Evening Post

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 123, 20 November 1931, Page 8

Evening Post.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1931.

MR. GANDHI'S DIPLOMACY

Mr. Gandhi, who has many of the qualifications of a saint, is on that account adored as a statesman by thousands of sentimentalists in Great Britain and by millions in America. Yet saints have usually been too deeply concerned in the affairs of the next world to shine in those of the present one, and it is probably only in legend that one could find a great saint who was also a great statesman. If Mr. Gandhi is no exception to the rule, one special reason is that to the virtues of a saint he adds not a few of the weaknesses of a movie star. He is vain, he is illogical, he is shifty, he is "temperamental," and he" does not shrink from turning a genuine self-denial to worldly profit by all the arts of self-advertisement. "Hitch your wagon ito a star" was Emerson's advice to the reformer, but if he had lived two or three generations later he might well have added thai the reformer who hitches his wagon to the kind of star that shines over Hollywood is likely to . get into trouble. In politics at any rate Mr. Gandhi's light is not that of a fixed star. It moves and changes so rapidly as to illustrate the prophecy of the poet* that , Naught shall endure savo mutability. The idealists who are hitching their wagon to this star from the East might as well tie' it up to. a will o' the wisp. It is quite unnecessary to illustrate what we have said from all the chopping and the changing, the contradictions and the evasions, the tears and the threats, that preceded Mr*. Gandhi's decision to attend the Round Table Conference. His changed attitude to the Conference since he first addressed its Federal Structure Committee on the 15th September is quite sufficient for the purpose. On that occasion he assured the British Government that "at no stage would il be . his desire to embarrass authority." ' I havo-come to London, he said, to attend the Committee, and the Bound' Table Conference when the proper time comes, absolutely in the spirit of cooperation, and .to strive my utmost to find points of agreement. Nobody, questioned the sincerity of these words, for if Mr. Gandhi's object had been to wreck the Conference he could have attained it without the trouble of a -journey to London, either by the sticking to the decision which he had announced on 11th August against attending the Conference'owing to alleged breaches of his. agreement with Lord'-Irwin, or by any other equally plausible pretext. ' Nor Is there any need to question the sincerity of the efforts that Mr. '. Gandhi has since made to arrive at an agreement which the Conference, the 'British Government, and the Indian Congress could accept: Our cabled reports have, indeed, supplied: no evidence that the Conference has been getting much constructive help from Mr. Gandhi, and this has made the occasional expressions of impatience,, of which he seems to hav t e had the monopoly, appear the more ungracious. "But all this evidence, whether, positive or negative, amounts to very little in comparison with the. deplorable form in which Mr. Gandhi's impatience found expression on Armistice Day. On this occasion Mr. Gandhi went outside the Conference to predict its complete failure, to impugn' the motives of the British Government, and to indicate the attack which they would have to face if they did not surrender. As this extraordinary statement is vouched by the reputable and not unfriendly newspaper to which it was made, there is no ground for doubting its authenticity. The essence of it was contained in a single sentence which was cabled on the. 12th inst. in the exact words reported by the London "Star":

The Round Table Conference is bound to fail, and Mr. MacDonald'a .only alternatives aro to grant the Indian Congress's full programme or return to military autocracy.

The rest of the message summarised Mr. Gandhi's explanation of the consequences that non-compliance with all the demands of the Congress would involve. The civil disobedience campaign would be renewed.. There would be a complete boycott of British, goods. A preference would be given to American manufactures even if they were of inferior quality. Beet sugar would be imported from Germany rather than cane sugar from Mauritius. It might be difficult to, find in the annals of diplomacy a parallel to these threats of war, uttered during the progress of a, ' Peace Conference by one of the delegates, and supported by details of the ruthlessness with which1 it would be raged. Even as "he must have a: long spoon that must eat with the devil," evidently so must he that sits at a Round Table with a saint expect a suspension of those rules of courtesy, common-sense, and lairplay which sinners have devised for their own protection

But by far die gravest part of Mr

Gandhi's offence has slill to be mentioned.

Tho British knew, ho siiid, ihul (ho Confcraicc would fail when they called it, because they packed it with delegates who were bound to quarrel.

This is a charge against Mi. Mac Donald and his colleagues of hypocrisy and fraud in organising at an immense cost a Conference which they intended to fail, and of which' they ensured the failure by "packing it with delegates who were bound to tfuarrel." A charge which it would be outrageous for anybody to make is peculiarly outrageous when it is made by Mr. Gandhi. He was himself the last of the' delegates whose presence at the Conference was in doubt. The personnel had been otherwise completed while he still hesitated. Why then did he accept membership of a Conference which he knew to be foredoomed to failure by the dishonesty of the Ministers who had organised it? Why did he waste time.and money in coming to London to take a futile part in such a fraud? Why did he talk when, he arrived about "the spirit of co-operation" and about striving "to find points of agreement" with delegates whom the fraud of the British Government had 'squared to disagree? If the whole thing was a fraud and a farce, why should a saint have had any truck with it and played into the. hands of the oppressors of India by suspending his campaign against'them in the meantime? .Even'now we have not reached the climax of Mr. Gandhi's performance. The rock on which the Round Table Conference threatens to split is the strife between Hindu and Moslem. The proper place to settle it is on Indian soil, but all attempts to settle it there have failed. That failure was one of the reasons for Mr. Gandhi's hesitation to attend the Conference, for what chance had Swaraj with that issue unsettled? Yet if the Conference fails to settle what the parties have failed to settle, and what Mr. Gandhi himself has failed to settle, he is prepared to put the whole blame on' the fraud of the British Government in packing the Conference with that object in view!