India in Transition The address by the Viceroy at a
joint sitting of the two Houses of the Indian Legislature on Monday was an utterance which stamps Lord Linlithgow as one of the most notable of the long line of representatives of the Sovereign in India. The present chapter in Indian constitutional history is closing. The elections for the new Provincial legislatures are impending, and the legislatures themselves will begin their work in April. The Viceroy pointed with sympathetic eloquence to the opportunity opening before the peoples of India to demonstrate their capacity to maintain some form of government more consonant with popular desires than the dictatorships which in Europe had emerged out of chaos and imposed themselves by force. The opportunity indeed is great, and opens up far vistas.
• Lord Linlithgow's declaration that he would be found ready to co-operate with any party that could constitu- tionally establish itself in power lost nothing in value through the fact that the Congress Party absented itself from the sitting at which his address was delivered. Opinion within the party on the wisdom of such was divided, and the-probability that Congress members will both _take part in the elections, and if the oppor- tunity offers accept office, increases.
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