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Edwin Samuel Montagu

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"EDWIN SAMUEL MONTAGU (1879-), English politician, second son of the 1st Lord Swaythling, was born Feb. 6 1879 and educated at Clifton, at the City of London School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he was president of the Union and acquired a considerable reputation for ability; and when he entered Parliament in 1906, at the age of 27, as Liberal member for the Chesterton division of Cambridgeshire, he was chosen by 1'Ir. Asquith, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, as his parliamentary secretary, and continued in that position when his chief succeeded to the premiership. Early in 'giro he was appointed Under-Secretary for India, at a time when Lord Morley's tenure of the Secretaryship of State for India was drawing to a close. He remained in the post, under Lord Crewe as Lord Morley's successor, till 1914; and so made his first official acquaintance with India under the influence of Lord Morley's reforms and Lord Crewe's Durbar changes of 1911. As both his chiefs were in the Lords, he was the spokesman of the office in the Commons, and he acquitted himself well. That he might equip himself the more completely for his duties, he took the unusual course of visiting India in person. In his Indian budget speech of 1913 he remarked with true insight that the watchword of the future was cooperation between the Government and the governed in India; the difficulty was that in India men of the 20th century lived side by side with men of the 5th. At the beginning of 1914 he was promoted to the responsible post of financial secretary to the Treasury, in which capacity he was of material assistance in the financial improvisation which had to be effected in the early days of the war. Early in the next year he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but when the first Coalition Ministry was formed he returned to his former post at the Treasury. Thence he was promoted, in the summer of 1916, to the headship of the office of Munitions and a seat on the War Committee of the Cabinet, on Mr. Lloyd George's succession to the Secretaryship of State for War. But when Mr. Asquith's Ministry fell he retired from office along with that minister's principal colleagues. The next summer, however, on Mr. Austen Chamberlain's resignation owing to the Mesopotamia report, he returned to the India Office as Secretary of State and began a tenure of that post which will always be memorable in Indian annals. It was felt that the wholehearted manner in which India, her princes and peoples, had flung themselves into the Imperial quarrel with Germany demanded a reconsideration of the relations between her and England. The new Secretary of State visited India in the following winter for the second time, and held prolonged conferences with the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, the leading members of the Indian civil service, ruling princes, and native politicians, and along with the Viceroy received deputations and memoranda from all classes. Ultimately in July 1918 there was published an elaborate report, drawn up and signed by the Viceroy as well as by the Secretary of State, recommending a series of constitutional reforms which should give the Indian peoples a large and real share in their own government. The report was received so cordially in the House of Commons that Mr. Montagu was able to claim at the end of the debate as " a remarkable fact " that all speakers admitted the principle of self-government for India. In India itself opinion was more divided, both among the English and among the Indians; but there was a large moderate section among both which welcomed the proposed reforms. In Dec. 1919 he had the satisfaction of passing the Government of India bill, embodying the recommendations of the report, through Parliament, and on its third reading he described it as a step in the discharge of our trusteeship for India; the ultimate justification of our rule would be in the capacity of the Indian peoples to govern themselves. When the new councils were established and beginning to work, he strongly set his face against any meddling with their proceedings by questions and answers in Parliament. When Lord Reading, the Lord Chief Justice of England, also a Jew, was appointed Viceroy of India in 1921, there was some public criticism, and it was suggested that Mr. Montagu might be moved to another office; but no change took place. He married in 1915 Beatrice Venetia, youngest daughter of the 4th Baron Sheffield.