398 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Meanwhile, Chinese speakers made it clear that the Chinese people
in general wanted to see the colonial system dismantled in the not too
distant future. They pointed out that the Chinese people would be ‘dis-
illusioned’ if they were to discover that ‘the main function of an inter-
national system after the war would be that of conserving empires.’^197
One Chinese member stated that the Chinese became suspicious when-
ever they heard the government of one nation say that the people of
another nation were not capable of governing themselves as this was pre-
cisely what the Japanese government had argued in justifying its actions
in respect to China.^198
The Indian delegation at Hot Springs was more assertive than the
Indian group at Mont Tremblant the latter having been, according to
Holland, ‘hand-picked’ by the British who had quickly become suspi-
cious of Carter’s intentions in bringing India into the IPR.^199 Although
it included a number of distinguished figures, the 1942 Indian delega-
tion did not include members of the Congress Party, many of whom had
been imprisoned on the grounds of their opposition to the war effort
and for this reason the delegation was widely seen by members of the
other groups as unreflective of political conditions in India.^200 By con-
trast, the Indian delegation in 1945 included Congress Party members,
the most notable among these being the delegation’s leader, Vijaya
Lakshmi Pandit, the sister of Jawaharlal Nehru. It was Pandit who at Hot
Springs pointedly raised the issue of Churchill’s caveat in respect to the
Atlantic Charter.^201 Holland later observed that the Indian group at Hot
Springs spoke ‘eloquently and at times angrily about British policy dur-
ing the war years in India.’^202
Criticisms of the colonial powers saw a French member with an
extensive record of colonial service protest that experienced administra-
tions over the last fifty years had brought about ‘great improvements’
(^197) International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, Security in the Pacific, 91.
(^198) Ibid., 92.
(^199) ‘Appendix 2: Holland-Hooper Interviews,’ in Hooper, ed., Remembering the Institute
of Pacific Relations, 346.
(^200) Ibid.
(^201) Ibid. See also International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, Security in the
Pacific, 11–2.
(^202) ‘Appendix 2: Holland-Hooper Interviews,’ in Hooper, ed., Remembering the Institute
of Pacific Relations, 346.