[2] "Pérche con pochissimi esempli sarà, più pietoso che quelli e'quali, per troppa pietà, lasciono seguire e'disordini di che ne nasca occisioni o rapine" ("Because with a very few examples [of cruelty] he will be more compassionate than those who, through excess of pity, allow disorders to continue, from which results murder and plunder"). THE PRINCE, ch. 17.
[3] Sometimes the very wording in INDIA anticipates the rhetoric of almost a decade later: the enemy's "ever-mounting demands" begets Britain's "ever more apologetic responses." Again: "We have had two shameful and disastrous years. They have been years in which we have not merely been standing still; we have been galloping down the slope. They have been years in which even deeper anxieties have entered our hearts than we felt in the darkest days of the Great War."
[4] Again Machiavelli sheds light on Churchill. The Italian notes that virtues and vices are often symbiotic rather than antithetical. Thus people say, "Hannibal was a great general—too bad he was cruel," when the likelihood is that Hannibal was great in part because he was cruel. So here we have to consider the probability that Churchill was great in 1940 in part because he was too pugnacious, stubborn, deluded, and conservative (in the deepest sense) to be able to adjust to the New Order in Europe—traits he had first shown in the matter of India.
[5] I do not recede from this statement of general principle taken in its full context. But since Mr. Baldwin has quoted these two last paragraphs with such marked approval to justify his own policy, it is necessary to point out first that the Mission to Egypt resulted, in spite of my resistance, in the abrogation of our Protectorate in 1921, and led directly to the present lamentable position; and secondly, that high authorities now attribute the Indian disorders of 1920 to the unrest caused by the Montagu-Chelmsford policy and this very Act of 1919.
[6] Mr. Baldwin to the Prime Minister
11th November, 1929.
It will be within your recollection that the Debate on Thursday last in the House of Commons concluded without any answer being given by the Secretary of State for India to my second question—namely, 'Whether this statement (i.e. the Viceroy's declaration) implies any change in the policy hitherto declared, or in the time when this status may be attained.'
It is true that this question was answered in the House of Lords, but I feel that the answer should equally be given by the Prime Minister in his capacity as Leader of the House of Commons.
The Prime Minister to Mr. Baldwin
November 11th, 1929.
I am grateful to you for your letter. The answer to both parts of the question 'Whether the Viceroy's declaration implies any change in the policy hitherto declared, or in the time when this status may be attained' is 'no.'
The policy, as you will remember, is set out in the Preamble of the Government of India Act, 1919, and it stands unchanged unless and until Parliament decides to amend that Act.
[7] Round Table Conference. Short Blue Book.
[8] Actually the latest estimates place the Indian population at nearly 350,000,000.
[9] Mr. Baldwin has since relieved me of this task.
[10] In December 1929, a few days before the Lahore Congress.
[11] An allusion to the great numbers who filled the building.
[12] Actually I used the word 'abandoned.' It has however been pointed out to me that the word 'abandoned' suggests a change under pressure of opinion of a decision by Mr. Baldwin and his colleagues on this specific point, whereas no decision to send a delegation had ever been taken by them. I have therefore substituted the word 'rejected.'
[13] My italics—W. S. C.
[14] It is now declared that the dead exceeded one thousand; and many horrible details are emerging from the Censorship which the guilty conscience of the Government of India is striving to enforce.
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