and the Government
of India, and it could not therefore come before the Imperial
Cabinet--or Conference--recently attended by the Prime Ministers of all
the Dominions assembled in London. But in regard to that question in the
Dominions, Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, one of India's representatives, laid
down in their presence firmly and plainly the principle on which all
Indians are at one:

There is no conviction more strongly in our minds than this, that a
full enjoyment of citizenship within the British Empire applies not
only to the United Kingdom but to every self-governing Dominion
within its compass. We have already agreed to a subtraction from
the integrity of the rights by the compromise of 1918 to which my
predecessor, Lord Sinha, was a party--that each Dominion and each
self-governing part of the Empire should be free to regulate the
composition of its population by suitable immigration laws. On that
compromise there is no intention whatever to go back, but we plead
on behalf of those who are already fully domiciled in the various
self-governing Dominions according to the laws under which those
Dominions are governed--to these peoples there is no reason
whatever to deny the full rights of citizenship--it is for them
that we plead, where they are lawfully settled, that they must be
admitted into the general body of citizenship, and no deduction
must be made from the rights that other British subjects enjoy.

In commending the matter to his audience for earnest consideration and
satisfactory settlement, Mr. Srinivasa Sastri spoke with the added
authority of his position as a member of the Indian Legislature and one
of the ablest leaders of the Moderate party. "It is," he said, "of the
most urgent and pressing importance that we should be able to carry back
a message of hope and of good cheer." He will have to report to the
Legislature on his mission when he returns to India, and no part of his
report will be looked for with more anxiety or more closely scrutinised.

Indians have already demonstrated their willingness to recognise
accomplished facts and to accept in practice any reasonable settlement
which does not strike fatally at the principle laid down by Mr.
Srinivasa Sastri, not only on behalf of his fellow-countrymen, but in
the name of the Government of India, which here again has acted as a
national Indian Government. South Africa,