tions of the Indian Civil Service. But,
whatever the mistakes committed by the civil authority in the Punjab or
by those charged with the administration of martial law in that
province, there is above the Punjab the Government of India, and its
plea of prolonged ignorance as to the details of the occurrences in the
Punjab can hardly hold water. The preoccupations of the Afghan war which
followed closely on the Punjab troubles were no doubt absorbing, but had
the Viceroy or the Home member or the Commander-in-Chief or one of his
responsible advisers proceeded in person, the moment the disorders were
over, to Lahore or Amritsar, barely more than a night's journey from
Delhi or Simla, is it conceivable that a halt would not have been
forthwith called to proceedings which these high officers of state were
constrained later on unanimously to deplore and reprobate? And if the
Government of India were too slow to move, was there not a Secretary of
State who knew, from statements made to him personally by Sir Michael
O'Dwyer on his return to England, at least enough to insist upon
immediate inquiry on the spot? Mr. Montagu has seldom, it is believed,
hesitated to require in the most peremptory terms full information on
far more trivial matters. Had prompt action been taken in India, there
would never have been any need for the Hunter Committee. As it was,
Indian feeling had run tremendously high before its findings were made
public. So when the Government of India and the Secretary of State
published their belated judgment, the people of India weighed such a
tardy measure of justice against the dissent of an important minority in
the House of Commons and of the majority of the Lords, the stifling of
discussion in the Indian Legislature, which was still more directly
interested in the matter, and above all the unprecedented public
subscriptions in England and in India for the glorification of General
Dyer, whilst the Punjab Government was still haggling over doles to the
widows and orphans of Jallianwala--and, having weighed it, found it
lamentably wanting, until at last the Duke of Connaught's moving speech
at Delhi for the first time began to redress the balance.

The story of Jallianwala and all that followed in the Punjab scattered
to the winds Mr. Gandhi's threadbare penitence for the horrible violence
of Indian mobs, and he poured out henceforth all the vials of his wrath
on the violence of the repression, far more unpardon