Item 8 - Telegram from Edwin Montagu to Lord Reading

Refers to A3/22/4–6. He thinks Reading was wise to receive the deputation, but doubts whether a conference would have been beneficial. Gandhi could not have emerged from the conference with any reputation as a practical politician, and would have been shown to have an anachronistic view of development in India as still being based on concessions by a benevolent Government to clamour, rather than on the Indians achieving their goals by their own efforts. Criticism at home has been based on comparisons with the Irish situation. The Government of India Act, which was intended as the first step of a settled method of progress, was based on hypotheses which make immediate vital amendments impossible. If the Indians would throw themselves into industrial development and the political education of the electorate, their demands would be unanswerable in a year or two.

(Typed, with handwritten alterations. Used for transmission.)