3.

dissociate India completely from this policy of encouraging
the evil-doer and aggressor and to say that the people of India
will be no party to it and will resist it whenever they have
a chance to do so.

We have seen the tragic farce of non-intervention in
Spain which, under cover of fair words and democratic procedure,
has aided the insurgents and the invaders of Spain and prevented
the people of the country from obtaining even the means of
infantry defence. The seas and a hundred doors are open for
supplies to reach the insurgents, but the Pyrenees frontier is
closed in the name of non-intervention, though women and children
die through bombing or starve through lack of food.

We blame and condemn the invaders and aggressors in Spain,
but they have at least openly defied all canons of international
law and decency and challenged the world to stop them. What of
those governments who, while bravely talking of peace and law,
have submitted to this challenge, adapted themselves to each
fresh aggression, and tried to make friends with the evil-doers?
What of those who have criminally stood by and shown indifference
when life, and what was more sacred than life itself, was crushed
and dishonoured?

Even today the aggressor nations are far weaker in numbers and strength and resources to the other countries. And yet the latter appear helpless and incapable of taking effective action. Is this not so because their hands and feet are tied by their past and present imperialist policy? These governments have failed; it is time that the people took action and compelled them to mend their ways. This action must be immediately to stop aerial bombardments, to open the Pyrenees frontier, to permit the means of defence and food to reach Republican Spain. If bombing is to continue, anti-air-craft guns and other apparatus meant for defence must be allowed to go through.

What vast destruction there has been during these last two years in Spain and China. The starving and the wounded, the women and the children cry out aloud pitifully for help, and it is the business of all decent and sensitive people all over the world to help. For this is a world problem and we must organize on a world basis. The real burden of the struggle has fallen on the people of the stricken countries, let us at least carry this small burden.

I am glad to tell this Conference that the Indian National Congress has organised and is soon sending a medical unit to China. We have also met with considerable success in India in our boycott of Japanese goods, as the export figures demonstrate. A recent incident will indicate the strength of our feeling for the Chinese people. In Malaya the Japanese owned iron mines which employed Chinese workers. These workers refused to help in producing munitions for Japan and left the mines. Thereupon Indian workers were engaged, but at our request they also refuse to work there, although this meant privation and suffering for them.

And so the struggle goes on. How many of our friends and colleagues and dear ones have died in this struggle already and not died in vain. How many of us who are gathered here may go the same way and not meet again? But whether we live or die, the cause of peace and freedom will remain, for that is greater than us - it is the cause of humanity itself. If that perishes then all of us perish. If it lives then we live also, whatever fate may befall us. To that cause then let us pledge ourselves.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Paris July 24, 1938.