To India

First lapping merrily, then lunging lustily, impudent waves made mock, last week, of seven wise Britons who set sail as an august commission to India. Patriotic, they will slave for more than a year, voluntarily, at a thankless task. Six of the wise men are Viscount Burnham, until recently owner of the London Daily Telegraph; Baron Strathcona, Unionist peer; Lieut. Col. George Richard Lane-Fox, up to the last fortnight Undersecretary of State for Mines; the Hon. Edward Cecil Cadogan, author-barrister M. P.; Major Clement Richard Attlee, Laborite M. P. and the Rt. Hon. Stephen Walsh, Secretary for War in the MacDonald Labor Cabinet. The seventh, their Chairman, the Great Liberal, Sir John Simon, several times a cabinet minister, will sacrifice for each twelvemonth that he neglects his legal practice not less than -L-30,000. To what end such slavery, such sacrifice?

The goal of the seven wise men, comprising the Indian Statutory Commission (TIME, Jan. 9) is nobly to create a work able plan which will bring more autonomous sovereignty and wider democracy to 318,940,000 backward, caste-divided Indians, now split among themselves upon an infinitude of religious and political issues. If these seven men can devise a plan which will content both India and Britain they will have wrought like titans, heroes, messiahs. Said Sir John Simon, last week. "This is the biggest job I know. Now I will have a try at it."