Checkmate

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1073, 10 September 1930, Page 9

Checkmate

PEACE EFFORTS. IN INDEX Impossible Demands CONGRESS LEADERS HELD TO BLAME British Official "Wireless Received 11.50 a.m. .RUGBY, Tuesday. THE failure of the unofficial efforts by tlie moderate Hindus, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and Mr. Jayakar, to persuade Ghandi and the Congress leaders to call off the civil disobedience movement in India is referred to in the Government of India’s summary of the Indian situation. This failure is ascribed to the unreasonable and impracticable nature of the Congress leaders’ demands.

The summary says: “Apart from prejudicing certain issues of first-rate constitutional importance, these demands most closely affect the financial interests of the local governments, and represent an attempt to impose the views of one party without reference to the opinions of others, and to practical constitutional and financial considerations. “They also involve a recognition by the- Government of the action on the restraint of trade, and a continuance of several of the main activities of the civil disobedience movement under i official sanction. “The proposals as a whole are so j far removed f£pm practical politics as i to suggest that they have been put i forward, deliberately for propaganda I purposes. j “An intimation has been conveyed ; to those responsible for them that a discussion on the basis of the demands iis impossible. At the outset, the attitude of the Government was. made | clear, subject to the essential condiI tion that the civil disobedience movement would be definitely abandoned. | “The Government was prepared I first to withdraw those emergency | methods made necessary by the movej ment; secondly, to ask the local j Governments sympathetically to rej view the sentence of imprisonment | passed on persons convicted of nonj violent offences directly connected | with the civil disobedience movement; s and, thirdly, to secure further fair and ■ adequate representation at tlie roundj table conference so that they could j have full facilities for pursuing a conI stitutional course.

“The breakdown of the conversations may give light and temporal impetus to the civil disobedience movement. On the other hand, the conversations have been unscrupulously used'in many parts of India aS' evidence that the Government was anxious for a settlement on any terms, and have been employed to encourage volunteers to defy the law on the assurance that prisoners would be very shortly released. “This opportunity for organised mis- ; representation is now removed. It may also be expected that moderate i opinion will recognise that while the Government was right to afford all facilities to public-spirited persons for pursuance of any efforts -they might make in the cause of peace, the responsibility for the breakdown of the conversations must be attributed to the extravagant and impracticable attitude of Congress.” FIGHT WITH TRIBES DRIVEN OFF BY BOMBS Recti. 10.15 a.m. DELHI, Tuesday. Following fierce hand-to-hand fighting near the village of Kharlachi in the North West Frontier Province between the Indian militia and hostile border tribesmen, the tribesmen were reinforced and raided picket posts in force at night, but were driven off by bombs. They suffered heavy casualties. Snipers wounded three of the militia.