out.  Government servants would not resign their appointments, lawyers would not cease to practise, and title-holders, with a few insignificant exceptions, would not surrender their titles; the “back to the spinning-wheel” call did not attract, and the continual failure of Ghandi’s predictions of the immediate attainment of complete Swaraj or self-government, which he was careful never to define, like hope deferred turned the heart sick.

From being a demi-god Ghandi gradually became a bore, and when he was at last arrested, tragic to relate, there was hardly a tremor of resentment through the tired political nerves of India.  The arrest was indeed a triumph of wise timing that does credit to the sagacity of the Government of India.  Had the arrest been effected when the name of Ghandi was at its zenith, there would have been widespread trouble and bloodshed.  As it was, people were only too glad to be rid of a gadfly that merely goaded them into infructuous bogs.

I apologise for this long excursus on the somewhat threadbare subject of the causes of unrest in India.  But I want those here present to realise what potent forces have been at work and to believe that the Indian generally is not the ungrateful, black-hearted seditionist he is painted by the reactionary press.  India is going through an inevitable stage of political transition, and we must not hastily judge her peoples—­for the most part so gallant, so kindly, so law-abiding, so lovable—­by the passing tantrums of political puberty.

THE PRESENT SITUATION

As things stand at present, there is a remarkable lull.  It would be futile to predict whether it will last.  It is due in part, as I have suggested, to general political weariness, in part to the drastic action taken against the smaller agitating fry, in part to the depletion of the coffers of the extremists, in part to the fact that the extremists are quarrelling amongst themselves as to their future programme.  Some are for continuing a boycott of the Councils; others are for capturing all the seats and dominating the legislature; others are for re-beating the dead horse of non-co-operation.  Meanwhile, with disunion in the extremist camp, the Councils conduct their business on moderate lines, and, so far as one can judge, with marked temperance and sanity.

The work of the first Councils has indeed been surprisingly good, and augurs well for the future.  India has not yet, of course, by any means grasped the full significance of representative government.  The party system is still in embryo, although two somewhat vague and nebulous parties calling themselves the “Nationalists” and the “Democrats” do exist.  But these parties have no clear-cut programme, and they do not follow the lead of the Ministers, who are regarded, not as representing the elected members of the Council, but as newly-appointed additional members of the official bureaucracy.