Item 4 - Telegram from Edwin Montagu to Lord Reading

Accepts Reading’s analysis of the political situation, but he reiterates his opposition to sentencing political offenders to rigorous imprisonment, and cautions against the arrest of women. ‘I do not know what has happened to Motilal Nehru, but he is a well educated barrister whose mind has been perverted originally by bitter resentment at his exclusion from Club life in the United Provinces. I do hope that he will not find himself suffering rigorous imprisonment.’ Asks for an explanation of what ‘picketing’, in the sense that it deserves six months’ imprisonment, means. A conference is inevitable one day, he thinks, but not on the basis proposed by Das.

(Typed.)