The one national trait which distinguishes the British from other nations of the world is their habit of truthfulness and frankness. When we say that we do not thereby mean that all Britishers are equally truthful--to the same extent and degree. But we do mean that on the whole the British nation has a larger percentage of truthful and candid persons in her family than any other nation on the face of the earth. Where their interests clash with those of others, they can be as hard, exacting and cruel as any one else in the world. But repentance overtakes them sooner than it does the others. They have a queer but admirable faculty of introspection which few other people possess to the same extent and in the same numbers. This is what endears them even to those who are never tired of cursing their snobbishness and masterful imperialism. The faculty of occasionally seeing themselves with the eyes of others, makes them the most successful _rulers of men_. They are as a nation lacking in imagination, but there are individuals amongst them who can see, if they will, their own faults; who can and do speak out their minds honestly and truthfully, even though by so doing they may temporarily earn odium and unpopularity. The remarks and observations of the eminent authors of the Report relating to the fiscal relations of India and England reflect the honesty of their purpose and the sincerity of their mind as no other part of the Report does. They have entered upon the subject with great diffidence and, though expressing themselves with marked candor and fairness, have refrained from making any definite recommendations. In this respect it will be only fair to acknowledge the equally candid opinion of Mr. Austin Chamberlain, who, in 1917, made a most significant confession by stating on an important occasion that "India will not remain, and ought not to remain content to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for the rest of the Empire." To our simple minds, not accustomed to the anomalies of official life, it seems inexplicable how, after these candid admissions, the authors could have any hesitation in recommending the only remedy by which India's wrong could be righted and her economic rights secured in the future--viz., fiscal autonomy. In Paragraph 335 the authors of the report give the genesis of the Swadeshi boycott movement of 1905, and very pertinently observe that "in Japanese progress and efficiency" the educated Indians see "an example of what could be effected by an Asiatic nation free of foreign control," or in other words, of what could be achieved by India, if she had a national government of her own interested in her industrial advance. Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford thus rightly observe that "English theories to the appropriate limits of the State's activity are inapplicable in India" and that if the resources of the country are to be developed the Government must take action.