THE DAILY PROVINCE
JULY 15, 1914

DO NOT SIDE-STEP THE ASIATIC ISSUE
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Royal Colonial Institute Journal Gives Advice to
Dominions.

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Says They Should Come to an Agreement With the
Indian Government.

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Declares -Make-shift Exclusion Schemes Offer
Indignity to the Hindus.

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Sohan Lal is inclined to Dispute Statements in local
“Sedition” Story.

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(Special Copyright Cable to the Vancouver Daily Province and Montreal
Star)
London, July 15.—The Royal Colonial Institute’s official journal,
deplores Hindu incident at Vancouver. It says it is easy to understand British
Columbia’s determination to keep out the Asiatics, but as things now stand, it
is the British Empire, as a whole, including the Asiatic people who belonged, if
challenged by Asiatic race to enforce this policy. Until the Russo-Japanese war
it was held as an axiom that no Asiatic nation could successfully challenge a
white one. That illusion gone, the white nations are obliged to reconstruct
their international obligations to include the possibility of powerful rivals
whose citizens are refused entrance to countries under the British flag. It is
not Canada or South Africa which is likely to suffer, but it is Great Britain;
upon whom malcontent India will vent her discontent. The journal adds that

THE DAILY PROVINCE
JULY 15, 1914
the expedients employed by Dominions for exclusion are only makeshift and
offer far more indignity to those excluded than a clear understanding would.
The Imperial Government, it goes on, will in no circumstances interfere with
the dominions’ rights to make their own immigration laws, but it is placed in a
false position when these laws are arbitrary, contradictory or difficult of
interpretation. The question has been shirked because of its delicacy but the
next imperial conference ought to see a full discussion and the establishment
of a clearly-defined policy common to all the dominions accepted in principle
by Great Britain, and framed so as not to affect the dignity and the amour
proper of the king’s Indian subjects. Why can not the Indian Government
follow the example of Japan and agree to restrict immigration not in a spirit of
retaliation, but as part of a bargain?
WINDERMERE

------------------Sohan Lal’s Denial.
Sohal Lal, a member of the local Hindu colony, called The Province office today
to deny the Truth of the story that volunteers were being invited by the Hindu
leaders here to go to India and spread sedition in connection with the failure
of the Komagata Maru contingent to land in Canada. Mr. Lal declared that such
information as this was doubtless given to the immigration authorities by
certain Hindu who told their fellow countrymen one thing and gave another to
the officials, just for their own particular ends. Mr. Lal said he knew nothing
about the truth or falsity of the statements that various Hindus had been
attempting to buy revolvers in Victoria stores.
“All Hindus are not seditionists”, he declared. “We simply seek rights of
autonomy and we think too that if the British will not let us get into Canada
then they should not come to India and refuse to give us franchise rights.