§ *EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON rose to ask the Secretary of State for India what steps are being taken by the India Office or any other official body to obtain information concerning the whereabouts and treatment of the Indian soldiers who are prisoners of war in Germany, and whether any measures have been adopted or are in contemplation for the supply of relief to these prisoners or the amelioration of their lot.
§ The noble Earl said: My Lords, I am sorry to impose upon the noble Marquess the obligation of answering yet another Question this evening, but my observations in putting this Question will be sufficiently brief to enable him to escape the necessity of a long reply. I am sure the noble Marquess will not expect me to offer any apology for putting this Question. The matter is really one, as no one knows better than himself, of great importance—of importance in its effect on the sentiment and attitude of our Indian soldiers who are fighting at the Front, on the opinion of the Indian soldiers who are lying in such large numbers wounded in hospital in this country, and, still more, on the opinion that will be entertained in India when the war comes to an end. When that time arrives these Indian prisoners will return to their own country with tales, not merely of the sufferings they have undergone in Gennany—and one can well believe that, in a country where no one speaks their language and where the conditions of life and food are absolutely different, those sufferings may be very great—but also of the manner, successful or the reverse, in which the British Raj had intervened to ameliorate their sufferings or to procure their release.
§ I have no idea myself how many Indian prisoners there are in Germany at the present time, but if we may judge from the prominent part that the Indian Forces have played in the fighting from the start, and more especially during the past two months, from the degree to which they have been in the thick of the fighting, and from their share in the general casualties which have been so severe, one can imagine that there must be at least several thousands of Indian prisoners in Germany. We know nothing about them in this country. Their names are not even published in the lists of casualties that appear in the newspapers. I have been endeavouring 1045 for some time past to obtain information on the point. We have in this country a Committee, with which I am closely associated—the Indian Soldiers' Fund—which has raised, and which distributes, large sums of money for the sending out of comforts to our Indian soldiers at the Front and for the relief of the wounded at home. In our efforts to ascertain what we could do for the prisoners, we have since the beginning of the war succeeded in procuring only one list of Indian prisoners from the Prisoners of War Help Committee, a list which contained a little over 300 names. Apart from that we have been dependent entirely upon stray pieces of information which have reached us in letters from officers who are themselves prisoners in different parts of Germany. In such cases—lamentably few, as I admit they are—we have done what we could to send out relief and to provide remittances of money to these unhappy men.
§ But the point of my Question to the noble Marquess is this, that surely this obligation is one which ought not to rest on a private Committee, necessarily imperfectly supplied with information, but ought to be undertaken and discharged by the India Office itself. It may be that some organisation already exists for this purpose, but if it does not I would suggest to the noble Marquess that it might be well for him either to constitute a Committee in the India Office with special direction to this object, or, if there are any reasons for not doing that, he might take our Committee, or some other Committee outside, give them the requisite authority for dealing with the matter; and provide them with funds. Amid the great issues with which we are dealing this matter may seem of small importance, but in India, it is of great importance indeed. I feel that I may, therefore, in addressing this appeal to the noble Marquess, address it, not merely to his humanitarian instincts, which alone, I think, would impel him to move, but to the larger interests of the State which are directly involved.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEI have, of course, no complaint of the noble Earl in raising this question of Indian prisoners of war, which is one which has given us, as he may well suppose, much concern. Various stories have reached us, both of exceptionally harsh treatment of Indian 1046 prisoners when captured, and of exceptionally kind treatment of Indian prisoners after their detention—the latter in hopes, it may be presumed, of winning their good will and of arousing discontent with British rule. The noble Earl, I think, is not accurate in stating that in all cases communication with Indian prisoners has been impossible in Germany. I believe, as a matter of fact, in some cases great pains have been taken to send Indian-speaking gentlemen to converse with them. But, as the noble Earl knows, we have had plenty of evidence in inquiries that have been made from time to time in Parliament of the fact that our general information about prisoners in Germany has been meagre. I do not know that we are much worse off, or indeed worse off, in respect of Indian prisoners than we are with respect to British prisoners in that regard.
From time to time the Government receive lists of prisoners in Germany, forwarded through the United States Ambassador. Those lists include a certain number of names of Indian prisoners, but we do not know, of course, what the total number of prisoners detained in Germany is; and therefore it is impossible to say whether the lists are anything like complete. So far as those lists have reached the War Office, to whom they are sent in the first instance, the names and the places of internment have been sent by them to the Prisoners of War Help Committee, to which the noble Earl alluded. That Committee is presided over by an old friend of mine with whom I was associated when he was Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, Sir Charles Lucas, and anybody who knows him should know that, both in capacity and in sympathy, nobody could be better qualified than he to preside over an inquiry of that kind. The Prisoners of War Help Committee does all that it can, through the channels of the possible, for the amelioration of the lot of British prisoners in Germany. It equally undertakes inquiry into the lot of the Indian prisoners there. It is in regular touch with the India Office, and therefore it seems to me that there would be no object in appointing a fresh body or Committee for these purposes. All that we can do at my Office is to impress upon the Prisoners of War Help Committee the particular needs of the Indian prisoners, although, so far as I know, they have shown no disposition to neglect those in favour of other prisoners. If the noble Earl has 1047 any other information which he would desire to communicate, of course we should be most glad to get it at the India Office. But, so far as I know, anything that can be done is being done by this body; and I will do my best to see that they are kept up to the mark in doing what is possible. But I am by no means confident that very much can be done in the particular conditions which obtain in Germany for the amelioration of the lot of any particular set of prisoners.
§ EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTONI am sorry to say that I am not satisfied with the noble Marquess's reply. I have no doubt that the Prisoners of War Help Committee does its best, but it is a Committee constituted for dealing with British prisoners of war. The conditions operating in regard to Indian prisoners of war are wholly different, and require to be dealt with by separate men with special knowledge and experience. The only thing which the Prisoners of War Help Committee has succeeded in furnishing to the Indian Soldiers' Fund is one list containing a little over 300 names. There must be thousands of Indian prisoners of war in Germany. That fact shows that the Committee have not at their hands at the present moment the resources necessary to enable them to cope with the matter. The noble Marquess says he will impress them with the importance of the case. Well and good; and I dare say something might be done by putting men of Indian knowledge and experience on that Committee. But the work would be better discharged by the India Office itself. The noble Marquess has in his Office several able Anglo-Indian officials, and I suggest to him to reconsider 1048 my point—namely, whether he might not direct some of these gentlemen to devote themselves exclusively to this matter. You will hear a great deal of this as time goes on, and any negligence—I am quite sure not intentional—will react terribly in India after the war.
The noble Marquess did not answer this question. When you have discovered where and who these prisoners are, what are you to do for them and who is to do it? The Fund with which I am connected, and which sits in my house, administers large sums of money, but I am not aware that it is our duty to make advances to Indian prisoners of war. We have, however, done so. We have sent out a sovereign to this man and so many rupees to another, but that is distinctly an obligation of Government. Therefore what I want the noble Marquess to do, if he wishes our Committee to act in this matter, is himself out of the resources at his disposal to provide us with the funds. The two points which I venture to submit to him for reconsideration are—first, the desirability of using the great influences he has at his disposal in the India Office to consider this matter specially; and, secondly, if he wishes us to deal with it in any way, to give us the funds to enable us to do so.