Nothing could be more deplorable than that Mr. Gandhi should
carry out his declared intentions—it is difficult not to write his threat, for threat it unquestion- ably is in view of the certain consequences the execution of the intention would have in so emotional a country as India. It is possible to admire his indisputable sincerity and the indomitable courage which would, if necessary, enable him to carry his resolution to a fatal finish, and yet at the same time to hold with profound conviction that his latest move is politically intolerable (is any Indian leader of any party to seek his ends by similar means ?) and morally indefensible. We have never hesitated to criticize the policy of the Government in regard to India, and we have associated ourselves often enough with Mr. Gandhi to give us the right to claim that our words should carry some weight with him when we urge him to abandon once and for ever recourse to a weapon not fundamentally distinguishable from the Japanese practice of committing hara-kiri on an enemy's doorstep. There may well, as Mr. Patel reminds him, be a great work for him still to do in the self-governing India of to-morrow. If he died now and in this way, he would live in history as a man courageous and self- sacrificing but tragically misguided, and British Ministers, as any fair-minded reader of the correspondence published on Tuesday must recognize, would be acquitted by the detached judgement of posterity of any shadow of respon- sibility for the step he had thought fit to take.
