It would help a lot in waging this war if
facile left-wing writers and speakers could acquire a sense of responsibility sufficient to restrain them from embellishing statements of fact with (if I may adapt a historic phrase) ideological inexactitudes. Here is a passage in a cable to a daily paper on Sir Stafford Cripps' visit to India : " No happier choice of a negotiator," it runs, " could have been made at this hour of mounting peril to a whole sub- continent whose leaders and peoples are still allowed no say in defence of their homeland." No say ? The writer, being in India, cannot be ignorant of the fact that the Viceroy's Executive Council contains a majority of Indians, and that the National Defence Council contains only one British member out of a total of 3o. To allege that the Indian leaders and people have " no say " in defence of their homeland is simply contrary to fact. Unfortunately half the readers of the papers, not being close students of Indian affairs, accept- what they see there, and the harm is done.
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