19 SEPTEMBER 1931, Page 2

The Round Table Conference Lord Willingdon, the Viceroy, at Simla,

on Monday, addressed the Council and Assembly on the importance of co-operation in face of India's economic and political difficulties. While all eyes were fixed on the London Conference, peace and order must be maintained in India and the revolutionary campaign of murder must be checked. Meanwhile in London the Federal Structure Committee met, and was attended for the first time by Mr. Gandhi, wearing a homespun robe over a loin- cloth. The Congress leader remained silent on Monday, but on Tuesday he made a long speech in which he demanded complete independence for India. He had ceased, he said, to call himself a British subject. lie aspired to be "a citizen" not in the Empire but in a " Commonwealth, in a partnership, possibly an in- dissoluble partnership, but not a partnership super- imposed by one nation upon another." He added, in vague terms, that " the Congress would never think of repudiating a single claim or burden that it should justly discharge."