(From the Archives, April 12) Another View

Mr. Graham Bower writes to the "Times". I have read with anxiety the comments of this morning's papers on the Curzon-Montagu incident. The personal aspects of that incident, though they seem to attract interest, are not of Imperial or rational importance, whilst the constitutional question and as such can be discussed by constitutional experts. But there are two sentences in Lord Curzon's letter which are likely to have disastrous consequences in India, Lord Curzon refers contemptuously to the Indian Government — a Government speaking for 300 million British subjects — as a subordinate branch of the British Government, and goes on to say :- "If the Government of India, because it rules over a large body of Moslems, is entitled to publish it's views about what we do in Smyrna or Thrace, why not equally in Egypt the Sudan, Palestine Arabia, the Malay Peninsula, or any other part of the Moslem world ?" Well, why not ? If cosmopolitan Jews are allowed to dictate British policy in Palestine, where Jews form less than 10 per cent of the population why is it unthinkable that Moslem British subjects should be allowed a voice in the matter?