GANDHIJI: I believe and don't believe in the sincerity of MacDonald, as in a sense he means to stand by the declaration he has made, but he must also know that the declaration does not mean responsibility at the Centre and yet he says it contains responsibility at the Centre and wants you to believe what is not true. There is another sense also in which he has appeared to me as insincereΓÇö not open but evasive in his conversationΓÇöand so I could not form an altogether good opinion of him. He carries a responsibility on his shoulders which he can ill afford to bear. He is overworked, and in me he has a difficult subject to deal with. He finds me a fighter; on the other hand, my demand seems to be pitched so high that he cannot circumvent me and so he gives me the idea of an insincere man. It may be weakness and not insincerity.
ROMAIN ROLLAND: He wrote beautifully about India.
G. His views are favourable even today, but then he had no responsibility. Today he has.
R. R. : His statement was impertinent. Your last speech at R.T.C. has much moved many people.
G. "Extraordinary speech openly inspired by Bolshevik ideas." That was the speech at the Federal Structure Committee on commercial discrimination. It did create consternation among my friends.
I said I or Congress would not discriminate against a person because he was an Englishman, but there would be discriminaion on other grounds, and I presented him with the formula : any interest in conflict with the national interest or not legitimatey acquired, I said, would be taken over by the State and I said that it would apply to Europeans of India. This, I said, would not be done by an executive order but by the order from the Federal Court.
[The Ordinance] is an inhuman document, worse than the Rowlatt Act. The menace to the Government of India from its own subordinates is of a different character. They disregarded instructions of a liberal nature, which are rare, but they are ready to carry out all instructions of a destructive character. Whereas the Central power is not able to exact discipline. I have called the Civil Service of India the greatest political freemasonry. The Secret Service is nothing before this snake-like coil of Civil Service. . . .
R. R. The German youth is quite different from what he was before War. Before War they believed in the concrete value of power. They have seen it curshed. The new youth lives in a state of relativismΓÇöno wonder they come from Einstein's place. To the German youth France seems to be a country of old values, so that German youth is ready to follow new ideals. They are angry with France which is a dead weight on the past. We can't judge Europe by the victor.
G. The Indian youth may not be capable of heroic self-sacrifice, but it is coming under the influence of non-resistance.
