The British Government and people responded generously to these splendid demonstrations of India's fundamental loyalty to the British cause and the British connection. The Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, declared with special emphasis that in future Indian questions must be approached from "a new angle of vision," and Indians, not least the Western-educated classes, construed his utterance into a pledge of the deepest significance. For two years India presented on everything that related to the war a front unbroken by any dissensions. The Imperial Legislative Council passed, almost without a murmur even at its most drastic provisions, repugnant as they were to the more advanced Indian members, a Defence of India Act on the lines of the Defence of the Realm Act at home, when Lord Hardinge gave an assurance that it was essential to the proper performance of her part in the war, and it voted spontaneously and unanimously a contribution of one hundred million pounds by the Indian Exchequer to the war expenditure of the Empire. India had thrilled with pride when, at Lord Hardinge's instance, her troops were first sent, not to act as merely subsidiary forces in subsidiary war-areas, but to share with British troops the very forefront of the battle in France, and she thrilled again when an Indian prince, the Maharajah of Bikanir, and Sir Satyendra Sinha, who was once more playing a conspicuous part in the political arena, and had been one of the oldest and ablest members of the moderate Congress party, were sent to represent India at the first Imperial War Conference in London, and took their seats side by side with British Ministers and with the Ministers of the self-governing Dominions.