of those facts should lead our Moslem fellow-subjects
in India to resent the action of the British Government and to adopt a
line of conduct from which they have nothing to gain and everything to
lose. But whatever that line of conduct may be, the duty of the British
Government and nation is clear. Their European policy, whilst allowing
all due weight to Indian interests and sentiment, must in the main be
guided by general considerations based on the necessities of civilised
progress throughout the world, and on the interests and welfare of the
British Empire as a whole. The idea that that policy should be diverted
from its course in order to subserve the cause of a single Moslem Power
which has rejected British advice is, as Sir Edward Grey very rightly
remarked, wholly inadmissible.

XXVI

SOME INDIAN PROBLEMS[106]

_"The Spectator," August 30, 1913_

In spite of the optimism at times displayed in dealing with Indian
affairs, which may be justified on grounds which are often, to say the
least, plausible, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the general
condition of India gives cause for serious reflection, if not for grave
anxiety. We are told on all sides that the East is rapidly awakening
from its torpid slumbers--even to the extent of forgetting that
characteristically Oriental habit of thought embodied in the Arabic
proverb, "Slowness is from God, hurry from the Devil." If this be so, we
must expect that, year by year, problems of ever-increasing complexity
will arise which will tax to the utmost the statesmanship of those
Western nations who are most brought in contact with Eastern peoples.
In these circumstances, it is specially desirable that the different
points of view from which Indian questions may be regarded should be
laid before the British public by representatives of various schools of
thought. But a short time ago a very able Socialist member of Parliament
(Mr. Ramsay MacDonald) gave to the world the impressions he had derived
whilst he was "careering over the plains of Rajputana," and paying
hurried visits to other parts of India. His views, although manifestly
in some degree the result of preconceived opinions, and somewhat tainted
with the dogmatism which is characteristic of the political school of
thought to which he belongs, exhibit at the same time habits of acute
observation and powers of rapid--sometimes unduly rapid--generalisation.
Neither are they, on the whole, so prejudi