WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

12 WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
Provinces of Agra and Oudh, and Sir Satyendra Prasanna Sinha.
In accordance with a further decision of His Majesty's Government,
the Secretary of State for India will also have the assistance
of one of the Ruling Chiefs of India. With the advice of the
Governor-General in Council, he has invited His Highness the
Maharajah of Bikanir, G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., A.D.C., to accompany
him, and His Highness has accepted the offer.
In noting the amount of care and caution bestowed on
the question of Indian representation at this gathering, it
must be borne in mind that hitherto India had not participated
in the Imperial Conferences. The constitution of the
Imperial Conference had been settled in 1907, when the first
was held. Prior to 1907, there had been a couple of "Colonial
Conferences", the last of them taking place in 1902, when the
Colonial Prime Ministers had been invited to London to consult
with the Imperial Government on colonial matters. In
1907, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, when summoning a
Colonial Conference, decided to take the step in advance of
establishing this as a definitely constituted Imperial Conference,
to be held every four years, and attended by the
Premiers of the self-governing Dominions, under the presidency
of the British Premier. A permanent Imperial Conference
Secretariat was set up, as a department of the Colonial
Office, to keep the records of the conferences and make the
arrangements for them. But India, not being a self-governing
Dominion, was at that time outside the purview of the
Conference Constitution. She was not represented at the
Imperial Conference of 1911, the first to be summoned under
the new constitution.
There was, therefore, no authority by which India could
be invited to an Imperial Conference, and no understanding
with the Dominion Premiers to permit of such a new development.
But India had made a large contribution of men and
money to the carrying on of the War, and her troops were