IT

T is a moot question whether the Cinematograph or Mr. Keir Hardie should be regarded as the worse enemy of the Gaekwar of Baroda. On the whole, I think I award the palm to Mr. Keir Hardie.

-The Cinematograph, in its Day-of-Judgment accurate fashion, only represented the scene at the Delhi Durbar as it actually happened. But it is rather a terrible thought that the inadvertent action of a single moment may be preserved in such fashion that the scene, in all its living actuality, can be reproduced in indefinite succession for endless years before the eyes of millions of men. It is a reminder, up-todate and most striking, of the truth of the saying: "For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops."

The Gaekwar was the second of the Indian princes to pay homage to the King at the Durbar at Delhi. After the Nizam had advanced, had made obeisance, and had backed out of the Imperial presence, it was the Gaekwar's turn. He advanced with apparent nonchalance, bowed slightly, and then departed, apparently turning his back upon his Sovereign. The incident was caught by the cinema, and night after night all last month in all the picture palaces of the world the multitudes assembled saluted with more or less violent expressions of indignation the action. of "the Prince who insulted the King." The Gaekwar had no intention of insulting anybody, much less the King-Emperor. Even if he had been so disloyal at heart as some of those who are in his immediate entourage, it would have been the very last thing he would have thought of doing, to choose such a moment to offer an affront to a Sovereign who literally held him in the hollow of his hand.

That this was fully understood by His Majesty is obvious from the gracious intimation which was sent to the Gaekwar affording him an opportunity of making a timely and satisfactory explanation. this opportunity the Maharaja availed himself with promptitude. He wrote:

... the very last thing I intended or could ever intend was to do anything that could displease his Imperial Majesty or lead him or anyone else to doubt the reality of my loyalty and allegiance to his throne and person. To the British Government the Baroda State owes everything, and to that Government my State and myself personally will always be truly grateful and loyal.

When approaching and returning from the dais at the Durbar I-am said to have failed to observe the exact etiquette prescribed. If this was the case it was due entirely to nervousness and confusion in the presence of their Imperial Majesties and that vast assembly. Only one chief, the Nizam, had made obeisance before me, and I had not had the opportunity of noticing others, and, in fact, in the confusion of the moment

That is a very simple statement of a very much to be regretted contretemps due to the nervousness and confusion of a man who found himself suddenly in the blaze of the limelight of the world. The phenomenon of stage fright is familiar. It is a distressing With this all-sufficient but temporary malady.

recognition of the origin of the episode the incident might have been regarded as closed.

And closed it would have been but for the cinematograph and Mr. Keir Hardie. We had almost forgotten the story when the filmns began to come in from India, and from that time onwards every night the British public has been presented with a living picture of the Gaekwar at the Durbar. His explanation is not given. Only his inadvertent offence is repeated over and over again until at last a kind of legend has sprung up that the Gaekwar meant to insult his Sovereign, and that the King-Emperor may be relied upon in due season to take it out of the Gaekwar. King George is not so deficient in magnanimity. For him the incident ended with the Gaekwar's explanation. The pictorial repetition on a thousand screens of the scene at the Durbar cannot affect the King's own estimate of the affair.

To assume otherwise would be to repeat the blunder of the man who on seeing a picture of the Crucifixion rushed out and began to beat the first Jew whom he met. "You, brute, you!" he cried. "Take that, and that!" "What for?" asked his victim. "For crucifying Christ," he replied. "But,” pleaded the Jew, "that was done nineteen hundred years ago." "That does not matter," said the irate Christian. "I heard of it for the first time to-day." The crowd in the cinema shows who hiss the Gaekwar see it for the first time. But to the King it is an old story now, well-nigh forgotten; nor is there the least reason to think that the reproduction of the scene on a thousand or a million screens can affect His Majesty's judgment or induce him to go back upon his decision to accept the Gaekwar's explanation.

Much more serious, however, than the cinematograph is Mr. Keir Hardie. No one denies the simple-hearted sincerity of the member for Merthyr Tydvil. It is as much beyond dispute as his Republican abhorrence of monarchs in general. Not even his worst enemy ever accused him of being in the confidence of any reigning Prince in India or elsewhere. Hence he probably thought, if he thought about the matter at all, that he could not possibly do