There is no conviction more strongly in our minds than this, that a full enjoyment of citizenship within the British Empire applies not only to the United Kingdom but to every self-governing Dominion within its compass. We have already agreed to a subtraction from the integrity of the rights by the compromise of 1918 to which my predecessor, Lord Sinha, was a party--that each Dominion and each self-governing part of the Empire should be free to regulate the composition of its population by suitable immigration laws. On that compromise there is no intention whatever to go back, but we plead on behalf of those who are already fully domiciled in the various self-governing Dominions according to the laws under which those Dominions are governed--to these peoples there is no reason whatever to deny the full rights of citizenship--it is for them that we plead, where they are lawfully settled, that they must be admitted into the general body of citizenship, and no deduction must be made from the rights that other British subjects enjoy. In commending the matter to his audience for earnest consideration and satisfactory settlement, Mr. Srinivasa Sastri spoke with the added authority of his position as a member of the Indian Legislature and one of the ablest leaders of the Moderate party. "It is," he said, "of the most urgent and pressing importance that we should be able to carry back a message of hope and of good cheer." He will have to report to the Legislature on his mission when he returns to India, and no part of his report will be looked for with more anxiety or more closely scrutinised. Indians have already demonstrated their willingness to recognise accomplished facts and to accept in practice any reasonable settlement which does not strike fatally at the principle laid down by Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, not only on behalf of his fellow-countrymen, but in the name of the Government of India, which here again has acted as a national Indian Government. South Africa, it may be, will nevertheless persist in subordinating to a narrow conception of her own interests the higher interests of Imperial unity, which, if it ever ceased to include India, would assuredly be a much poorer thing. It is all the more essential that if India's faith in the Empire is not to be, perhaps irretrievably, shaken, South Africa should remain, in her refusal to honour the pledge of partnership given to India on behalf of the whole Empire, a solitary exception amongst the self-governing Dominions, and that the United Kingdom, whose responsibility to India is most directly involved, should insist that the pledge be redeemed to the full in the Crown Colonies which are under the immediate and direct control of the Imperial Government. FOOTNOTES: [4] August 1921. CHAPTER XV THE INCLINED PLANE OF GANDHIISM