104 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
could be with his wife. Bose met Nehru upon his arrival in the Black
Forest resort, and the two stayed in the same boardinghouse.^49 Once
Kamala Nehru’s condition improved a little, Subhas went on to Austria.
“If I can be of any ser vice in your present trouble,” Subhas wrote to
Jawahar from Hofgastein on October 4, 1935, “I hope you will not
hesitate to send for me.”^50 He himself found solace in the company of
Emilie in both Karlsbad and Hofgastein.^51
Bose felt well enough to leave Hofgastein on October 23, 1935, and
traveled to Vienna after seeing the Nehrus once more in Badenweiler.
During November and December of 1935, he readied himself for an-
other major European tour in early 1936, to advocate freedom for In-
dia. He was denied a visa to go to the Soviet Union. He reckoned that
this was because of the “new Soviet- British rapprochement” and that
the decision would be “rather damaging to the reputation of the Soviet
Government in India.”^52 Oblivious to Sta linist terror, Nehru had been
euphoric about what he had seen of social transformation in the Soviet
Union. Bose’s critical remarks on communism in The Indian Struggle
may have had something to do with the unwelcoming attitude of the
Russians. His disappointment with the Soviet Union, however, was
more than offset by the permit he was granted to visit the Irish Free
State. Emilie conducted some of the correspondence with Irish friends
on his behalf. Subhas was still under the mistaken assumption that he
was not allowed to visit En gland, and so made plans to go directly from
the Continent to Ireland.^53
In the second week of January 1936, Bose set off from Vienna for his
final swing through Europe, before his planned return to India in time
for the annual session of the Indian National Congress in Lucknow. His
first stop was Prague, where he had a conversation with President Ed-
ouard Benes on January 13. It was a time of hectic diplomatic activity
in Czechoslovakia, with German demands for the Sudetenland threat-
ening the government of Benes. Bose found that Benes’s meeting with
him was preceded by one with the French ambassador and followed by
one with the Austrian envoy. In the midst of European con flicts that
clearly had to take precedence for Benes, Bose battled on to keep the
subject of Indian in de pen dence on the po lit i cal agenda. He left the