INDIA: Mahatma and Viceroy

Common Sense has published a remarkable document — five letters exchanged between Mohandas K. Gandhi (then a political prisoner in the Aga Khan's palace at Poona) and India's Viceroy, Viscount Wavell. In his foreword Newsman Louis Fischer, who made the letters public, claimed that Gandhi's recent conciliatory proposal to Wavell for Indian independence (TIME, Aug. 28) was a "sequel" to this correspondence. That might or might not be true. But as historic and human documents, the letters were unique. Each of the correspondents was an arch-type—Gandhi of the saintly man turned...

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