me to leave to you the duty of seeing that this disapproval shall
be unmistakably marked by censure or other action which seems to
you necessary upon those who were responsible for them. The
instances cited by the Committee gave justifiable ground for the
assertion that the administration of martial law in the Punjab was
marred by a spirit which prompted--not generally, but unfortunately
not uncommonly--the enforcement of punishments and orders
calculated, if not intended to humiliate Indians as a race, to
cause unwarranted inconvenience amounting on occasions to
injustice, and to flout the standards of propriety and humanity,
which the inhabitants not only of India in particular but of the
civilised world in general have a right to demand of those set in
authority over them. It is a matter for regret that,
notwithstanding the conduct of the majority, there should have been
some officers in the Punjab who appear to have overlooked the fact
that they were administering martial law, not in order to subdue
the population of a hostile country temporarily occupied as an act
of war, but in order to deal promptly with those who had disturbed
the peace of a population owing allegiance to the King Emperor, and
in the main profoundly loyal to that allegiance.

This clear enunciation of bed-rock principles and emphatic condemnation
of many of the methods of repression used in the Punjab would have done
more to reassure the public mind in India had the actual punishment
inflicted on General Dyer and a few others been more commensurate with
the gravity of the censure passed on their actions, and in any case it
came far too late. It came too late to stem the rising tide of Indian
bitterness, intensified by many gross exaggerations and deliberate
inventions, which lost all sense of proportion when the Extremists
demanded Sir Michael O'Dwyer's impeachment, though many responsible
Indians had expressed their unabated confidence in him before he left
the Punjab on the expiry of his term of office, just after the troubles,
in terms more unstinted even than those in which the Government of India
and the British Government conveyed their appreciation of his long and
distinguished services--services which assuredly no errors of judgment
committed under great stress could be allowed to overshadow. It came
too late also to correct the effects of the p