The great debate

OUR anticipation regarding the probable result of the debate on Viscount Curzon’s motion in the House of Commons has been fulfilled to the letter. Neither the Liberal nor the Labour amendment appears to have been moved, far less pressed, and the original motion was talked out after a speech from the Under Secretary of State, which showed how much he and the mover of the resolution had in common between them. The debate, in fact, served exactly the purpose which the mover of the resolution had in view, namely, that of confirming the Government in its present attitude, and if it incidentally served another and a scarcely less notable purpose, it was because it could not be helped. It showed that the history of the latter half of the first decade of the century, when India had for the first time a Liberal statesman of the highest reputation for character and consistency as her Secretary of State, is repeating itself with a vengeance today with Labour put in the place of the Liberal party. In those days, the spectacle was presented week after week of the government of the day being heckled by its own supporters in regard to its Indian policy and measures and supported with the same consistency and warmth by its traditional opponents. The debate on Viscount Curzon’s motion showed, not for the first time during the short period Labour had been in office, that the Government’s Indian policy had the fullest support from the Conservatives and the orthodox Liberals, less full support from the more advanced Liberals and less advanced Labour members, and least support from those Labour members who had carried some of their old-time principles into the House.