The Round Table' and After - The three outstanding personalities
_ the closing days of the_ Round Table- Conference .were the Prime Minister, Mr. Sastri and, inevitably, Mr. Gandhi. Mr. MacDonald has done a great - piece of work in carrying the January pledge of the Labour Government unscathed through a very different Cabinet in December, and the success of the negotiations now to be continued in a new form will depend very largely on how far he keeps the strings in his own hands at this end. Mr. Sastri added one more to the great services he has continuously rendered to his country by his broad-visioned and impressive appeal to Mr. Gandhi to throw his influ- ence definitely on the side of conciliation and mutual understanding. Mr. Gandhi, unhappily, remains any- thing but definite, and it is impossible to gather from any of his recent utterances what line he intends to take on his return to India. He probably does not know himself. Another civil disobedience campaign, at a time when a necessity profoundly to be deplored but not seriously to be questioned has entailed measures of abnormal severity for the repression of crime in Bengal, would have calamitous consequences in India. There is some tendency here to imagine that Mr. Gandhi's influence over his countrymen has waned. No ground exists for that belief. The Mahatma can stilt do more than any man living to bring self-government for India into being. * *
