"Will Be Hell"?

An avalanche of close to 500,000 words buried in London last week the Second Indian Round Table Conference which has cost nearly $1,000,000.

In rambling, soot-stained St. James's Palace the final plenary session began at 10 a. m. Small grate fires accented the palace chill. Shivering and snuffling, the delegates climbed the crimson-carpeted grand stair. They were grimly resolved to utter 33 prepared orations if it took all day and all night, which it very nearly did.

Orator James Ramsay MacDonald admitted in 3,000 sonorous words that the $1,000,000 Conference had virtually failed. It broke down on the specific job of trying to draft a new constitution that would make the Government of India responsible chiefly to an Indian Parliament instead of to Great Britain's autocratic Viceroy of India. The larger issue, namely whether India should receive "dominion status" with its implicit right of secession from the British Commonwealth, was not even considered by the Conference--despite the fact that it was the Second Indian Round Table Conference and should have been the last.

In the circumstances Mr. MacDonald could only announce a Third Conference, to be held next year in India, and repeat the assurances with which he closed the First Conference last January, namely, that His Majesty's Government view with favor the setting up of an Indian Federation with an Indian Parliament as the supreme authority in all matters except: 1) defense; 2) foreign affairs; 3) finance.

Since control of these three most vital departments of government would continue "reserved" to Great Britain, the Prime Minister offered to the First Conference last January and to the Second Conference last week only the merest shadow of independence for India. Plausibly enough he argued that since the Hindu and Moslem delegates to the Second Conference have been unable to agree, even with each other, upon the proportion of Hindu and Moslem representation in the future Indian Parliament, they must all go back to India and keep on trying to thrash out these and other details among themselves.

"We have met with obstacles," cried Scot MacDonald, "but one of those optimists to whom humanity owes the most of its progress said : 'Obstacles were made to be overcome.' In that buoyancy of spirit and good will which comes from it, let us go on with our common task ! " Facing a third and nobody knows how many more $1,000,000 conferences, St. Gandhi, who had a heavy cold, received the Prime Minister's oration with no buoyancy of spirit whatever.

"I will study your declaration," he said thickly to Scot MacDonald, "once or twice or thrice, or as often as may be necessary, scanning every word of it, reading its hidden meaning if there is a hidden meaning in it--and if I then come to the conclusion, as just now seems likely, that as far as I am concerned we have come to the parting of the ways, it does not matter to us. ... The dignity of human nature requires that we must face the storms of life, and sometimes even blood brothers have got to go each on his own way. . . . Call it by whatever name you will, but I want complete independence for India."

In dead silence the Conference received this dignified threat that St. Gandhi might again declare civil disobedience to the British Raj ("and then there would be hell!" as Mr. Gandhi earlier remarked to correspondents). Meeting the challenge with suavity and energy, Mr. MacDonald shot back, "I do hope we are going to go away determined to cooperate. It is no good going on any other path, let me assure you! . . . My dear Mahatma, let us go on in this way. It is the best way and you may find it will be the only way."

Midnight had struck. A little after 2 a. m. the Second Indian Round Table Conference finally adjourned. That very afternoon the Prime Minister, defending his Conference declaration in the House of Commons, said: "There is no intention of granting complete independence and India does not want it."

In India, day before the Conference in London adjourned, an utterly drastic ordinance was promulgated by Sir Francis Stanley Jackson, Governor of Bengal, the great eastern province of which Calcutta is the capital. Seemingly the object was to frighten Indians who might otherwise decide to join another Gandhite civil disobedience movement. Under the ordinance Bengal courts were authorized to proceed in camera and in the absence of the accused at discretion of the magistrate; special tribunals were established to pass sentence of death or transportation for life upon seditious persons; the Government of Bengal was authorized to demand the services of municipal officials and even school teachers in quelling disturbances; police were granted extraordinary powers to search buildings and open correspondence; Bengalese newspapers were forbidden to report troop or police activities; all private radio sets, either sending or receiving, were ordered suppressed; and sentries guarding prisoners were ordered to shoot at sight "any prisoner attempting to escape or interfering with officials in the execution of their duties."

Having proclaimed this ordinance as a parting gift to Bengal, retiring Governor Sir Stanley Jackson prepared to sail for England. His successor, who will enforce the "Bloody Ordinance" (as it was promptly christened), is Sir John Anderson, famed for his ruthless efficiency in suppressing Irish patriots when a supervisor of the "Black-&-Tans."

Newsorgans of the Gandhite Indian National Congress mourned "the fearful thunderbolt loosed upon the hapless people of Bengal," flayed the MacDonald declaration at London as "a paper which if accepted will condemn India to a self-chosen slavery and will perpetuate Imperial domination and exploitation."

While St. Gandhi hesitated to re-proclaim civil disobedience his disciples in India were silent, but not so President Sailendra Nath Ghose of the Indian National Congress of America, an obstreperous affiliate. "India will start immediately her civil disobedience campaign," cried Mr. Ghose. "If Gandhi now dares to obstruct the way, Gandhi will be removed from, the path of India's onward march."

At Victoria Station a London crowd sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" as Mr. Gandhi entered a third-class carriage with Disciple Madeline Slade. Mr. Gandhi wore a new shawl and loincloth of her weaving.

"Your Christ was crucified," murmured the Mahatma in parting to a Hearst correspondent.

"Do you compare yourself with Christ?"

"Only to the extent that he died for his principle; I am willing to do that. One of your heroes--Nathan Hale--said he regretted he had but one life to give for his country. Had I a thousand lives I would give them for India's independence. It is difficult to convince you Occidentals that nothing short of independence will stem my countrymen's passions."

With Mr. Gandhi, by his request, went two strapping Scotland Yard detectives, "to protect me from my friends."

In Paris the Mahatma told an audience of 2,000, chiefly women, that "if only women could forget that they belong to the weaker sex, they could do more than men to prevent wars."

In Geneva Pacifist Gandhi stopped briefly with his French biographer. Pacifist Remain Rolland (Nobel Prize for Literature 1915), hoped to be received by Pope Pius XI before sailing from Brindisi for India.

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