aloft his head as the bright son of heaven whom the man of the West should honor and reverence. But the Englishman smiles at, and casts contempt upon, his vain assumption, and in a thousand ways tries to impress upon the Brahman that he is an inferior, whose right place is at the feet of the man of the West!

This, then, is the situation in a nut shell at the present time. These two men are face to face, each one unwilling to recognize or acknowledge the excellence and eminence of the other.

(b) In the second place, the bitterness of the present race problem in India is affected by another element. India is a part of the British Empire. She has now become a willing member of, and desires to remain permanently in, the union. She appreciates the dignity and value of this union with the white man in many ways; but under the training and through the instigation of the white man himself she is insisting that it be on honorable terms, that even if she enjoy not equal rights and privileges with the Anglo-Saxon she at least be treated with respect and dignity.

India is no longer willing that she, who constitutes threefourths of the population of the Empire, be denied the same prerogatives as the other fourth.

But, unfortunately, this other fourth is not willing to grant her this request. The white man of England, of Canada, of Australia, and of South Africa enjoys, and claims the right to enjoy, equally with the inhabitants of India, all the social, political and commercial blessings of that land. Yea, the white man can, and does, exercise prerogatives and enjoy privileges and opportunities in India which are denied to the native. What, however, chiefly exercises the Indian at this time, and what so annoys him, is that he is not permitted to enter the other countries of the Empire. Australia is a closed door to him as an immigrant. Canada has recently ruthlessly slammed her doors in his face. South Africa is willing to deal with him only as an inferior in semi-bondage, though she badly needs his services. Even in England he is made to feel that he is a persona non grata to be patronized as a ward, it may be,

but not to be welcomed as an honored fellow citizen of the common Empire.

The sinister events of the last two years have roused all the people of India to resentment and indignation beyond anything I have ever known in that land. The recent treatment of Indians in South Africa and in Canada has stirred her to her depth and constitutes in itself a more serious menace to the integrity of the Empire than anything else I know.

Great Britain deplores this narrowness and racial prejudice of her colonies, but is helpless to remove them, since they claim absolute independence and are ready constantly to cry "hands off" whenever the mother country appeals to them on lines of Imperial union and harmony. The situation represents a similar impasse to that between state and federal authority in this land in reference to the reception of the Eastern peoples. The people of India are loyal to the Empire; but with increasing vehemence they demand that justice and right to be dealt evenly between them and the white man, at least within the borders of the Empire. If the other sections of the Empire deny to them the right of entrance, it is but right that those sections also should be denied the right to come to India; and when this is accomplished, we shall witness the absurd and impossible vision of an Empire, which is made up of mutually independent and antagonistic elements, whose only common law and aspiration is that of mutual exclusion and repugnance!

The only redeeming feature to the situation was the effort of the Viceroy to demand from South Africa humane, if not equal, treatment to the Indian. And this brought forth concessions from the South African government. But that the Viceroy, who is eminently conciliatory and ambitious to help his Indian people in this struggle, is nevertheless a white man, possessed of the weakness and foibles of his arrogant race, is evident from his futile attempt to defend Canada in her recent expulsion of the shipload of Indian subjects from her coasts.

At the present time and stress of war India may be willing to hold these fundamental claims and rights in abeyance; but from this time forward Great Britain must count with this new aspiration and deepening purpose of India to find an honorable place in that great Empire. She has no desire whatever to leave the Empire; she knows that her highest interests are connected with it, and she now gladly and unreservedly throws herself into the great war, not only to demonstrate her loyalty, but also to prove herself worthy of the confidence of the West.

I anticipate that through this war India will reveal, as never before, and in a new aspect, the strength of her character and her value as an integral part of the Empire; so that at the close of the war, Great Britain will not hesitate to reward her with more confidence and power and will purge out that bitter racial leaven which must otherwise soon produce undying hatred and a permanent rupture between them.

THE NEW INDIAN COUNCILS

By Payson J. Treat, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, Leland Stanford University

The past few years have witnessed a remarkable extension of the principles of representation and self-government among the peoples of Eastern Asia. In the Philippines we gave the qualified voters control of the municipal governments in 1901, of the provincial boards in 1907, and in that year inaugurated the Philippine Assembly, a lower house composed solely of the representatives of the people. This was an experiment unique in the history of tropical dependencies. In the Netherlands Indies municipal councils were created in 1906 and provincial councils of officials and nominated members a few years later. In China local self-governing bodies and provincial assemblies were established in 1907, and a national assembly or senate, half of whose members were elected, was convened in Peking in 1910. These measures, however, proved to be premature. And in 1912 elected representatives for the first time sat in the Legislative Council of Ceylon.

The period was also marked by important changes in the constitution of the Indian legislatures, and three new provincial councils were created. These changes or reforms originated concretely in a minute of Lord Minto, the Governor-General, in 1906, which reviewed the political situation in India. The subject was carefully considered in the Governor-General's Council, the opinions of the local government were sought, and finally the Secretary of State for India passed upon the proposals. In 1909 an Act of Parliament, in general terms, provided for the new councils, while the regulations were drawn up by the Indian authorities, and in 1910 the reformed councils sat for the first time.

These councils were the Council of the Governor-General of India (popularly known as the Imperial Council) and the

provincial councils of Madras, Bombay, Bengal, the United Provinces, Eastern Bengal and Assam, the Punjab, and Burma. The presence of non-official members in the Imperial Council and in the councils of Madras and Bombay dated from 1861. The other provincial councils were established in Bengal in 1862, the United Provinces in 1886, the Punjab, and Burma in 1898, and in Eastern Bengal and Assam in 1905. The Indian Councils Act of 1892, the last important statute before the Act of 1909, enlarged the councils slightly and introduced the principle of recommendation of members by specified interests, such recommendation however having to be approved by the executive. Prior to the reforms of 1909 the Imperial Council was composed of twenty-four members, excluding the GovernorGeneral. Of them fourteen were officials, five were recommended by the non-official members of the legislative councils of Madras, Bombay, Bengal, and the United Provinces, and by the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce, and five were nominated by the Governor-General. It was possible to increase the number of nominated members at the expense of the official delegation. Of the twenty-four members eight were generally natives of India. The provincial councils varied in size from nine to twenty-three, and except in the case of the Punjab and Burma they contained recommended as well as nominated members.

The object of the reforms of 1909 was to secure the advice and support of representatives of the important classes of the Indian peoples. The progressive legislation came as an interlude in a period of revolutionary propaganda and anarchistic outrages. On the one hand government repressed with all its power the criminal minority, and on the other it conferred enlarged opportunities for self-expression upon the representatives of the people. The names of Lord Minto and Lord Morley will always be associated with these reforms.

Although the object of the reform was evident the method of attaining it was not easily worked out. A simple alteration in the councils would have been the creation of a bicameral system, one house representing the govern