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Viceroy. The Indian apologists, at their best, reveal a passionate conviction; the British, a rational caution. There could be few better examples of this typical British temper than Scottish Viceroy Linlithgow. He is a model of sober British effort, often suspected of misunderstanding, frequently attended by friction. Son of Australia's first Governor-General, he was born to great wealth, went to Eton, served throughout World War I, thereafter specialized in agriculture. In 1926-28 he traveled exhaustively in India as Chairman of the Royal Commission on Indian Agriculture. Later he served on the Parliamentary committee which formulated the Government of India Act of 1935 (he accomplished a minor revolution by having Parliament open its windows in the summertime). He became Viceroy in 1936.
Lord Linlithgow's own estates had prepared him to occupy the Viceroy's staggering marble "lodge"-which has six miles of corridors-with casual ease. His innate conservatism was softened by sociability and humor-his London town house once bore the deeply felt legend in brass "This Is Not the Russian Embassy" (which was next door). The Viceroy was at first greatly admired in New Delhi for his hard work, conciliatory attitude, patient fact finding, agricultural knowledge. When the Congress party's provincial ministers balked at taking office under the 1935 Act, because of the extraordinary powers still reserved for the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow was able to persuade them that he could imagine few emergencies great enough to call for those powers.
Since the war crisis it has been said that Lord Linlithgow's conservatism has played into British industrial hands, which have held down India's industrial development and hence her war effort. A recent Indian cartoon showed the Viceroy hunting, with the legend: "This week the Viceroy shot down 247 enemy partridges." His persistence in official dignities has come in for criticism. He still uses a ten-car viceregal train, steps from it to scarlet carpets. Last month, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek paid his momentous visit to India, the Viceroy sent an aide to welcome him instead of going himself.
But many feel that the Viceroy has done as well as any rational, cautious Briton might be expected to do in terrible, irrational times. Beyond doubt, he reflects the attitude of most of his colleagues and superiors in London. The great question is whether, in Indian policy, the times call for less rationality and more risk.
The most that was expected from the British Government last week was a compromise along the lines suggested by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. The Labor Party was urging it. Sir Stafford Cripps was probably urging it even more. The still-potent Tory imperialists were working hard against it.