behind official majorities voting to order.  To the credit of the public services, and not least of the Indian Civil Service, I should add that, if I may venture to judge by the great majority of those I know best, there is now a genuine desire to make the reforms a success, however apprehensive some of them may have formerly been.  The change unquestionably often involves considerable sacrifices of power, and even sometimes power for good, as well as of old traditions and prejudices, and such sacrifices come hardest to those whose habits of life and mind are already set, but they are worth making.  It is far easier for the younger men who have more recently joined to realise that their opportunities of service to India and to the Empire will, if anything, be greater than before, though they will call for somewhat different qualities, as their influence will now depend more upon capacity to persuade than to give orders.  To the non-official British communities the European-elected members of the new Assemblies have already given an admirable lead by the cordiality of their personal relations with their Indian colleagues, as well as by such public manifestations of goodwill and sound judgment as their unanimous vote in support of the Indian resolution on Amritsar in the Legislative Assembly.  One of the greatest obstacles to fruitful co-operation is racial aloofness, even amongst the best-disposed Indians and Europeans, and every Englishman can on his own account and within his own sphere do something to overcome it.

The visit of the Duke of Connaught last winter to India for the express purpose of representing the King-Emperor at the opening of the new Councils in the three great Presidencies, and of delivering a Royal Message of unprecedented import to the new Indian Legislature in the Imperial capital, bore perhaps its happiest fruits in the personal appeal, prompted by his old love and knowledge of the Indian people, in which he sought to dispel “the shadow of Amritsar” that had “lengthened over the face of India,” and did in fact do much to dispel it.  The Prince of Wales is to follow this winter not only in the Duke’s recent footsteps, but, as heir to the Throne, in the footsteps of his royal father and grandfather.  Even if opinions are divided as to the political expediency of his visit before the clouds that still overhang the Indian horizon have been dispelled, we may rest assured that his personal qualities will win for him too the affection and reverence which the Indian people are traditionally and instinctively inclined to give to those whom the gods have invested with the heaven-born attributes of kingship.