever for the alien theories of the We and the writer concludes with prayer that, when Parliament is legislating for India, it might not despise the advice of the men who have spent their lives there! and of whom "there is a wide selection available of every political creed and every social class, men who, unlike arians, have had to so regarding both hi ity."
In all this, a striking parallel may be found in the state of China to-day. In this country, it is true, there is no caste to comlicate issues, and the intense igious convictions and tabus that permeate India are at any rate less visible: whether they exist, we do not feel competent to say. But at any rate respect for family and ancestor worship would seem to constitute a barrier: to democracy on the Western plan as solid as caste. And if in the former country the British. Raj, much shaken by the experimenters of Westminster, but! still able to keep order and to save the country from the worst: results of political innovation. And it is just possible that that authority may yet be reinstated, because the pledges given under; the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme] are hardly to be considered! irrevocable, when India so obviously desires neither it nor them. But in China there is no external force to save her from! the consequences of her own' foolishness, and the Western' peoples, having brought her the! doubtful blessing of their own! materialism, are obviously in no mood Yor the gigantic responsibility of saving her from the consequences of unwisely eating, thereof: nay rather, at the] Washington Conference, they deliberately encouraged her to eat. as much more as she could. In the long run, the native sense of} the Chinese people and the strength of its ancient institutions will save China, as they have done before, and in their own way. But one cannot help' wondering whether the process will be assisted by any recoil elsewhere against the excessive democratizing of the world, which is already revealed as only less! dangerous to Europe and America than it is to Asia. There are China has no Brahmins, she has had her literati, whose' learning in native literature and philosophy' gave them a position and thority which the exponents of Western learning certainly have not yet acquired. It is to be doubted whether they ever wil because at heart China remai contemptuous of the foreigner—as truly every country is in its attitude to other nations—and would therefore naturally set on a lower plane than her own Philosophers those whose only claim to consideration is that] they have mastered certain eunning devices and catchwords of the barbarian. some faintly hopeful signs mankind's return to sanity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.