"Bloody Volunteers"

In the extensive Bombay presidency, vital stronghold of the British Raj, there were signs last week that St. Gandhi's movement for independence was at last receiving support from all the native classes.

High caste Hindu ladies, sheltered, delicate, refined, appeared in numbers for the first time at public demonstrations against the government. Depositors of the Bank of India started a "run" which lasted all one day, not because they considered the bank unsound, but solely in protest against the alleged pro-British tendencies of the manager. He soon came out for St. Gandhi. The bank remained sound.

At a general mass meeting of 50 Bombay mercantile associations a triple resolution was passed: 1) Demanding the release of St. Gandhi from jail; 2) Urging leaders of the independence movement to boycott the Anglo-Indian round table conference in London next autumn; 3 ) Pledging all members of the 50 Merchants' Associations to buy no British goods.

The Indian Chamber of Commerce warned the Viceroy Baron Irwin, that "absolute trade chaos" would result from continuance of the present situation. In Bombay an official of the largest U. S. motor agency in India said that St. Gandhi's movement had cut auto sales 20%. In England a survey of mill areas chiefly dependent on India as a market! for textiles showed one out of three workers idle, some 25 mills closed.

Despite or because of St. Gandhi's blow at British labor, his loudest champions in London last week--indeed his only champions--were members of the left wing Labor party. In the House of Commons these outbursts were heard:

David Kirkwood, M. P.: "Fed up, that's what I am, with our bleeding India white!"

Thomas Isaac Mardy Jones, M. P.: "I hear that British soldiers went about Sholapur after the riots (TIME. May 19) hooking off the natives' Gandhi caps.* They used sticks with hooks on the end of them. What is the government doing to end such conduct?"

"That report was untrue!" shot back Secretary of State for India William Wedgwood Benn. But in London rumors grew that the pressure of left-wing Labor was being felt even in the Cabinet itself. First Commissioner of Works George Lansbury was said to have urged that India's boycott of British goods should be "broken" by conceding St. Gandhi's demands.

Blood & Kicks. With leaders carrying ropes and two days rations, 2,500 followers of St. Gandhi approached the barbed wire fence and ditch defenses of the Government salt works at Dharasana last week, tried to lasso the fence posts to pull them down. From a nearby hill watched Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, leader of the movement in succession to jailed Judge Abbas Tyabji who succeeded jailed St. Gandhi (TIME, May 19). Sole U. S. eyewitness: Correspondent Webb Miller sent via airplane from London to India by United Press.

"My clothes were splashed with mud when the police flung [Gandhi] volunteers into ditches," cabled Mr. Miller. "The spectacle of their beating the unresisting volunteers was so painful I frequently was forced to turn away. ... I saw them kick volunteers already lying on the ground . . . fractured arms and wrists . . . bleeding. ... I personally saw over 200 in a temporary hospital."

By some mistake at the British Censor's office, part of Mr. Miller's cable was allowed to pass. It was then suddenly chopped off short and the Government of India asked the cable company to cancel what had been sent, but this was already on its way to New York. In London a touring group of U. S. editors who protested the censorship were told by Baron Burnham of the Simon Commission in India that "censorship exists for the sake of human life. It is right for a man to smoke a cigaret--but not in a powder magazine." Contradicting U. S. eyewitness testimony, the local British magistrate at Dharasana denied that the police had beaten anybody at all.

"Gandhi police." For watching and presumably directing the Dharasana salt raid. Mrs. Xaidu was jailed (and sentenced to nine months imprisonment). St. Gandhi's son Manilal was also jailed (one year). Hurrying to succeed Mrs. Naidu as leader, revered V. J. Patel, a former president of the Indian Legislative Assembly, took a train at Bombay. When it reached the station nearest Dharasana (a scheduled stop), the engineer did not slacken speed, although Mr. Patel pulled the emergency cord.

Returning later to Bombay, Leader Patel addressed 75,000 Indians of all classes (including Mohammedans) who stood in such a way that the outlines of the throng formed a living map of "Mother India."

"Press on!" cried Mr. Patel. "To victory!" Afterward a parade of 200,000 Gandhites marched through Bombay, marshaled by their own flagrantly illegal "police," supported by banner-bearers representing 28 large Indian business firms. At the principal railway terminal the "Gandhi police'' formed a cordon, worked frantically to keep the multitude from overwhelming a small detachment of British police. Those at last, without a word, suddenly shouldered arms and escaped in good order. Several correspondents reported from Bombay that "the native element appears to believe the British raj is almost at an end." This "belief" was highly premature. Nevertheless Bombay was actually in the hands of the Gandhi mob and Gandhi police last week. The British police kept off the streets during most of the vast peaceful demonstrations which swept the city from end to end. But, at Wadala, Bombay suburb, police armed with bamboo lathes chased off two assaults on the local Government salt works, arrested 115. Later, police fired upon a recalcitrant group, injured a few.

St. Gandhi & Wife. In the Yeroda jail at Poona, scrawny St. Gandhi was allowed to see his wife last week with an official present. Cheerful and confident, he said that Satyagraha or the "insistence on truth" of Indians seemed to be conquering British force of the ordinary kind. As usual, the Saint had only praise for his British keepers, said that the three pounds of goat milk a day on which he lives is provided by milking the animal in his presence, so that he may see that all is "clean."

* Small peaked caps, symbolic as are Fascist black shirts.

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