Peace Terms

The long awaited "peace terms" offered by Mahatma Gandhi to the British Government were duly forwarded by Viceroy Lord Irwin to London last week. Nationalist demands were reported to be simply: "Give us Dominion status and we will abandon the civil disobedience campaign."

To foreign observers this demand seemed modest enough. The British Government has continually implied that it was maintaining India in tutelage only until she could be educated to Dominion-hood. But the British lion last week roared his amazement at St. Gandhi's "diabolically clever'' plan. If the Labor Government attempted to give India Dominion status it would fail with the next election, said English politicians. If it did not, Indians would not attend the September round table conference, another blow at the Laborites.

Winston Churchill, who has aspirations of leading the Conservatives again, spoke with the oldtime voice of Kipling:

"The Government of India has arrested and imprisoned Gandhi for criminal breeches of law. They now permit him to hold cabinet councils with his fellow conspirators in jail, while the great governing organism, upon whose calm strength the lives and livelihood of uncounted millions depend, wait cap in hand outside the cell door, hoping to wheedle a few kind words out of their prisoner.

"It would be wrong to lure and coax Indian representatives to the round table conference over here with vague phrases about Dominion status when it is quite certain that these Indian politicians will not obtain Dominion status in their life-times."

Perhaps moved by the fact that Bombay's foreign trade had declined over $8,000,000 for the month of June as compared with June 1929, British citizens of Calcutta held a huge mass meeting to denounce the "contemptibly weak manner in which India is being governed."

With these activities in mind, soothingly counselled the sage Manchester Guardian: "Churchill and his school do not understand the changes that have lately come about in India and Egypt. They think of Kipling's India, but that is as dead as mutton. In its place stands a disorganized, feverish mass of people. . . . determined to manage their own affairs."

Meantime, the Nationalists employed a new and annoying British boycott idea. Municipal funds of Ahmedabad ($1,215,000 annual revenue, $1,460,000 reserve) were removed from English banking houses, deposited in Indian-owned institutions.

New character was given the desultory guerilla warfare against Afridi tribesmen on the northwest frontier when one of a party of tribesmen shot down and killed a Capt. F. Ashcroft of a British infantry platoon, Observers thought that the incident would precipitate a far more aggressive policy on the part of the British toward suppressing the uprising.

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