Spinner Sails

Robbers retreated, tigers turned tail as a rickety automobile sped out of the Himalayas late one night last week. In the car was little baldheaded, featherweight Mahatma Gandhi. He had just two hours to cover 100 miles--over roads so perilous that night driving is usually prohibited--to Kalka. Arriving at Kalka in time's nick, he was cheered by a crowd of devotees as he boarded the frontier express for Bombay. En route, admirers gave him coins and homespun yarn. One woman auspiciously sprinkled his forehead with red powder. From Bombay he was to sail for London and the Round Table Conference.

Just how the little brown man justified his sudden haste to join the meeting, after turning stubborn at the last moment fortnight ago and refusing to sail with his colleagues (TIME, Aug. 31), was not made completely clear. St. Gandhi had accused the British of violating the Delhi pact, of coercing natives to pay taxes by such extreme measures as locking them up in rooms filled with angry hornets. He said he would not leave India until Viceroy Willingdon promised that during his absence there would be no evictions, no forced tax collection. Because without his attendance there seemed little chance of the conference accomplishing its aims, from several quarters gentle pressure began to be directed toward St. Gandhi. The S. S. Mooltan, bearing the Indian delegates, drew nearer to London. From its wireless room came stronger and stronger appeals to the Mahatma to drop his immediate grievance, represent his 270,000,000 Hindus at the Round Table. During the feverish last hours of the British Government which fell fortnight ago. William Wedgwood Benn, Secretary of State for India, insisted that Viceroy Willingdon meet with and conciliate the Mahatma. Finally, last week, the little brown man himself asked for a conference with the Viceroy. The Viceroy would not agree to the establishment of an impartial tribunal to investigate alleged breaches of the Delhi pact (TIME, March 2), as Gandhi had first demanded, but he did say that he would have some of the more startling charges looked into. The Mahatma retired to his mountain retreat near Simla, took a ceremonial bath, repeated a litany 1,008 times with some disciples, began his wild dash for London.

On the day he sailed he addressed a rain-soaked multitude. "I see nothing on the horizon," said he despondently, "to warrant hope. I was born an optimist and I am hoping against hope. My faith is in God and He seems to have made my way clear for me to go to London. Therefore I expect that He will use me as His instrument for the service of humanity. For me the service of India is identical with the service of humanity.

"I shall not disappoint the nation, and on my return, if you are inclined to feel that I have let you down, it is open to you to expel me. Not only that. If you lay hands on me and kill me I shall not consider it an act of violence.

"I am a crippled man; but it is natural that a crippled nation should have a crippled delegate."

St. Gandhi then said goodbye to his wife and son, boarded the S. S. Rajputana with his English disciple. Miss Madeline Slade (Srimati Mira Bai).* His two goats were left behind, but he had provided himself with 30 quarts of pasteurized goat's milk and enough dried fruit to live on until he reaches London. In his meagre luggage there was also a copy of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. Discovery of this fact set observers to wondering if the Mahatma had borrowed his catchword and chief weapon from the New England sage.

On the second-class promenade of the Rajputana a little enclosure was rigged up for the distinguished traveler. There, to the great interest of homing Britons, he began to cook, spin, pray. Occasionally he rose to place a skinny, brown benediction on the head of some surprised English child.

Still playing the patient underdog, St. Gandhi approached the ship's captain and murmured: "I'm your prisoner for a fortnight. Oh, I'm an even better sailor than a prisoner."

*Latest addition to St. Gandhi's sisterhood in his model colony on the banks of the Sbarmati River at Ahmedabad is 21-year-old Nilla Cram Cook. She arrived from Greece where she took part in the Delphic festival and where she spent two years in a Sisters of Charity convent accustoming herself to the contemplative life. Beauteous, of classic mold, she is the first U. S. addition to the Mahatma's platonic harem. She speaks Indo-Aryan and other Oriental languages, recently made a novel of her own eventful life. Her father was the late George Cram ("Jig") Cook, author, playwright, onetime director of the Provincetown Players, who, successively the husband of Sara Herndon Swain, Mollie A. Price, Playwright Susan Glaspell (Allison's House), adopted Greece as his country and died there seven years ago.

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