Between the Roy* and the Viceroy there is this difference: The Earl of Willingdon on his throne at Delhi can initiate action, decree the most drastic measures—in short, can rule. Last week the return to India of Mahatma Gandhi gave the Viceroy a chance to seem every inch a king. When Mr. Gandhi begged audience by telegram to discuss Lord Willingdon's recent ordinance suppressing free speech, freedom of assembly and virtually all civil rights in Bengal (TIME, Dec. 14), he received from the Viceregal court the telegraphic answer:
". . . His Excellency feels bound to emphasize that he will not be prepared to discuss with you the measures which the Government of India, with the full approval of His Majesty's Government, have found it necessary to adopt in Bengal, the United Provinces and the North-west Frontier Province. . . ."
In Bombay the Viceregal telegram was publicly called "insulting" by President Vallabhai Patel of the Gandhite Indian National Congress. Other Gandhites shouted: "This means war!" Squatting in his little tent pitched atop a Bombay tenement house, the Mahatma meditated half the night. Then loyal followers heard the scratch, scratch of his pen as he wrote to the Viceroy:
"You demand co-operation from the Congress without returning any on behalf of the Government. ... I can read in no other way your peremptory refusal to discuss the ordinances. . . . The Congress must resist with its prescribed creed of non-violence such measures of legalized terrorism as have been imposed in various provinces."
Next morning Disciple Madeline Slade, daughter of a deceased British Admiral, hastily washed all the Mahatma's loin cloths, so that he might not lack fresh ones in jail. Meanwhile leading British and Indian merchants and businessmen peppered the Viceregal Court with telegrams, cables. They reminded Lord Willingdon that Mahatma Gandhi's arrest would mean a trade loss of millions of dollars to the Empire, since it would unquestionably provoke a fresh Indian boycott of British goods. Even the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, George Lansbury, successor to James Ramsay MacDonald as Parliamentary Leader of the Labor Party, cabled from London to the Viceroy: "Many friends are profoundly disturbed by your refusal to discuss the working of the ordinances with Gandhi . . . should be treated as one whose advice and goodwill on all matters should be considered."
The Viceroy's next act was 100% kingly. He ordered the Government of Bombay to arrest Mr. Gandhi in the dead of night and lodge him before dawn in Yerovda Jail near Poona, where the Mahatma had twice before been imprisoned (1926, 1930). At 3 a. m. Police Commissioner Wilson, Inspector Hirst and two strapping Indian policemen climbed the tenement stairs, approached the tent with-in which Mr. Gandhi was sleeping, bearing a warrant arresting the Mahatma "for good and sufficient reasons." Under a century-old ordinance enacted in the reign of King George IV. 50 years before Britain became an Empire, Prisoner Gandhi was to be lodged in jail for an indefinite term "during the pleasure of the Government."
"Bapoo, Bapoo!" cried Miss Slade softly, awakening the Mahatma by his pet name. "The police are here."
As it was Bapoo's day of silence, he received the warrant of arrest with a silent nod and smile,