The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 120
120 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN have a standing engagement with the senior Deputy Foreign Minister. " I said, "Yes. " "Will you be seeing him tomorrow or the day after?" I said, "Yes. " He said, "Do you mind doing me a favour?" and he entrusted me with that message so that I could deliver it, as he did not expect an early interview either with the senior Deputy Foreign Minister or with Chiang Kai-Shek himself. I had a feeling not that I was taken into complete confidence - that I think with the Chinese is out of the question - but that being an Asiatic I was admitted at least to the ante-chamber of their minds, perhaps, a little more easily than a European would have been. That was about the only difference. As I have said, I spent four months in Chungking, and in early October I returned to Delhi. Before I left Chungking, I received a communication from Sir Olaf Caroe that the Viceroy thought if I could stay a little longer in Chungking, it might be useful. I wrote back to say that I would be glad to stay on if the Chief Justice thought there was nothing which needed my attention in Delhi, but that in order to preserve my sanity I must have at least two weeks at home and could then return to Chungking. He wrote back and said, the Viceroy thought that perhaps it was not worthwhile subjecting me to the hazards of a journey home and back. So I went back to Delhi. I sat on the Court on one case, and then I was dispatched to a conference in the Province of Quebec, in Canada. That was the Pacific Relations Conference, at Mont Tremblant. Question : Sir Zafrulla, would you like to say a few words about the meeting of the Dominion Ministers in London ? Khan : Early, during the war, His Majesty's Government called what was later known as the Dominion Ministers Conference. They asked each of the dominions and also India, which was not yet technically a dominion but was in practice treated as one, to send a minister to London for a conference on such problems as the war had given rise to. This was in November, 1939, during what has been known as "the phony period of the war," that is, before Hitler started his march into Holland and Belgium and later into France. I was asked by the Viceroy, as the senior Indian minister, to represent India at this conference; so I went along. In those days the best way to travel to the United Kingdom from Delhi was to go by train to Gwalior and catch a flying boat going to London. My young