The Times of Tuesday reports a striking speech by the
Aga Khan delivered in reply to a complimentary address pre- sented to him at a gathering of Mohammedans in Bombay. on January 11th. After indicating the special difficulties that attached to the leadership of the Mohammedans. in India, and observing that their interests were bound up with the progress of the sister-communities, while sentiment would always attach them to Mohammedans outside India, the Aga Khan declared that their first duty was attachment to the Imperial Throne and the British Administration; "which' was carried on in a spirit of self-sacrifice, justice, and remarkable devotion to duty." The reforms, which were generous and far-reaching in effect, had placed not only Mohammedans but the whole people of India on their trial. But development was impossible if they lived in a state of endemic anarchy, which destroyed the confidence between rulers and ruled, and eventually recoiled on society at large. Protests and repression were unavailing so long as society as a whole did not bestir itself to root out the anarchical spirit. Loyal people must help the Government with all their might to remove the causes of crime for their own sake, for otherwise measures of repression would bring nothing but misery, not alone to the guilty, but to the innocent majority. "They should," he added, "send out earnest missionaries to preach loyalty, to bring mis- guided zealots to see through reason and righteousness the sacred nature of the ties that united Indian society and the Government."
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