denounced the “no” of “Non-co-operation” as “in its passive moral form asceticism, and in its active moral form violence.”  The conclusion wrung from his reluctant idealism is one at which the large majority of sober-minded Indians arrived long before the poet.  They gave effect to it as voters at the elections in defiance of Mr. Gandhi’s boycott, and their representatives gave effect to it in the legislatures which Mr. Gandhi no less vainly boycotted.

Yet in spite of Mr. Gandhi’s repeated failures “Non-co-operation” is not dead.  It has a widespread organisation, with committees in every town and emissaries particularly active in the large villages and in many rural districts.  It had the enthusiastic support at Nagpur of the large assemblage that still retains the name, but little else, of the old Indian National Congress.  It does not lack funds, for Mr. Gandhi professes to have gathered in the crore of rupees which he asked for within the appointed twelvemonth.  It controls a large part of the Indian Press, though mostly of the less reputable type, more vituperative and mendacious, in spite of all Indian Press laws, than anything conceived of in this country where there are no Press laws.  Mr. Gandhi himself goes on preaching “Non-co-operation” with unabated conviction and unresting energy, the same picture always of physical frailty and unconquerable spirit, travelling all over the country in crowded third-class carriages, worshipped by huge crowds that hang on his sainted lips—­and pausing only in his feverish campaign to spend a short week at Simla in daily conference with Lord Reading.  That the new Viceroy should have thought it advisable almost immediately after his arrival in India to hold such prolonged intercourse with Mr. Gandhi is the best proof that the Mahatma is no mere dreamer whose influence is evanescent, but a power to be reckoned with.  The Simla interviews did not seem to have been entirely fruitless when Mr. Gandhi extracted from his chief Mahomedan lieutenants, the brothers Ali, a disavowal, however half-hearted, of any intention to incite to violence in certain speeches delivered by them for which they would otherwise have had to be prosecuted.  It looked as if he had made a more effective stand than on other occasions against the importation of violence into “Non-co-operation,” and proved the reality of the influence which he is believed to have all along exercised to curb his Mahomedan followers who do not share his disbelief in violence.  But Simla only deflected him for a short time from his dangerous course.

In the whole of this strange movement nothing is more mysterious than the hold which Mr. Gandhi has over Mahomedans as well as Hindus, though the wrongs of Turkey, which are ever in his mouth, touch only very remotely the great mass of Indian Mahomedans, whilst the old antagonism of the two communities is still simmering and bubbling and apt to boil over on the slightest provocation.  Collisions are most frequent