Pomp & the Circumstances

Even the soft Indian morning seemed a bright blue pennant, peculiarly British. Sunlight splashed on the copper dome of the Viceroy's palace, and down Kings Way the War Memorial Arch, casting precise shadows, was a reminder of past victories. There was nothing to suggest desperation in the brightly polished Rolls-Royce with a plucky little Union Jack whipping from the radiator cap. The long line of troops stood rigid, a starched khaki pride.

Only Sir Edward Elgar could have put this scene to music. Only Kipling could have rhymed it. It was the glory of the British Empire summarized. And yet this was the scene--more than Singapore (see p. 18), more than the wrangling House of Commons (see p. 31), more than the smoke-choked, German-defiled Strait of Dover (see p. 27)--that said to the world: the British Empire, as an idea, is on its last gallant march, from which it may not come home.

For in that Rolls-Royce, reviewing those troops, owning that bright blue morning, was a man who, by the old standards, was just a "native," but, by the new, was one of the half-dozen most important men in the world-Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China. By his side was his beautiful wife, Mei-ling Soong Chiang, symbol, above all others, of the women of Asia. He had flown to India to tell the British to fight harder, and to ask the Indians to. In the difference between telling and asking lay, if not a world, at least an Empire.

The Gissimo's visit to New Delhi was not just a polite gesture. It was a practical, dynamic war move. Its importance was not hard to find:

In China there are 425,000,000 people. In India there are 352,000,000. One out of every three people on the face of the earth is either Chinese or Indian. One-third of the world's manpower is a tremendous military potential.

But last week--a very late week, as the communiques told--the manpower was still just a potential. The Gissimo hoped to take it one step closer to reality--coordinated, fighting reality. He had on his agenda the current facts of the war and the future hopes as well. The facts he took up with the British, the hopes with the Indians.

India for Indians? The Generalissimo and his military staff of 15 men let the British Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, and the British Commander in India, General Sir Alan Fleming Hartley, hear some strong words. Those words told off the British Burma Command's tardiness in taking advantage of the strong Chinese Army units sent there to fight the Japanese. They pointed out what the loss of Rangoon would mean to the Allied war effort: China cut off (alternate "Burma Roads" to India are being constructed, but they are not yet finished), Calcutta threatened, the natural springboard for a counteroffensive lost. Above all, they reproached British tardiness in setting the Indians free, to have and to hold India.

Even military experts were beginning to realize last week that it takes more than tactics, more than logistics or ordnance, to win through. The military correspondent of the London Evening Standard put Chiang Kai-shek's case for him pretty clearly. To account for China's and Russia's resistance against apparently overwhelming odds, he said: "These two allies prepared their defense-in-depth among the populations themselves. Malaya was not roused. Will Burma be? Will India? War is a branch of politics, all know. What some forget is that politics are the main part of war."

India for Japanese? In the summer of 1939, when Chungking was suffering its first horrible season of bombing, the Indian leader Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited China for a fortnight. "These two weeks," he wrote later, "were memorable ones, both personally for me and for the future relations of India and China. I found, to my joy, that my desire that China and India should draw closer to each other was fully reciprocated by China's leaders, and more especially by that great man who has become the symbol of China's unity and her determination to be free."

Chiang Kaishek, that man, hoped by his visit last week to cash in on these cordial sentiments. For Pandit Nehru, by succeeding Mahatma Gandhi as Chairman of the Indian National Congress, had become the symbol of India's determination to be free.

But Pandit Nehru apparently feared that the Gissimo, officially an ally of the British raj, was on the wrong team. Before one of his conferences with the Gissimo, Pandit Nehru told TIME'S correspondent: "India will never grovel before the Japanese, but will utilize passive resistance, which, unlike Western pacifism, is a powerful weapon. . . . The moral factor is the dominating influence in this war, and it would make an immense difference if India and like countries were free."

After several discussions of freedom which Pandit Nehru held with the Gissimo, a newspaperman asked Pandit Nehru whether the visit would cause India's political parties to join the war effort. He answered: "Inferences which some quarters are drawing from Chiang's visit are entirely unjustified."

Even as he spoke, the covetous Japanese eye stared at India. A slavery far worse than British Imperialism was creeping, like the grip of an octopus, closer & closer. The Gissimo's beautiful Missimo was not referring to anything British for Indians to hear: "We prefer death to slavery." And the Gissimo's spokesman, genial, Missouri-educated Hollington Tong, who knows English better than some Englishmen, put it plainly to Indian newsmen. As one "native" to others, he explained just what that preferable death might be like.

"I hope we can cooperate against aggression. The Japs also gave us sweet words, but brought hell, rape, looting, death--chill death, barbaric death."

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