The Press Friday, November 14, 1930. The Round Table Conference.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20085, 14 November 1930, Page 12

The Press Friday, November 14, 1930. The Round Table Conference.

The Round Table Conference, opened by .the King on Wednesday, may or may not mark the last stage in a period of exceptional difficulty and danger in India. If. it. succeeds, all the " wisdpm, £nd" gobfT, Jwill" of which his Majesty spoke will, still be required to convert an agreement in words into the; vital co-operation of peoples. If it fails, the difficulty and the danger of Great Britain's task in India may be greater than ever, but it will neither be abandoned nor continued in a dif-ferent-temper or with a different purpose. Great Britain's aim in India has bceu too often affirmed, and in too earnest a spirit, to be-altered br given up; but, though "the Conference is in no sense a final authority, its deliberations may begin an advance and end a struggle. The fact that it is not fully representative of India, though full representation had been hoped for and laboured for, from one point of view is regrettable. If it had been possible to meet the Congress leaders with, the rest and to reach a sane agreement with them, this would have' been unmistakable success. 1 But the absence of Congress representatives is due to causes which show that, if they had attended, the Conference must have failed. If it has a chance of succeeding, it is that the Indian delegates are there to ask and to accept something less than the* impossible, demanded by Gandhi and the Nehrus. Tl 's does not-mean that the Conference has been " packed" with Indians subservient to the Government of India or the British Government or with placable nonentities, or that the powerful nationalistic feeling of the Congress, which undoubtedly does express the desire of millions of Indians, has been left voiceless-or allowed only a feeble voice. In addition to representatives carefully chosen to speak for interests, classes, and creeds outside the Congress, there are delegates present, such as Mr Jinnah, Mr Srinivasa Sastri, and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, vfari assert as boldly as any of ■ the Congress leaders India's right to self-determination. But these Indians are not blind to facts and ,the danger of defying them. Though it would be absurd to hope that they do or will ask nothing but what Great Britain can grant easily and at once, they are at least disposed to think that the utmost possible, as soon as possible, is enough. Gandhi insists on thing, and at onfce, whatever the consequences might be. When Sir Tej Bahadur Sapim and Mr «Jayakar, with I Lord Irwin's approval «nd help, endeavoured to learn on what terms the .Congress leaders would stop the civil disobedience movement and participate in the Conference, Gandhi and the-two Nehrus replied, last August, that they wonld difccuss the question of the Confyanna and order the cessation of civil disobedience^ —but not of the trade boycotfrr-jpn fhpso conditions: India's right to secede must be recognised; a responsible national Government must be set up, in full charge of the army and finance; and " unjust" British claims, including the national debt, must be referred to ah independent tribunal. In other words, if the Government of India and the British Government would capitulate, the Congress leaders wight attend the Conference to accept the surrender and sign the treaty, and apart from this business the Conference would have had little or nothing to do. _ Of course such terras were unacceptable and probably not thought of as anything else by the propounders; but if this was an attempt to wreck the Conference before it was constituted, it may prove to have been badly The Conference map succeed: its problem, in a nutshell, is to reconcile Dominion, status with. the. financial and judicial and military safeguards that Great Britain can only relax as India proVes that it is safe to relax them. If the Conference solves this prdblem, there is a chance that India will realise the folly of the Congress irrationalists, whose demands were intended to make a solution impossible, and- turii-;M?ay fijpni them to wiser courses and advisers.