Sir Malcolm Hailey takes charge

SIR Malcolm Hailey, who on Saturday took charge of this province from Sir Edward MacLagan at Bombay, has already reached his summer capital and assumed the reins of office. No one can say that His Excellency has come to a bed of roses. The legacy which he has received from his predecessor, is, indeed, as we have already said, in some respects just as troublesome as that which his predecessor himself had received from Sir Michael O’Dwyer. The very peace of which Sir Edward boasted in one of his farewell speeches is in itself a source of positive danger, for it is a peace which has all the elements of a calm before the storm. Then there is at least one problem which at the time when Sir Edward ascended his gaddi either did not exist at all or was but a small cloud in Punjab’s political horizon no bigger than a man’s hand, but which thanks to the tactless, unintelligent and unsystematically handling of it by Sir Edward’s Government has today assumed enormous size and proportion. In both cases, it will require statesmanship of the very highest order, statesmanship of which tact, judgment, sympathy, courage and imagination are the principle ingredients, to solve the difficulty with which Sir Malcolm finds himself confronted. This is not necessarily a disadvantage to an ambitious ruler on the threshold of his career. It is not merely your enemy to whom your difficulty offers an opportunity. Your own opportunity is just as great, if only you know how to turn it to account. From this point of view, no provincial ruler of our time, unless it was his own immediate predecessor, had a more splendid opportunity than what his Excellency has before him.