Viceroy into Roi

The job of ruling in India seven times as many subjects of the King-Emperor as live in the British Isles is likely to be tough during the weeks to come for that tall, scholarly Scottish banker, Viceroy and Governor General the Marquess of Linlithgow, Earl of Hopetoun and Baron Hope. Last week the House of Commons officially gave up hope that during a Nazi Blitzkrieg the India Office in London could continue to run India by cable and radio remote control. Only thing to do was to make the Viceroy in effect not only Roi but also Dictator over 350,000,000 people. This the House of Commons did.

Mahatma Gandhi has lately shown signs of weaseling and wavering around to a position where the Nazis (or Communists) may not find him hard to deal with. The nut-brown little saint-cum-politico now keeps chattering that "Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted Naziism or Fascism. At best it is merely a cloak to hide the Nazi and Fascist tendencies of imperialism. And it is to save such 'democracy' that the war is being fought! There is something hypocritical about it." Such vaguely anti-Ally sentiments from Gandhi represent, a sharp change in attitude, for up to about the time France cracked, the Mahatma was still amiably backing & filling in quasi-cooperation with Lord Linlithgow.

First act of the Viceroy against Nazi propaganda in India was to forbid that radio sets in the popular tea and betel-leaf shops be tuned in on German stations. Indian listening to the Nazis, explained the Viceroy, was "creating unjustified nervousness." Next the British Raj cut off the public payroll the Indian National Congress members who since last November in seven out of the eleven Provinces have boycotted these assemblies but continued to draw their salaries. Then Lord Linlithgow conscripted all British males from 18 to 50 for defense of India. He also conscripted skilled Indian workers, decreed speedups of Indian munitions and other war-goods production.

Indians, meantime, are being exhorted by the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress to non-cooperate with the Raj in all war measures. More serious, the Working Committee, which is now increasingly at outs with Mahatma Gandhi, has exhorted all local Congress committees to try to "arm the people for self-defense"--meaning possible revolt. Somehow or other the Viceroy and the white Britons he conscripted last week must manage to remain top dogs in India. This is going to be harder work than the bird-shooting, garden-partying and ceremony-going the able Scotsman has been doing at the Empire's poshest post for the past four years.

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