INDIA: Tea with an Ogre

When U. S. citizens wearied of St. Gandhi, prominent U. S. newsfolk stopped covering India's fight for freedom, but last week famed Karl H. von Wiegand, sagacious Hearstling, cabled: "I have just traveled through India from the extreme southern part to Bombay and Allahabad in the North, more than 1,500 miles. "Talks with members of almost every class of Indians quickly reveal that feeling—even hatred—against the British, is intensifying. The current is steadily running deeper. "British of long residence in India frankly admitted that they fear a big explosion sooner or later. Some even touched guardedly on the 'nightmare of massacre.' "Viceroy the Earl of Willingdon, with the approval of the British Government and British Parliament in London, has set in motion a gigantic police apparatus of drastic suppression of civil rights, free speech and freedom of assembly, such as the world has not seen in many years excepting in Russia and in Italy. . . . "Two years at hard labor are given for not leaving your home town when so ordered by police; for flying the Nationalist flag of India; for saluting that flag; for observing hartal, that is, closing your business as a protest against the imprisonment of Gandhi; for peaceful demonstrations on the street; for making speeches urging the freedom of India. . . . "The attempt made to create the impression that Gandhi's influence is on the wane, that he is losing his hold on the imagination of the people of India, is utterly misleading. . . . One wonders whether the British are misleading the world as to the true situation or are deceived themselves." Not quite such a Wicked Ogre as Indian mothers tell their children he is. Viceroy Earl of Willingdon made his first conciliatory move last week toward St. Gandhi. To everyone's surprise Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, new President of the Gandhite Indian National Congress (TIME, March 28), was not at once jailed, as she had prophesied she would be. Instead she was invited to take tea with Ogre Willingdon at New Delhi.