Farewell to Delhi

To hear the retiring Viceroy's farewell address last week, India's Central Legislature met in gay saris, bright turbans, khaki. Tall, unbending Lord Linlithgow spoke for an hour and a quarter. Said he: "Indian public men without delay should start to get together. . . . There is nothing to stop India's leaders from considering and devising an alternative [to the Cripps plan] or from trying by private negotiation with other parties in the country to secure their support for any such alternative."

Dawn, newspaper published by Mohamed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Moslem League, called the speech "a colorless survey of a long and colorless regime, or irregime."

When Lord Halifax was Viceroy of India, he officially recognized Mohandas Gandhi as a statesman and chief Indian spokesman, allowed Indian National Congress influence to grow. Next came Lord Willingdon, who attempted to sup press the Congress, succeeded only in driving it underground. Linlithgow stood between Halifax and Willingdon, showing neither Halifax's sympathy nor Willingdon's iron hand. During his "irregime," anti-British sentiment grew in India; economic conditions did not improve; Gandhi, Nehru and some 35,000 members of the Congress party were jailed.

The august London Times and ultra-conservative Daily Telegraph wrote no editorials on the Viceroy's address. But other British newspapers did comment, and their attitude had more significance for the future than Linlithgow's righteous words.

Said the Manchester Guardian: "It rather looks as if the Indian Government had decided that the best thing to do is to pretend that Gandhi and Congress do not exist and to hope that they will be quietly forgotten."

The Daily Herald, speaking for the Labor Party, hoped the new Viceroy. Lord Wavell, "will sweep away the pompous trappings of the New Delhi Court and establish contact with the real life of India. . . . The British Government itself must take a hand. ... It must resume the initiative; reopen negotiations with representatives of the Indians; shake off the weary fatalism in which it has persisted ever since the Cripps talks failed."

This week militant Nationalists rioted in Bombay, Poona, Ahmadabad, marking a year of jail for Gandhi. Police arrested freely.

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