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 must go today, I say, ‘Why did you not think of that yesterday and give the poor people time to go, and why don’t you find places for them to go to?’”

“If these are the matters which you wish Indians to control,” I suggested, “I am sure General Wavell would have regarded them as interference in the prosecution of the war.”

“The British,” Gandhi declared with a smile, “offered us wartime tasks like the running of can teens and the printing of stationery, which are of minor significance. Though I am no strategist, there are things we could have done which would have been more conducive to success in the war. The British have fared so badly in the Far East that they could do with help from us.”

“Apparently, then,” I summarized, “you placed chief stress on defense.”

He agreed.

“Did Nehru and other Congress leaders take the same view?”

“I hope so,” he replied. “I hope Nehru takes the same view, and that the Maulana Sahib [Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the Moslem president of the Congress Party] takes the same view.”

“In other words,” I said, “you found nothing good in the Cripps proposals?”

“I am glad you put this direct and definite question to me,” he exclaimed. “No. I found nothing good at all in them.”