The problems of Indian administration are in themselves difficult enough to solve, but even more difficult are some of the problems connected with the relations of India and her peoples to the rest of the Empire. One of these has assumed during the last few years a character of extreme gravity, which neither the Imperial Government nor the British public seems to have at all adequately grasped. "I think," said Mr. Gokhale in moving his resolution for the prohibition of Indian indentured labour for Natal, "I am stating the plain truth when I say that no single question of our time has evoked more bitter feelings throughout India--feelings in the presence of which the best friends of British rule have had to remain helpless--than the continued ill-treatment of Indians in South Africa." Every Indian member of the Viceroy's Legislative Council who spoke during that debate, whatever race or creed or caste he represented, endorsed the truth of Mr. Gokhale's statement, and had a vote been taken on the resolution it would have had what no other resolution moved during the whole session would have secured--the unanimous support of the whole body of Indian members and the sympathy of every English member, official as well as unofficial. The Government of India wisely averted a division by accepting the resolution. Not a single attempt was made either by the Viceroy in the chair or by other representatives of Government to controvert either Mr. Gokhale's statement or the overwhelming array of facts showing the nature and extent of the ill-treatment of Indians in South Africa, which was presented by the mover of the resolution and by every Indian speaker who followed him. The whole tone of the debate was extremely dignified and self-restrained, but no Englishman can have listened to it without a deep sense of humiliation. For the first time in history the Government of India had to sit dumb whilst judgment was pronounced in default against the Imperial Government upon a question which has stirred the resentment of every single community of our Indian Empire. It was the one question which called forth very deep feeling in the Indian National Congress at Lahore last December, where subscriptions and donations flowed in freely to defray the expenses of a campaign throughout India, and it figured just as prominently in the proceedings of the All-India Moslem League, which held its annual meeting there in the following month. In fact, Mahomedans have the additional grievance that the laws of the Transvaal discriminate by name against those of their faith. There is scarcely a city of any importance in India in which public meetings have not testified to the interest and indignation which the subject arouses in every class of Indian audience.