just as intolerable as if they were expected to converse in private with the same care that a man should use in a public speech. Criminal documents or conversations are not entitled to privilege. But conspiracy involves secrecy at least. There was no secrecy in my relations to the other gentlemen concerned. There was no secrecy in the organization or objects of the Round Table groups. The whole of the facts from first to last had been made public by those charged with conspiracy. I had no right to expect the public in India to know all these facts. But I was not writing for the Indian nor for any other public. If I had been I should have been most careful to recount the necessary facts. I was writing to private friends who knew them by heart. The points, however, which I wish to emphasize are those which do not appear on the face of the letter itself. They are two.

(1) When I wrote the letter on November 13 I had not discussed the current situation in India with Sir James Meston, I did not know his views and was not in a position to state them. As a matter of fact he did not read the proof. (2) Through an inadvertence, for which I am solely responsible, Mr. Marris never saw the letter at all, until he knew that it was being made public a month later.

§ 13. I must here mention an incident which occurred after I had written this letter and before I left Allahabad. I was strongly advised by some European, as well as by Indian friends, to avoid staying with officials. While at Allahabad I received from an unknown hand a cutting from a newspaper, which ran as follows:

Stormy Petrels.-We are very sorry to see that Mr. Lionel Curtis is travelling with one of educated India's most deadly foes, Sir Valentine Chirol. It bodes ill for Mr. Curtis' attitude towards India, already none too favourable. They come from Simla to stay at Government House, Allahabad. Sir Valentine Chirol is ever a welcome guest of the highest officials, and his fatal influence distorts their view of India. That one of the leaders of the Round Table is seeing India under such auspices will greatly increase her difficulties in winning her place in the Empire.

The point deserves some attention because every other Englishman who comes to study Indian affairs and has numerous friends amongst the officials will find himself in the same predicament. My own solution was as follows: Sir James Meston had introduced me to the Hon. Dr. Tej Bahadur Sapru, member of the Viceroy's Council, the

Hon. M. C. Y. Chintamani, Editor of the Leader, and Mr. Ishwar Saran, explained to them the reasons for my coming to India, and then withdrew, leaving me alone to listen to their views. The interview led to a courteous invitation, which I gladly accepted, to discuss matters further with a number of their friends at Dr. Sapru's house. To this gathering I read the cutting which had reached me in the meantime, and pointed to the difficulty in which it placed me. I had numerous friends, I said, in the service, and knew their various points of view pretty well before I came here. It was for that reason that, on the advice of Sir James Meston, I had come here to make the acquaintance of Indians and learn their point of view. Now in order to gain the friendship and confidence of Indian gentlemen, was I to make a show of suspending my relations with Englishmen who were my friends before I reached India and would be when I had left it? That was scarcely the way to earn the friendship of Indians. Rather I preferred to make it known to them who my friends and what my connexions were, and then leave them to judge whether to admit me to their intimacy. So I told them the history of my connexion with Sir James Meston, Mr. Marris, and Sir Valentine Chirol. I told them also that I had been head of the department in the Transvaal which was charged with controlling Asiatic immigration. That is the course I have always followed until the publicity forced upon me rendered it unnecessary, and I have found that Indians, like every one else, are readier to talk freely to a man, when they find that he has nothing to conceal.

On November 24 I left Allahabad for the Central Provinces, reached Calcutta thence on December 16, and rejoined Sir James Meston at Lucknow on December 24, in order to be present as a visitor at the meetings of the Indian National Congress and the All Indian Moslem League.

On December 25 a Lucknow paper announced that

The anti-Indian forces are at work. They are organizing their campaign. The ROUND TABLE propagandists are very busy indeed and they have influence too.... Our countrymen should bear in mind that the enemies of Indian aspirations of the Curtis and Chirol kind mean business, and they are the respectable guests at Government House. They may have access to information which we cannot dream of. They are very astute men hiding as they do, sharping [sic] claws with velvet paws. Great is the danger

ahead.

This was followed by another article on the 26th headed BEWARE OF THE ROUND TABLE. BEWARE OF CURTIS, in which it was said:

The heroes of the Round Table are prepared to have their way. They are sowing the seeds of wild mischief. They are prepared to effect the changes at whatever cost. We will protest with all our strength and vigour against the over-lordship of the Colonies over us. But we shall not, even at the worst provocation, budge an inch from the straight road of strict constitutional agitation. Ahinsa Paramo Dharma,1 say our shastras. We shall not resort to, nor shall we tolerate violence. We shall not do anything which might hurt. even the offending man.

