scrutiny here as well as in India. I have no prepossession in favour
of military expenditure, but the pressure of facts, the pressure of
the situation, the possibilities of contingencies that may arise, seem
obviously to make it impossible for any Government or any Minister to
acquiesce in the risks on the Indian frontier. We have to consider
not only our position with respect to foreign Powers on the Indian
frontier, but the exceedingly complex questions that arise in
connection with the turbulent border tribes. All these things make
it impossible--I say nothing about internal conditions--for any
Government or any Minister with a sense of responsibility to cancel
or to deal with the military programme in any high-handed or cavalier
way.

Next I come to what, I am sure, is first in the minds of most Members
of the House--the political and social condition of India. Lord Minto
became Viceroy, I think, in November, 1905, and the present Government
succeeded to power in the first week of December. Now much of the
criticism that I have seen on the attitude of His Majesty's Government
and the Viceroy, leaves out of account the fact that we did not come
quite into a haven of serenity and peace. Very fierce monsoons had
broken out on the Olympian heights at Simla, in the camps, and in the
Councils at Downing Street. This was the inheritance into which
we came--rather a formidable inheritance for which I do not, this
afternoon, attempt to distribute the responsibility. Still, when we
came into power, our policy was necessarily guided by the conditions
under which the case had been left. Our policy was to compose the
singular conditions of controversy and confusion by which we were
faced. In the famous Army case we happily succeeded. But in Eastern
Bengal, for a time, we did not succeed. When I see newspaper articles
beginning with the preamble that the problem of India is altogether