5 SEPTEMBER 1931, Page 2

India Mr. Gandhi's farewell to India has been an affair

as protracted as a prima donna's farewell to her art, but at last he is on the high seas, bound for London, where he will represent Congress at the Round Table Conference. He should be grateful to the Viceroy both for pressure to go and for " saving his face." He leaves behind him a country where the situation which, if it gives no cause for complacency, gives none for immediate alarm. On the frontier Abdul Ghaffar Khan's " Red Shirts " are an enigma in which our interest cannot afford to be academic. Their leader claims 300,000 followers ; official estimates put the number of recruits actually enrolled at rather over the total of a year ago-20,000. In a crisis, the latter figure might well be the further from the truth. It is certain that discipline and equipment within the organization are improving rapidly. News of the rebellion in Burma is still encouraging, though not unduly so.