Gandhi Out!

As the pilot of India's Ship of State, Viceroy Baron Irwin went in a single day last week from Full Speed Ahead to Full Speed Astern.

India has been going these many months on the theory that to demonstrate in favor of Nationalism, or even to be a member of the Working Committee of the Nationalist Congress, was a crime. But today the British Government wants India's Nationalist leaders to read, discuss among themselves and accept the plan for "reserved Dominion Status" drafted in London by the Indian Round Table Conference (TIME, Jan. 26). In jail they could read, but not discuss. Therefore, last week, the Viceroy decreed that what had been crimes the day before were no longer crimes, ordered the "unconditional release" of the principal Nationalists and their leader, St. Gandhi.

Recently the bandy-legged little Mahatma has abandoned even goat's milk as too luxurious, subsisted on a mixture of parched Indian corn, California raisins and bird seed. Ordered by telegraph to release St. Gandhi, the British Governor of Yerovda jail in Poona, incredulous, delayed to act, demanded "written orders." When these came St. Gandhi, arrested in the dead of night last May, was released in the dead of night. In London the Opposition press raged against the Viceroy's jail delivery, declared that he would be in "an almost ludicrously humiliating position" if the Gandhites continued to demonstrate for independence and had to be locked up again. In Calcutta, simultaneously, Nationalist S. Chandra Bose was let out of jail. He promptly resumed his Nationalist oratory, was locked up again by policemen who doubtless felt foolish. In London, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald all but sobbed with emotion in a typical appeal to the House of Commons as debate on the Round Table Conference work began: "If you are prepared to march our soldiers from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, if you are prepared to stage--for the world to behold--the failure of our political genius and to provide, simultaneously, the spectacle of bringing your name and fame very low--then refuse to let us proceed!"

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