of a definite composition to consider the problem of Danube
navigation—to which all the Danube states objected at this
juncture. No recommendation was adopted on this point at
the meeting of the Economic Committee, since no proposal
obtained two-thirds of the votes, as is required by the Com-
mittee's anles of procedure.
The voting at the plenary meeting showed a majority
of fourteen votes against seven in favour of convocation of
a conference, such states as India and Ethiopia being among
the fourteen. One would have thought that, in a matter like
the Danube, these states could have adopted a more objec-
tive, more sober and reasonable attitude towards the Danube
states. But this was not so. Why, one wonders, did India
have to insist on this question being settled in the peace
treaty, say, with Rumania? What interests of India, what
interests of the Indians, are involved in the convocation of
a Danutbe conference, on which Britain and the United
States so strongly insist? The leader of the Indian delega-
tion, Sir Samuel Runganadhan, could, of course, get up here
and for some reason of his own declare that the Indian
delegation had a deep interest in this matter—that it was, as
it were, under moral compulsion to insist upon a decision in
the matter of the Danube with which not a single Danubian
state at this Conference agrees. But every one of us under-
stands that if we had had the voice of an independent India,
if we had had the voice of a representative of the real India
—which all honest democrats throughout the world demand
—we could have expected more objective voting on Ihe
part of India, whereas now we Tiave been again confronted
with the intolerable situation that the Indian delegation
simply .performed its colonial duty of voting at the will
of another country—of Great Britain. But the time is
not far off when other and happier days will come for
India!
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