INDIAN PORTRAITS

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20412, 5 December 1931, Page 13

INDIAN PORTRAITS

lI.—MR GANDHI IN LONDON

(specially written- for the S'Bess.)

H\v L. C. "Webb. |

(Saturday is a dismal day in London and Euston road is a dismal part ot' London. To make ' matters " worse, a light rain was falling and already, in the early afternoon, the buses were lit up. The sooty buildings were dejected and dripping—all except Gilbert Scott's pjinatiti;' railway ,-tatioii. Seen through the fog that exotic pile, with its Gothicrevival fripperies, revealed something of the dream that inspired its justly maligned architect. So I thought as I contemplated it fro in the portico of the Friends' Meeting House, that uncompromisingly modern newcomer to Buston road. Around mo was a group so strangely mixed that it could have gathered nowhere except in London —half a dozen elderly Indian merchants, their exquisite silk turbans protected by umbrellas, a hundred or more Indian students with au air of the London .School of Economics about them, some elderly ladies of the sort that is "interested" in "movements," a few members of Parliament, several elaborately disinterested gentlomon in the striking uniform of tlm plain-clothes police, anil some hundreds of those mysterious people who collect because other people collect. Drawn up beside the pavement were three motor-vans with movie cameras on top, tended by very wet operators who were, one guessed, wishing themselves back in Alabama. We were waiting—and had been for two hours —for the arrival of Mr" Gandhi. By three o'clock .the group was a crowd, spilling over the pavement and across the rond to the railings ot an outskirt of Regent's Park. At intervals Ave bought newspapers describing the arrival of Mr Gandhi at Southampton and his progress towards London; once a Communist addressed us on tho exploitation of the Indian proletariat, but it was too damp for political antagonisms to be aroused, and after shouting a few dispirited insults at a man unhappy enough to be wearing a topper, the orator departed. At 3.50 the police began to arrive, their black capes glistening pleasantly in the electric light. In an amiable but bored way they shovelled a few hundred people off the pavement and cleared a space in front of the doors. Important people began to arrive in taxis, and everyone became plcasurably thrilled; surely ho could not be far off now. (In point of fact, he had already entered by a back door and was drinking orange-juicc in an ante-room.) Inside the centrally-heated hall a packed audience steamed unpleasantly and shuffled cold feet. But things wore moving at last; a battalion of cameramen appeared in front of the stage and began arranging plates and flares. A door at the back of tho stage opened; there was instantly dead silence, and everyone craned' forward. Something vague and white was outlined for a moment in the doorway, but before anyone could move or speak the artillery of the cameramen burst, into startling activity. Magnesium flares popped and fizzed, intense white flashes left everyone temporarily blind, arid a cloud of smoke rolled up in front of the stage. As it dispersed there was revealed a queer little man with a shaven head and steel rimmed spectacles, his thin legs bare and his body swathed in intricate folds of white cloth. His hands made the gesture of prayer and on hia face was the happy/pleasantly wicked Smile pf a schoolboy detected in a minor misdemeanour. Unconsciously, tho stage management was perfect. ' The Indians in the audience yellel and waved; the English people at first clapped decorously, then stamped, and finally, caught up by the tide, shouted too. I suspect, however, that most of them were, like myself, taking in the details of Mr Gandhi's personal appearance with some astonishment. The Beaverbrook and Rotheraere newspapers have made familiar to the English public a photograph of Mr Gandhi which has been skilfully adjusted to the tone of thoir leading articles. This lean, cruel, leering, fanatical face has caused thousands of British fathers to sputter angrily at the breakfast-table and ask why this spineless Government doesn't t;lap him in gaol and leave him there. Now Mr Gandhi, though quite as lean and toothless and shaven as his photographs make him out to be, has a charm of appearance, of voice, and qf n?anner that is almost uncanny. (A settlement worker in the East End, where Mr Gandhi was later to live, told me that children always became devoted to him on the shortest acquaintance.) I While the English were making their raontal adjustments with as good a grace as possible, Mr Laurence Housman began a Speech of Welcome, Mr Housman set himself gladly to the task of intensifying an already heavily charged emotional atmosphere; his rich voice boomed and quavered, his eyes strayed frequently to the ceiling, and the words "fellowship," "love," "brotherhood," and "peace" seemed to echo constantly about us. ("This man," said an English voice just behind me, "is a high-grade Rotarian,") By the time he had finished everyone was keyed up; a skilled orator could have done anything with such an audience. I believe that if Mr Gandhi had wanted to he could have led u 8 forth to start a riot or a crusade. But being a great orator, and not merely a good one, he never gives an audience what it is waiting for. Mr Housman had blown us up like balloons; we felt we had to do something spectacular in the cause of freedom or burst. Mr Gandhi gently deflated us. Nothing about liberty or peace or brotherhood ; only a sober account-of the tasks before tho Round-Table Conference, of the difficulties of ing his followers from umvise violence, and of the motives behind the Congress Party. His voice was deforential and patiently explanatory. It was the speech of a man who know, 8 . P°'^V; S and is yet more than a politician. The wholo tangled situation, about which there has been so much angry writing and speaking, seemed for the moment to resolve itself into a few clear moral issues. At the finish ho invited us to pray according to our several religions "or creeds —there must have been thirty or forty represented—for the success of tho Conference. Mr Gandlii left the stage and paddlail oft' down the aisle towards the front door, his sandals flip-flopping < on the floor. 'ln tho midst of' the crowd, flauked by two tall ushers, lie looked extraordinarily small and withered, and yot still most incredibly benign. Ihe Indians raised a piercing shout of ' Ki jai. Mahatiria Gandhi," and he was gone. . , Outside, the rain and the wind had. increased, and a dozen anxious friends pounced on the thrust him into a closed motorrcar, and began swathing him in blankets. In the n only the smile and the spectacles ware visible. My last glimpse wa* of a benevolent cocoon disappearing m ° the wet darkness.