What drove the iron into the soul of India more than the things actually done in the Punjab, for which many Indians admit the provocation, was the reluctance of her rulers to look them in the face, and the tardiness and half-heartedness of the atonement made for them. Not till nearly half a year after the troubles had occurred did the Government of India announce the appointment of the Hunter Committee of Inquiry, and this announcement was coupled with the introduction of a Bill of Indemnity for all officers of Government engaged in their repression, which wore, in the eyes of Indians, however unreasonably, the appearance of an attempt to shelter them against the possible findings of the Committee. Again nearly half a year passed before the report of the Committee was made public, and the bloom had already been taken off it for most Indians by the report of a Commission instituted on its own account by the Indian National Congress which, partisan and lurid as it was, never received full refutation, as the witnesses upon whose evidence it was based were, for technical reasons, not heard by the Hunter Committee. The complete surrender of civil authority into military hands first at Amritsar, and then, under orders from Simla, at Lahore and elsewhere, was, as His Majesty's Government afterwards acknowledged, a disastrous departure from the best traditions of the Indian Civil Service. But, whatever the mistakes committed by the civil authority in the Punjab or by those charged with the administration of martial law in that province, there is above the Punjab the Government of India, and its plea of prolonged ignorance as to the details of the occurrences in the Punjab can hardly hold water. The preoccupations of the Afghan war which followed closely on the Punjab troubles were no doubt absorbing, but had the Viceroy or the Home member or the Commander-in-Chief or one of his responsible advisers proceeded in person, the moment the disorders were over, to Lahore or Amritsar, barely more than a night's journey from Delhi or Simla, is it conceivable that a halt would not have been forthwith called to proceedings which these high officers of state were constrained later on unanimously to deplore and reprobate? And if the Government of India were too slow to move, was there not a Secretary of State who knew, from statements made to him personally by Sir Michael O'Dwyer on his return to England, at least enough to insist upon immediate inquiry on the spot? Mr. Montagu has seldom, it is believed, hesitated to require in the most peremptory terms full information on far more trivial matters. Had prompt action been taken in India, there would never have been any need for the Hunter Committee. As it was, Indian feeling had run tremendously high before its findings were made public. So when the Government of India and the Secretary of State published their belated judgment, the people of India weighed such a