INDIA: The Gravest Danger

The Tory gentlemen of the House of Lords were angry. Peer after peer rose to condemn Britain's decision to quit India next year (TIME, March 3). The Conservative leader, Viscount Cranborne, said the Government was "throwing up the sponge . . . abandoning our friends, washing their hands of the whole business." A motion of condemnation came from an old India hand, Viscount Templewood (as Sir Samuel Hoare he had been Secretary of State for India four years, then Foreign Secretary in 1935). He and others argued that the Government's decision was a betrayal of India's minorities and "a...