In its essence a puritan movement, there was unquestionably a nationalist side to it which tended to render it suspect in the eyes of many Punjab officials, and these suspicions were heightened by the _Gadr_ conspiracy fomented in the second year of the war by a number of Sikhs, who returned from Canada bitterly estranged from British rule by the anti-Asiatic policy of the Dominion and still more by the fiery eloquence of Indian revolutionaries in German pay. But against the disloyalty of a small section must be weighed the loyal war services of the vast majority of Sikhs, and the Punjab Government proudly boasted at the time that there were 80,000 Sikhs serving in the army, a proportion far higher than in the case of any other community. It was doubtless partly in recognition of such war services that in the reforms scheme they were given the benefit of "community" representation in the new Councils on the same lines as the Mahomedans. But with a tenacious memory of the language used years ago by Lord Minto in reply to Mahomedan representations, they still complain that the historical importance and actual influence of their community have not received nearly as full a measure of consideration. Unfortunately, bitterness was revived by the large number of Sikhs amongst General Dyer's victims at Jallianwala, most of them, according to the Sikh version, innocent country-folk, who had come into Amritsar on that day because it happened to be a Sikh religious holiday, and had merely strayed into the Bagh out of harmless and ignorant curiosity.