(3 of 3)
leave our
people too much leisure. Also we would produce more than we need and
thus enforce idleness upon some other part of the world as a result of
our overproduction." Abruptly St. Gandhi jerked out his dollar
watch, announced that it was 7 p.m.—time to pray. Mr. Chaplin was
moved to kneel and he scarcely wobbled during the long Hindu prayer.
Departing after some further talk with the Mahatma, Charlie Chaplin
gasped to reporters: "Gandhi is a tremendous personality,
tremendous! He is a great international figure! More, he is A GREAT
DRAMATIC FIGURE."
Gandhi to Lancashire, Climax of the Gandhi
week was the Mahatma's pilgrimage to cotton-spinning, overproducing
Lancashire. Intensely practical, Mr. Gandhi had no idealistic notion
that he could relieve unemployment in this distressed British area by
inducing capitalists to scrap their textile machinery, or unemployed
workers to adopt the hand loom. What the small brown man was after was
to drive a shrewd bargain in business-plus-politics. Before leaving
London in a third-class smoking compartment, Non-Smoker Gandhi let it
be known that if the powerful industrialists of Lancashire and other
depressed British textile areas will bring pressure upon the British
Government to grant India her independence, he, Gandhi, will move to
end India's present "boycott" of British cloth and goods.
Mr. Gandhi proposed more. Without mentioning Japan or the U.S., he let
it be known that he favors a reciprocal Anglo-Indian agreement under
which India's surplus needs (over and above what she can produce
herself) would be supplied exclusively by Britain—this agreement to
be, of course, in return for complete Indian independence.
"Tear
His Eyes Out!" St. Gandhi had set out for Lancashire to drive a
bargain by which he thought both sides would gain—but would hungry,
workless Lancashire understand? Was the 76-lb. Mahatma's life safe?
Scotland Yard sent with him four detectives (each over 200 lb.), just
in case. Darwen, black focus of Lancashire depression, was Inspector
Gandhi's objective, but Scotland Yard bundled him off his train at
nearby Springvale Village. There the Mahatma slept safely, with a local
constable stationed every 50 yards on all approaching roads. In Darwen
next day the well-guarded Mahatma was both booed ("Tear his eyes
out!") and cheered ("Good old Gandhi!"). He met the
Mayor, visited shut factories, gloomy homes. "It distresses
me," said St. Gandhi, "that in all this unemployment I have
had some kind of share. ... It is the result of a step I took as my
duty to the largest army of unemployed anywhere—the starving
millions of India. ... I have come in search of a way out of the
difficulty. ... I am powerless without the active co-operation of
Lancashire and Englishmen" (i.e. in freeing India).
