British Jewry Thanks Lord Reading for His Services in India

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

An expression of thanks on behalf of the Jewish community in Great Britain and on behalf of the Board of Jewish Deputies to Lord Reading, retiring viceroy of India, was rendered at the monthly meeting of the Board of Jewish Deputies last Sunday.

Mr. D’Avigdor Goldsmid, president of the Board, in commenting upon the arrival of Lord Reading and the reception accorded by the city of London, stated that thanks are due to Lord Reading for the honor conferred upon British Jewry by the way he represented the King in India.

Lord Reading, returning to London after five years, was met at Victoria Station by Lord Colebrooke, on behalf of King George, and by Lord Birkenhead and Sir Ronald Waterhouse, on behalf of Prime Minister Baldwin.

Interviewed by newspapermen on board the Channel boat from France, the ex-Viceroy said, “All’s well with India.”

He declared that the years he spent there were a time of anxiety and hard work, but added that affairs there were better than when he arrived. “I never knew when trouble was coming,” he said, “or from what quarter it would come. Day and night I was at work.”

Lord Reading remarked that he did not go in for riding on elephants in processions.

“The hardships of the Viceroy’s life are in the sheer drudgery of what I might almost call ‘office work’,” he said. “I have done by best to bring peace to India. Things are better there now than five years ago. For one thing, the evil spirits aroused by the war are dying out. The Indian’s emotional unrest is departing. People are looking at things in a calmer light. Constitutional methods are coming back. India is being more and more self-governed. We could not stop self-government even if we wanted to. In fact, we have promised the Indians self-government,” he said.