rol of Indian affairs aroused a very
bitter feeling, as Indian opinion still smarted under the treatment of
Indians in other parts of the Empire and remained distrustful of the
temporary compromise only recently arrived at. The Viceroy was very
reserved and reticent, and his reserve and reticence were made the
pretext for assuming that, as he had been appointed under the first
Coalition Government at home when Mr. Chamberlain succeeded Lord Crewe
at the India Office, he was the reactionary nominee of a reactionary
Secretary of State. No assumption could have been more unjust. Lord
Chelmsford's scheme was completed and sent home towards the end of 1916.
But nothing transpired as to its contents, nor as to any action being
taken upon it. Indians inferred that it was indefinitely pigeon-holed in
Whitehall. The very reasonable plea that the Imperial Government, whose
energies had to be devoted to the life-and-death struggle in which the
whole Empire was involved, had little time to devote to a serious study
of such problems as the introduction of grave constitutional changes in
India, was countered by the argument that the same Imperial Government
seemed to find no difficulty in sparing time for such measures as Irish
Home Rule, votes for women, and a large extension of the franchise in
the United Kingdom.

The long delay, whatever its causes, perplexed and alarmed even moderate
Indian opinion, which had lost the most popular of the leaders capable
of guiding it, and waited in vain for any comforting assurances from
responsible official quarters. Moreover, it allowed the Extreme wing to
set up a standard of political demands which it became more and more
difficult for any Indian to decline altogether to endorse without
exposing himself to the reproach that he was unpatriotic and a creature
of Government. As soon as it became known that Lord Chelmsford was
engaged in elaborating a scheme of post-war reforms, nineteen Indian
members of the Imperial Legislative Council hurriedly put forward a
counter scheme of their own, professedly for the better guidance of
British Ministers. Besides pressing for various more or less practical
reforms, such as the granting of commissions to Indians, the Nineteen
demanded full control for the Provincial Councils over the Executive
subject to a limited veto of the Governor of the Province; direct
election to those Councils--although nothing definite was said about the
franchise; and, in the Im