15 OCTOBER 1921, Page 2

Mr. Gandhi is doing his utmost to induce Mr. Montagu

to allow the Indian Government to prosecute him. The brothers All have been committed for trial on a charge of sedition, as the result of their efforts to persuade the sepoys to desert. Mr. Gandhi, in his organ New India for September 29th, pub- lished a violent article declaring that " it is sinful for anyone, either as a soldier or civilian, to serve this Government," and that, as soon as the spinning wheel and the loom were to be found in every home, he would ask the Indian sepoy individually to leave his service and become a weaver." " We must," he added, " reiterate from numerous platforms the formula of the Ali brothers regarding the sepoy, and we must spread disaffection openly and systematically till it compels the Govern- ment to arrest us." Mr. Gandhi's tactics seem ludicrous to the West. But the illiterate masses of India are being taught to regard him as a prophet and a magician, and Mr. Montagu's refusal to let Mr. Gandhi be prosecuted causes the peasants to think that the Indian Government is afraid of the " Mahatma."