170 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
He urged Mahatma Gandhi to adopt a bold policy, so that he could
become one of Gandhi’s humble camp followers.^78
Even as the prospect of a European war loomed, Bose considered
taking a vacation at his favorite resort in Austria. “I wish I could go to
Badgastein,” Subhas had written to Emilie on April 19, 1939, even be-
fore he had resigned as Congress president. He asked her to inquire
from the proprietress of Kurhaus Hochland how much a visit would
cost. “And can you come there if I come for change?” he had asked. On
June 21, during his po lit i cal tour, he wrote that it was time to work and
not to rest. “Please wait till August,” he wrote to Emilie, “probably I will
come then to Gastein.” He also asked when she would come to India.
He had to work because there was “so much public enthusiasm.” “I
must take a month’s holiday at least,” he wrote to Emilie on July 6, as he
traveled by train from Jubbulpore to Bombay, “but I do not know if the
holiday will begin in the middle of August or the beginning of Septem-
ber.” He thought of her all the time, he assured her, sending his love.^79
At the beginning of September, he was still in India. On the evening
of September 3, 1939, he was addressing a massive public meeting of
two hundred thousand people on the Marina Beach in Madras when
someone thrust an evening newspaper into his hands. Britain had re-
sponded to Germany’s invasion of Poland by declaring war. Bose im-
mediately described the European war as an opportunity that was rare
in the his tory of a nation—a chance that India could not afford to
lose.^80 He analyzed the unfolding international situation from the stra-
tegic point of view of India’s freedom struggle alone. At any crucial
moment of decision, Bose felt a need to combine intuitive perception
with rational un der stand ing. “Where reason fails,” as he put it, “instinct
can guide us. Where instinct misleads by creating a mystical haze, rea-
son can put us on the right path.” From September to November 1939,
Bose traversed the length and breadth of the country to bring together
what he called the “individual- mind” and the “mass- mind.”^81
The outbreak of war changed all of the po lit i cal calculations in In-
dia. The viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared India a belligerent in the
war against Germany without bothering to consult the Indian National
Congress, which held of fice in eight of the eleven provinces of British
India. Though disciplinary action had been taken against him just over