Horace Alexander:  Gandhi’s interpreter

Andrew Clark looks at a new book on the Quaker pacifist

Horace Alexander was in the first of two cohorts of weighty Friends who, as peace emissaries, moved us through the twentieth century. The first was spearheaded by Carl Heath, Horace Alexander, Corder Catchpool and Agatha Harrison – the list is not exhaustive. Then came those whom we have lost more recently, Duncan Wood, Sydney Bailey, Adam Curle, Wolf Mendl and Walter Martin. His life and work are the subject of a new book by Geoffrey Carnall.

I met Horace Alexander in the USA when he was ninety-nine and value that tenuous link. I could still recognise the brilliant caricature of him sketched circa 1951. He was born in 1889 and went to Bootham and Cambridge, where he learned his anti-imperialism from Philip Noel-Baker and was influenced by JM Keynes. His bronchial condition precluded service with the Friends War Victims Relief organisation; however, he was already at the heart of peace campaigning in 1917 as secretary to the War Sub-Committee of Meeting for Sufferings.

Horace Alexander ‘felt unable to cope with uneducated people, and reluctantly decided that his mission had to be to the élite’. He was also appallingly condescending about the intellect of his fiancée Olive Graham, an Oxford history graduate. They were married in July 1918. Sadly, she developed what was probably multiple sclerosis later that year. She played a deeply-appreciated role at Woodbrooke, including helping Jomo Kenyata on his visit there in 1931, until her premature death in 1942.

The first world war was a complete shock to Friends, and they shared the liberal view that the Treaty of Versailles was going to be a disaster. Horace Alexander assumed the post of lecturing in international relations at Woodbrooke and followed his father’s World Federalism by advocating the League of Nations. In 1923 he visited Germany and Austria and began to see the devastating effects of the Versailles treaty and the groundswell of anti-Semitism.

His first visit to India in 1927/8 was in connection with the opium trade. He ‘had the pleasure of betraying’ the confidences of both the Swarajists (Nationalists) and the governor to each other by explaining to the latter that the Swarajists would actually accept higher taxation if opium revenue was forfeited. (The rules of confidentiality were unclear here.)

His conversion to the cause of Indian independence was gradual but complete by the end of 1927 when he had been with Tagore. This led on to the first two ‘Round Table’ talks and the formation of the India Conciliation Group in 1931. An Indian businessman, GD Birla, funded Agatha Harrison’s salary as its secretary.

Meanwhile, at Woodbrooke in 1927/8, Horace Alexander had made a close friend of Fritz Berber, a German academic. After the burning of the Reichstag, Fritz Berber came to the United Kingdom and Horace Alexander visited Germany, concluding that he had ‘to seek… “that of God” in the instruments of this terror, and to understand what real desires for good may be in their hearts’. Horace Alexander was with Fritz Berber on Kristallnacht.

Horace Alexander worked through two groups: the India Conciliation Group and the Group for Anglo-German Understanding. He developed very influential political contacts, particularly the then parliamentary under-secretary in the India Office, RA (RAB) Butler of Saffron Walden, and Leo Amery, secretary of state for India, who ‘value your ideas and ideals’ in the face of an implacable establishment, viceroys and civil servants.

There was ‘the revulsion of senior German army officers against Nazi barbarity’ (in 1939/40) to which Churchillians were impervious. In 1940 Butler requested Horace Alexander to give Friends’ alternative strategy to the second world war, which is, indeed, interestingly, albeit briefly, outlined. Writing to Halifax, the foreign secretary, in 1940, Horace Alexander appreciated that the second world war was unavoidable ‘in view of the temper and mentality of the present rulers of Germany’. Nor was Fritz Berber, even under Ribbentrop’s protection, any more effective. Despite his compromises, he was nevertheless fearlessly critical of the crime against the Jews and may have saved 250,000 of them in Hungary from genocide.

The major focus of this study is the relationship that evolves between Horace Alexander and the Indian independence leaders, most particularly Gandhi. After Charlie Andrews’ death in 1941, there was a role for an Englishman for which Horace was clearly the best fitted to ‘…understand me, pitilessly cross-examine me, and then if you are convinced be my messenger’. Indeed, at one point Gandhi loses his cool, and Horace Alexander calms him.
Gandhi’s affection for Horace Alexander subsequently gave rise to this note in 1947:

‘Dear Horace,
Naughty of you to be ill. I must make a desperate effort to see you in your bed and make you laugh. Love Bapu’ [and indeed he came].

The India Conciliation Group and the relief work of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in Bengal are fascinatingly related. Horace Alexander’s relationships with the nationalists and British political leaders and civil servants were crucial. The book moves to the climax of Indian independence and partition, with extraordinary details of the Quaker presence alongside the Congress negotiating team in Simla in 1946.

The post-war years are important as Horace Alexander continues to act, and reflects: ‘…I have no doubt that some (political leaders and high officials) are striving for peace and disarmament as honestly… as any pacifist. It is only if we hold to our faith in them that we are likely to be able to help them.’

Gandhi’s Interpreter is academically excellent, well written and explains what really happened. It is also a book that, incidentally, challenges twenty-first century Quaker central work.

Gandhi’s Interpreter: a life of Horace Alexander by Geoffrey Carnall. Edinburgh University Press.

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