"For Your Majesty"

After a carefully staged wait of more than a month, after keying world expectation to highest attainable pitch, Sir John Simon released last week the final section of his famed Report on India (TIME, Jan. 30, 1928, et seq.) the section containing his Commission's recommendation of What Is To Be Done.

As they ruffled the 344 pages of this crisp, blue-bound volume, most observers wondered how much the Simon Commission had been influenced by St. Gandhi's spectacular campaign for independence (TIME, Jan. 6, et seq.). They found Sir John's own characteristic answer in his last section--section 369 of Part Twelve, the one ending, "All of which we submit for Your Majesty's gracious consideration." It opens magnificently thus:

"In writing this Report we have made no allusion to the events of the last few months in India. In fact, the whole of our principal recommendations were arrived at and unanimously agreed upon before the events occurred. We have not altered a line of our report on that account."

Suppress Dyarchy, Evoke Federation. Despite their pretense that the crisis created by St. Gandhi did not exist, the Simon commissioners show both adaptability and energy of thought. They advise three major steps:

1) The system of provincial government called Dyarchy (the "reserving" of certain phases of government to the British, while others are entrusted to native administrators) must be abolished.

2) By a lengthy process of development (for which the Commission is careful to set no time limit), let the various provinces of British India assume the form of States under a broad and flexible Federal constitution. Eventually the native states of India (at the pleasure of their rajahs and maharajahs) would be expected to join the Indian federation.

3) As predicted fortnight ago, the Commission recommends that Burma be separated at once from India proper and pursue its destiny under a British Governor responsible not to the Viceroy of India but to the King-Emperor.

Emergency Measures. As in the case of most concessions by masters to subject peoples, the Simon report contains qualifications such that the Viceroy and his subordinate governors could "in cases of emergency" resume substantially their present powers and put down such a movement as St. Gandhi's by the sword.

On the other hand the report does not in fact smell of "British hypocrisy" though angry Indians are sure to proclaim a veritable stench. Startling and definitely courageous is the proposal that the police -- always the subject most rigidly "reserved" to British administration under Dyarchy -- shall now be placed within the scope of native officialdom. Today the governor of a province may not appoint a native as his minister of police, but under the Commission's plan he could, and as time passed he would gradually be expected and finally forced by public opinion to appoint a native.

Realizing fully that this subject (Police) is "the very focus of controversy," the Commissioners, after prolonged hemming and hawing, finally take the plunge. They declare: "If Police continues to be a reserved subject, this naturally means that Dyarchy continues," and Dyarchy is stigmatized as nothing less than a "standing challenge" to "exaggerated [native] hostility."

The Viceroy and The Army. In the provinces (future states) abolition of Dyarchy is expected to soothe native opinion and admit native statesmen to all ministries of the government. Eventually then, the Indian federation would be made up of locally self-governed states. But at the top of the whole pyramid the Viceroy must remain supreme, strong in his command of the army.

"There must be in India a power which can step in and save the situation," says the Commission, adding that "situations" to be saved may include epidemics and plagues. Control of the army is thus to be "reserved," but by a refinement of language such reservation is not perpetuation of Dyarchy, because Dyarchy has always applied solely to provincial matters, whereas the army is national.

Here the Commissioners were obviously afraid to take the plunge. "The control and direction of (the) army," says their Report with absolute finality, "must rest in the hands of agents of the Imperial Government," but it is "hoped" that some day natives may be privileged to sit upon a purely advisory "committee on army affairs . . . for the purpose of discussing . . . keeping in touch . . . etc."

Significance. Plainly the Simon Report is an absolute denial of St. Gandhi's demand for Independence, and offers no more than a distant hope of dominion status. Although permeated with goodwill (not mere condescension) it has an underlying note of pessimism, fruit of its members' struggles to deal with facts and figures almost too gigantic to be grasped. Example: the Commission deplores that only 2.8% of the population of British India are enfranchised to vote for members of the provincial councils, and views not without sympathy the Gandhite demand for 100% enfranchisement of all adults before the next election. But-- practically speaking--what would this mean? "It would mean "placing over 100 million [new] names on the register." This is too staggering an order for Sir John Simon and colleagues. They recommend extending the adult franchise in British India from 2.8% not to 100%, but to 10% of the population. By and large the whole Report is a 10% affair, sure to anger Indian moderates (20%) and to render Gandhites (100%,) blue-purple with disgruntled rage.

"Selfish Government." Aside from the fact that Bombay police bruised and bashed some 500 non-violent Gandhites, the week in India was unexciting. Approached in his jail near Poona by an emissary of James Ramsay MacDonald with terms of compromise, St. Gandhi cocked his bird-like head and listened. Rejecting the terms (secret) he denounced "the selfishness of the British Government," demanded as the first and minimum price of peace complete self-rule for India.

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