Indian Exchequer the cost of a larger army than would be required merely for Indian defence whilst keeping it under its own control for employment at the discretion of British Ministers far beyond the frontiers of India. Official assurances were given both in India and at home that an exaggerated construction had been placed on the meaning of the Report, to which, moreover, neither the British Government nor the Government of India was officially committed, and that in any case Indian troops would not be required to serve outside India except with the consent of the Government of India. These assurances did not prevent the Assembly from passing two Resolutions in which it embodied its strong protests. The second part of the Report, containing practical recommendations for the reorganisation of the Indian Army, and alone based on the results of the inquiry actually conducted in India, was far less criticised. The army estimates themselves would have been enough to cause dismay even if the estimates of other departments, upon which the Indian public looks with more favour, had not clearly been pruned down with more than usual parsimony to meet the large increase in military expenditure. But Lord Rawlinson, who had done his utmost to reduce them to the extreme limit of safety as he conceived it in existing circumstances, wisely decided to take the Assembly as far as possible into his confidence, and to explain the requirements of the military situation not only from his seat on the Government bench but in private conferences, at which members were freely invited to meet him and his advisers. If he did not altogether convince them, he gave them food for reflection at a time when not only our own North-West Frontier but the whole of Central Asia is still in a state of turmoil, Persia a very doubtful quantity, and the Ameer of Afghanistan far more eager to sign a treaty of alliance with Soviet Russia than to bring to a friendly conclusion the long-drawn negotiations which the Government of India has sent the head of its foreign department to conduct at Kabul. The appointment of a Committee to visit the North-West Frontier and to study the situation on the spot was admirably calculated to carry the practical education of Indian legislators a long step farther. In regard to other matters, too, Government gave and gained time for reflection by referring them, before committing itself to any definite pronouncement of policy, to special committees in which points at issue could be thrashed out much more effectively and with less heat than if only discussed in full house.