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By Root 5647 0

around her might seem at times, she was always listened to with respect. Another rumour, promoted this time by Mr Norton, the mathematical “genius,” had it that Murphy was well known for speaking seditiously in public houses. Miss Johnston remarked despondently: “No doubt we shall all be murdered in our beds by the wretched man,” but scarcely anyone took Murphy to be a serious menace, even full of whiskey and Bolshevism as he was reported to be. Nevertheless the old ladies and the Major agreed that it was a sign of the times. And what terrible times they were! At no point in recent history, reflected the Major (who was slumped in an armchair in an agreeable after-lunch torpor), at no point in the past two or three hundred years could the standards of decent people have been so threatened, could civilization have been so vulnerable and near to disintegration, as they were today. One just had to open the newspaper...

Another sign of the times was the derelict state of the fields that lay around the Majestic. Not planted in the spring because of Edward’s quarrel with the farm-workers, they now wore a thick green fur of weeds. The Major sometimes saw tattered children dragging aimlessly through these fields in a doleful search for something edible: a little corn that had seeded itself from last year’s harvest or a stray potato plant. Edward too seemed oppressed by this sight and although he said: “It’s their own damned fault. I told the silly beggars what would happen if they didn’t plant those fields,” he made no move to have the children chased away and even one day sent Seán Murphy out with a washing-tub full of windfalls from the orchard. The children fled, of course, at the sight of him and he was obliged to leave the tub there in the middle of the field. When he went back for it half an hour later it was empty.

“I sometimes wonder,” mused the Major, “what would happen if one caught one of those little brats young enough, taught him how to behave, sent him to a decent public school and so on. D’you suppose one could tell the difference between him and the son of a gentleman?”

“You might just as well dress up a monkey in a suit of clothes,” replied Edward shortly.

* * *

AMRITSAR

The findings of the Hunter Commission in regard to the disturbances in the Punjab in the spring of last year were issued last night as a Blue Book...General Dyer’s career as a soldier is over. All the members admit that firing was necessary. Even the Indians recognize that the riots could not have been quelled by any other means. They condemn General Dyer, however, in the first place, for firing without warning, and, in the next place, for continuing to fire when the necessity for drastic action had disappeared...Six months after an event it is very easy to weigh its circumstances in a deli-cate balance and to apportion approval and blame. No doubt, General Dyer acted rashly; but he probably had about two minutes in which to make up his mind. He was confronted with a fanatical Oriental mob, fired with anti-European frenzy. He knew that hundreds of white women and girls were dependent on him for their safety. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that the fate of India was at stake. Therefore, he gave the order to fire. We quite agree that he went beyond his brief. The “crawling” order was merely stupid. General Dyer was neither a politician nor a moralist. He was a soldier and, moreover, an Anglo-Indian. He thought of the memsahib who had been assaulted, and in India the memsahib is sacrosanct. The Hunter Report will have far-reaching consequences in India. We are not at all certain that they will lighten the task of the Indian Government. General Dyer’s condemnation, although inevitable and strictly correct, will be remembered in India when his unfortunate decision has been long forgotten.

* * *

NIGHT OF TERROR IN DERRY

Fierce Fighting in the Streets

Armed parties of Unionists and Sinn Feiners took possession of some of the streets and rifle and revolver fire was almost continuous during the greater part of the night. Our Londonderry Correspondent,