The Turning of a Page

It was late, Japan was near, and at last, after all the painful years, Britain turned the page of history. Standing in a sun-splashed, marble conference room in New Delhi, Sir Stafford Cripps solemnly read to 200 correspondents Britain's offer of full Dominion status to India after the war, including the right to separate into two or more Dominions and even to secede from the British Commonwealth. He spoke for the British Government, but the offer had unmistakably the sound of his own voice. He was the only top member of the British War Cabinet who had long & loudly advocated such an offer, and it would indelibly blazon his name in history.

Man. His personal presentation of the offer was very greatly in the offer's favor. The quick, smiling, socialistic, 52-year-old lawyer was a man not only of stabbing intellect and wit but also of transparently high sincerity. The British Government had customarily approached India down marble stairs and along crimson carpets. Sir Stafford hustled out of an R.A.F. Lockheed with a brief case, three small bags and a portable typewriter.

The British-Indian problem was 300 years old, but Sir Stafford said he hoped he could iron things out in two weeks. It seemed astounding, but he knew what he had in his bags. He did not have tropical clothes, and he sweated hard through a rush of interviews with all manner of Indian politicos. An Indian brought ten sun helmets for him to try on, but all were too small for his high-domed head. He took to knocking off for afternoon swims at the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club.

After two days at the Viceroy's staggering palace, he moved to the comfortable little bungalow that he had expressly asked for (TIME, March 30). When newsmen began to draw optimistic deductions from the smiles of callers as they left Sir Stafford's bungalow, Sir Stafford cracked that he always asked everyone to smile as he left.

But there could be no doubt that his callers enjoyed him. Some of the most important, including the Indian National Congress Party's Jawaharlal Nehru and the Moslem League's Mohamed Ali Jinnah, remembered him well from his 1939 Indian trip. As usual, Sir Stafford was a deft verbal swordsman. He told a press conference: "My mind is rubber up to meet you this morning. I'm always in my best form at breakfast." When asked why he had not brought crusty, conservative Secretary of State for India Leopold Stennett Amery with him, Sir Stafford parried with: "Of course you know there is a serious shortage of manpower in England."

After six conference-jammed days Sir Stafford called in the press, read them India's Magna Charta and answered questions for two hours, taking off his coat and getting down to India's future in his shirt sleeves. When he was asked who would guarantee Britain's declaration, he replied: "You must trust me; it is only on my word."* India was more than inclined to take his word.

Plan. But if Sir Stafford himself was the best of sponsors for the plan, the plan greatly recommended itself. It was shot through with Sir Stafford's own solicitude for India's racial, religious and political differences.

During the war Britain would direct India's defense, but India would appoint a member to Winston Churchill's War Cabinet. At the end of the war, elections would be held for the provincial legislatures. The lower houses of these bodies would then sit as an electoral college to choose, by proportional representation, a constitutional congress. The 562 semi-autonomous Indian States would be invited into this congress with proportional representation. States or provinces which did not agree to the new constitution could agree on separate constitutions, which would be equally recognized by Britain. Thus the door was left open for a separate Moslem State, if India's great minority of 80,000,000 Moslems want it.

Decision? Party committees immediately went into session. Mohandas Gandhi was rumored to have said: "If the Congress President asks my advice, I'll say it's a postdated check, accept it or not."

A majority of the Congress Working Committee was rumored to be balking at the plan, not for the future, but as giving India too little control over its war effort. On the other hand, the plan's provisos for local self-determination seemed to have quieted Congress Party-Moslem League friction. Many observers felt that, under such self-government as the plan proposed, demands for a separate Moslem State would evaporate.

Sir Stafford's job might still be done within the astounding two-week limit he had set himself. Otherwise the outlook was dark. It was late, Japan was near,* and Britain's generous voice might be drowned by the harsh conquering voices of Tokyo.

*Asked if a guarantee could be had from President Roosevelt, Sir Stafford said: "I am afraid you won't get it." *India's chief pro-Axis propagandist, fat, fluent Subhas Chandra Bose, onetime Congress leader, was last week rumored killed in an airplane crash

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