On the 27th I received information which gave me the first clue to this language. Some Indian friends informed me that a report was being spread like wild-fire amongst the crowds assembled for the Congress that I had advocated the subjection of India to the Colonies at the cost of bloodshed, and that I had classed Indians with Negroes. Meantime, the letter had been privately printed under a headline calculated to bias the reader in advance. On seeing this letter itself, my friends had found that it was in fact an argument against a policy which might, I feared, lead to bloodshed, and against the treatment of India in Imperial affairs on the same basis as Central Africa. My friends believed that the letter was about to be published in the Bombay Chronicle, and presently I received a telegram confirming this news.

§ 14. On telling Sir James Meston and Mr. Marris what had happened I learned for the first time that I had failed to show Mr. Marris the draft. I then wrote the following letter, which together with my letter to Mr. Kerr was immediately circulated to the leading papers throughout India :

SIR,

GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
LUCKNOW:

The 28th December 1916.

Yesterday I learned that a private letter of mine had been surreptitiously obtained (I do not know how or by whom) multiplied and distributed amongst a large number of people here. I now see from the public telegrams that it has been published in whole or in part in the Bombay Chronicle. The matter was brought to my notice by Indian gentlemen attending the Congress meeting who had no hesitation in expressing their disapproval of such conduct. They

1 'Not to kill is the highest religion.'

warned me that preposterous inferences were being drawn by means of phrases quoted from the letter without reference to the context in which they appeared. The best answer to such misconstructions is the full text of the letter, and I shall feel myself under a very great obligation if you can find space to publish it in full. The letter explains itself and requires no justification to those who will read it carefully, remembering that it was written to intimate friends and not for publication. This is specifically stated in its last

sentence.

An account of the objects and methods of the Round Table is given in the prefaces to the two books recently published over my name. It is an association of men working in groups in the various parts of the Commonwealth engaged in studying imperial problems for their own political guidance. As General Secretary I have been engaged in collecting and publishing materials for such study. The attached letter is an attempt to give the Secretary of the London Group, my impression, formed after spending a few weeks in India, of the character, magnitude, and delicacy of the work to be done here.

With regard to the three friends whose names are mentioned in my letter, a word must be added. My earlier studies of public affairs were concerned with conditions in England and South Africa, countries with which I was familiar; and the possibility that self-government was not an institution appropriate only to European communities did not occupy my thoughts. It was in discussion with the friends named that I was first persuaded that self-government was the aim to which British policy in India must be directed. They showed me that any complete study of imperial problems must include India and I am here now in deference to their strong advice to come and study Indian opinion on the spot. I naturally consulted them in arranging my tour in India.

I am,

Yours faithfully,

L. CURTIS.

Mr. Marris was averse even to the brief reference I made to himself in this letter. If I had consulted my own wishes I should have added a statement to the effect that he had never seen my letter of November 13 at all.

At the time I believed that a wide publication of the letter would suffice to contradict the erroneous rumours which were current as to what I had written; and in this belief I was fortified by letters I received from Indian friends in the Congress, themselves pronounced Nationalists.

F.

Let me quote from one of those letters:

I am writing this to express to you my personal regret as also that of many others that a private letter like this should be published. I should like you to believe that there are a good many of us who think it ungentlemanly to take advantage of a secret discovery of a private letter and to publish it to the world.

It has startled me to find that the passage in your letter where you speak of bloodshed, if India is to be treated in her external affairs as Africa, should be capable of misconstruction by any man of education. I am afraid attempts will be made to spread this misconstruction in the Congress camp and that the younger and less thoughtful members will be misled by it, but I trust that this will not in any way deter you from carrying out the object which has brought you to India, and specially that part of it which aims at ascertaining the opinions of various classes of people.

In justice to the Indian National Congress and All-India Muslim League, amongst whose members I have many personal friends, I am bound to add that the circulation of my letter at their gatherings was not the work of these responsible public bodies. To prove this statement let me quote from a letter written to me by one of their recognized leaders:

I was surprised to find that a private letter written by you to a friend was published. As you rightly say no responsible member of the Indian National Congress had any part or share in it.

The immediate purpose to which my letter was put is now a matter of common knowledge. The excitement raised by its circulation served to clinch the union between the Hindu and Moslem communities which it was desired to effect at Lucknow.1 With regard to the means I have nothing to say here. With regard to the object I am glad to think that I have been the involuntary cause of a better understanding between those two great sections of the Indian People. As a student of history I have shown the heritage of mischief which followed from attempts made in the eighteenth century to rule Ireland and the American Colonies by fostering their divisions, and especially religious divisions. One may not agree with the immediate methods and object of any particular movement; but so long as that movement is legitimate in itself, one may surely rejoice in any tendency it may have to unite the religious

1 For the Lucknow Compact see resolution appended to this letter, P. 90.