THE .WORLD TO-DAY 439

reforms of 1919 only served to whet the national appetite
for a greater advance towards responsible government. The
frustration of these hopes even drove some to agitate for
complete independence instead of mere ' dominion status.'
' The pace being thus forced by the progressive intensification
of the national demand, India has now reached the threshold
of a Federation of autonomous provinces. This is the scope
of the Reform Act of 1935. The future of India hangs on
the future of Asia and the World. The fate of Humanity
itself is now in the keeping of its statesmen.

" To-day," wrote Mr. S. S. McClure in the London Times
on 15 January 1921, "the white race occupies not only
Europe, but North and South America and Australia, and
rules ninety-seven per cent, of Africa and nearly half of
Asia, and the most important fact to-day is the coming
struggle between the forces of colour and the white race."
On 26 February of the same year, the Argus of Melbourne
wrote editorially : " This is the huge question that is really
before the peacemakers. Can they find out some new way
of life between West and East, some way different from the
two-thousand-year-old way of warfare? All other wars-
even the Great War just finished—become parochial squab-
bles compared with this war. When it comes, if it comes,
it will have all the horrors of modern science in its hands,
and all the weight of the ancient forces of history at its
back. Can it then be avoided ? Can the wise men of America
and Japan, of Britain and the British Empire, of Asia and
Europe, not find some other way out ? " The answer is yet
to be given.