DIFFICULT TASK FOR VICEROY

Chronicle (Levin), 28 June 1946, Page 5

DIFFICULT TASK FOR VICEROY

LONDON, June 26. India received the Cahinet Mission's statement in a mood of disillusionment, suspcion and emergency — disillusionment mostly hecause of the exhihition of chronic -communalism by the Indian leaders which, throughout the talks, i'orced the mission into the invidious role of arbiter hetween the coniiicting clements, says the Times' New Delhi correspondent. The saddest thing ahout the whole three months of proceedings has been ^ the only too ohvious desire of the majority and tlie minority communities to avoid shouldering the responsihility for leading the country into independence, unless they have British hacking for their exaggerated claims upon other communities. This might he laughahle if not so tragic. It iS difficult to see how the Viceroy, who now faces the tremendous task of administering with officials only can hope to exercise the spirit of intolerance and intransigeance which is afc the root of'the breakdown. The country now faces the prospect of electing a constituent assenibly which will hammer out its independence. No one pretends tliis will he other than a protracted herculean task. If "it is not to fail it must he conducted in an atmospliere free from sectarian strife, which is precisely why British statesmen are so stressing the need for a Coalition Government for the interim period.