POSTPONED FOR DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 April 1942, Page 3

POSTPONED FOR DAY

ANNOUNCEMENT BV SIR S. CRIPPS ON OUTCOME OF MISSION . TO,'INDIA. DISCUSSIONS CONTINUE. LONDON, April 6. The outcome of Sir Stafford Cripps’s mission to India may not be known until Wednesday. He had expected to make the result known tomorrow, but his announcement has now been postponed for a day. The working committee of the Congress Party again discussed the British plan for India and afterward the president, Maulana Azad, said he expected to receive a communication from Sir Stafford during the day. Mr Azad revealed that Pandit Nehru reported to the committee on a 2i-hour talk he had had with Colonel Louis Johnson, President Roosevelt’s envoy in India. The Moslem League, meeting at Allahabad, passed a resolution authorising its leader, Mr Jinnah, to take any steps in furtherance of the league’s objects that he deemed proper, provided they were consistent with the league’s principles and policy. Mr Jinnah explained that the resolution did not make him a dictator but gave him certain specific powers to be exercised in case of emergency.

TOJO’S ADVICE

INDIA URGED TO REJECT OFFER. (Received This Day, 10.55 a.m.) NEW YORK, April 6. The Tokio official radio reports that General Tojo (Prime Minister), in a statement, exhorted India to reject Britain’s offer of post-war independence. General Tojo recalled Japan’s progress through Malaya, Burma and the Andaman Islands and said: “The grim determination of our empire to crush the United States and Britain is thus being steadily translated into action. If India should remain as before, under the military control of Britain, it, I am afraid, would be unavoidable, in the course of our subjugation of the British forces there, that India would suffer great calamities.”

General Tojo asserted that British influence in India was now about to be exterminated.

A spokesman, Mr Hori, in a similar appeal, declared: “It does not matter who obtains command of the armed forces of India. The only way left is to crush that army.”