and certainly most interesting figures in Indian politics.  A Chitpavan Brahman by birth, with the blood of the old dominant caste of Maharashtra in his veins, he has often been, both in the Viceroy’s Legislative Council and in that of his own Presidency, a severe and even bitter critic of an alien Government, of which he nevertheless admits the benefit, and even the necessity, for India.  On the other hand, though he proclaims himself a Nationalist, and though, on one occasion at least, when he presided over the stormy session of the Indian National Congress at Calcutta in December, 1906, which endorsed the Bengalee boycott movement, he lent the weight of his authority to a policy that was difficult to reconcile with constitutional methods of opposition, his reason and his moral sense have always revolted against the reactionary appeals to religious prejudice and racial hatred by which men like Tilak have sought to stimulate a perverted form of Indian patriotism.  Highly educated both as a Western and an Eastern scholar, he approaches perhaps more nearly than any of his fellow-countrymen to the Western type of doctrinaire, Radical in politics and agnostic in regard to religion, but with a dash of passion and enthusiasm which the Western doctrinaire is apt to lack.  When Tilak opened his first campaign of unrest in the Deccan by attacking the Hindu reformers, he found few stouter opponents than Mr. Gokhale, who was one of Ranade’s staunchest disciples and supporters.  Nor did Tilak ever forgive him.  His newspapers never ceased to pursue him with relentless ferocity, and only last year Mr. Gokhale had to appeal to the Law Courts for protection against the scurrilous libels of the “extremist” Press.

His own experiences in political life since he resigned his work as a professor at the Ferguson College in Poona in order to take a larger share in public affairs have probably helped to convince Mr. Gokhale that his fellow-countrymen for the most part still lack many essential qualifications for the successful discharge of those civic duties which are the corollary of the civic rights he claims for them.  He does not, it is understood, desire to seek re-election to the Imperial Council at Calcutta after the expiry of its present powers, two years hence, as he wishes to devote himself chiefly to the educational work, which, in one form or another, has perhaps always been the most absorbing interest of his life.  When he was a professor at the Ferguson College teaching was with him a vocation rather than a profession, and, if one may judge by his practice, he believes that only those who are prepared to set an example of selflessness and almost ascetic simplicity of life can hope to promote the moral and social as well as the political advancement of India.  It is on these principles that he founded five years ago the “Servants of India” Society, recruited in the first instance amongst a few personal followers and supported hitherto by the voluntary contributions of his admirers.