GREAT BRITAIN: Forceps or Blackjack?

A new nation is being brought to birth by the Mother of Parliaments herself. And this offspring is as legitimate as her other children . . . Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa—Viscount Halifax (Viceroy of India 1926-31).

The Indian masses are being handed over bound & gagged to the forces of Capitalism, British and Indian—Professor Harold J. Laski (University of London). Nothing seems more natural to Scotsmen than that when the Empire is at a crossroads the bumbling English and the bubbling Welsh should turn to Edinburgh. In this bleak, granite capital stands the small, unpretentious Bank of Scotland. One of its directors is the Marquess of Linlithgow, Sir Victor Alexander John Hope. Since it is not quite clear in London whether India is being reborn or bound & gagged, Director Linlithgow will quit the Bank of Scotland for five years to perform at New Delhi something between a happy accouchement and a sinister blackjacking of 350,000,000 Indians—one-fifth of the population of the world. Last week, in short, Lord Linlithgow was named successor to Lord Willingdon as Viceroy of India.

The appointment was leisurely in the extreme. Possibly never before has the King named a Viceroy so far in advance, the appointment not taking effect until next April. By this stratagem English Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who may fight and lose a general election any time before October of next year, makes reasonably certain that the New Constitution for India just passed by the Mother of Parliaments (TIME, Aug. 12) will be applied by no Laborite or Socialist but by a hard young graduate of Eton from granite Edinburgh, a Director of the Bank of Scotland, a onetime Armored Car Company Commander, a Capitalist, a Conservative of 47. There was plenty of time last week, months and months, for everybody to become familiar with the new Indian Constitution.

Duty, Duty, Duty, Paradoxically, it matters little whether anybody does become familiar with the new Indian Constitution because the nature of its sweeping changes are made almost wholly dependent upon the personal character of Lord Linlithgow and other future rulers at New Delhi.

On paper the new Constitution sets out to do three things: 1) The provinces of British India and the Native States of the ruling princes are drawn into an All-India Federation. 2) The Provinces are made autonomous under the native Indian Cabinets with certain powers reserved to the local Governor who is responsible to the Viceroy. 3) The All-India Federal Government is made autonomous under a native Indian Federal Cabinet, except that Defense and Foreign Affairs are reserved to the Viceroy who also has certain special powers.

Assuming that the Viceroy, who is ultimately responsible to His Majesty’s Government, keeps hands off and orders the provincial governors to keep their hands off, India will have been reborn—or “unfrozen” as onetime Viceroy Viscount Halifax declared recently with enthusiasm. The native cabinets will have sway within India’s vast borders and even control the police, a feature of the new Constitution which has given Tory Die-Hards the jitters. True, so great an authority as Lord Halifax has observed: “We cannot say, for example, how cabinets will be formed,” but they necessarily will be formed and their members will be Indians. The new Constitution also calls for provincial legislatures chosen by 14% of the adult population of British India. All such details of accouchement can be arranged in homely midwife fashion by the Director of the Bank of Scotland.

Amid this rebirth and afterward for an unlimited time the Viceroy is charged by the new Constitution with what are called “duties.” He has the duty of safeguarding the minority communities including the British, the duty of coping with any serious threat to Peace and the duty of ensuring the financial stability and credit of India. So that the Viceroy may do his duty, the Constitution vests him with all powers pertinent thereto. The governors of the provinces have the further duty of combatting terrorism. Pursuant to this duty any governor is empowered by the Constitution to take under his control any or all branches of the government of his province.

“Outlook Gloomy.” Thus a Viceroy, at the absolute discretion and whim of His Majesty’s Government, can become overnight a totalitarian Dictator, gagging and blackjacking one-fifth of the human race at his pleasure. But what wing-collared, high-principled Director of the Bank of Scotland ever gagged or blackjacked anybody? To this every Communist and most Socialists would reply with Professor Laski that bank directors are precisely the people who by invisible but effective means have not only been gagging and binding but bleeding India’s masses to the verge of destitution, Indian bankers in this respect being the most rapacious of them all.

Reporting last year to the Royal Asiatic Society, Sir John Megaw, Director of Public Health in India, declared: “Sixty percent of the village population are poorly or badly nourished. . . . The country is in a state of emergency which is rapidly passing to one of crisis. . . . The outlook for the future is gloomy to a degree. . . . If the entire products of the soil are needed to provide for the urgent needs of the cultivators [as at present], nothing will be left for the payment of rent or revenue. . . . The whole social structure of India must inevitably be rudely shaken, if not wholly destroyed.”

White Magic. Happily, the Marquess of Linlithgow is the Empire’s great specialist on precisely this issue which is India’s economic crux. He delved into all its aspects for two years (1926-28) as Chairman of the Royal Commission on Indian Agriculture. Both Houses of Parliament then appointed him Chairman of their Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (1933-35), which to all intents and purposes wrote India’s new Constitution.

Thus Linlithgow will go from Edinburgh to New Delhi carrying behind his high forehead the greatest and most profound knowledge of India ever taken thither by a new Viceroy. The Director of the Bank of Scotland last week was hailed as an ideal choice by almost every organ of English, Welsh and Scottish opinion. Conviction prevailed that, even should a Labor Cabinet be brought in by the next election in Great Britain, his vast prestige would assure him virtually a continued free hand in applying to India just the right combination of obstetrical forceps, gags and blackjacks dictated by his Scottish morality and commonsense. Indian editorial opinion denounced the new Constitution as a “sheer sham” fortnight ago, but India’s white rulers believe they know Indians better than the Indians know themselves. Viceroy Halifax has even ventured the formal prediction that when the new Constitution is in operation “it will be found invested with a magnetic force strong enough to make it impossible for responsible men in India to stand aside.”

Victoria’s Godson. Though a gentleman burglar strolled out of Lord Linlithgow’s London house last year with $5,000 worth of jewelry including a sapphire tiara matching the next Vicereine’s eyes, the Marquess is rated “poor” for so costly a post as Viceroy (salary: $97,500). Indians will find him the tallest of Britain’s long line of moose-tall Viceroys, and in India the fact that Queen Victoria was his godmother will help.

An urbane humorist, the new Viceroy when stimulated can be counted on to provoke well-bred hilarity with his “Imitation of a Maiden Aunt at a Children’s Party.” On the links he is a keen golfer, on the parade ground a tremendous trumpeter, at the piano a smooth tenor.

Six-foot Lady Linlithgow is an acceptable soprano, better at tennis which she plays on the French Riviera every winter with Sweden’s moose-tall King Gustaf. Twins, the eldest children, the Earl of Hopetoun and Lord John Hope, now 23, will stay on in London with the King’s swank Scots Guards, while “The Baby,” Lady Doreen Hope, 15, remains in boarding school. To New Delhi for the fun and splendor of the Viceregal Court go Lady Anne, 21, and Lady Joan, 19. The whole family was vexed when the Soviet Ambassador moved in next door to their house in Chesham Place and strange-looking people began punching their bell. Promptly Lord Linlithgow installed a shiny brass door plate: “This is NOT the Russian Embassy.”