SCENE VI The public square of Bassora. Alzayni on a dais; in front a scaffold on which stand Nureddene, an executioner, Murad and others. Almuene moves between the dais and scaffold. The square is crowded with people. EXECUTIONER Ho! listen, listen, Moslems. Nureddene, Son of Alfazzal, son of Sawy, stands Upon the rug of blood, the man who smote Great Viziers and came armed with forgeries To uncrown mighty Kings. Look on his doom, You enemies of great Alzayni, look and shake. (Low, to Nureddene) My lord, forgive me who am thus compelled, Oh much against my will, to ill-requite Your father's kindly favours.

Morleyism Analysed THE fuller reports of Mr. Morley's speech to hand by mail do not in any essential point alter the impression that was produced by Reuter’s summary. The whole of the speech turns upon a single sentence as its pivot — the statement that British rule will continue, ought to continue and must continue. Mr. Morley does not say forever, but that is understood. It follows that if the continuance of British rule on any terms is the fundamental necessity, any and every means used for its preservation is legitimate. Compared with that supreme necessity justice does not matter, humanity does not matter, truth does not matter, morality may be trampled on, the l

Welcome to the Prophet of Nationalism TODAY Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal is due in Calcutta, a free man once more until it shall please irresponsible Magistrates and easily-twisted laws to repeat his seclusion from the work which God has given him to do. A true leader of men today in India holds his liberty as a light thing to be lost at a moment's notice; when he chooses to defend himself, he does so with the knowledge that no skill of defence but the choice of his prosecutors is the arbiter of the trial, no soundness of the law in his favour, but the convenience of those who employ and pay his judge, determines whether he goes free or incurs the honoura

Exclusion or Unity? WE DEALT yesterday with the question of the function of the Congress, whether it should be merely to focus public opinion and proceed no farther or to gather up the life of the nation and deploy its strength in a struggle for national self-assertion. When this question is decided, the next which arises is that of the aim towards which the Congress is to work. If its function is merely to focus public opinion, its aim can only be to submit grievances to the Government for redress, to beg for privileges and to petition for favours. It will then admit the absolute authority of the bureaucracy and fulfil the purpose of collective petitioning instead

The Struggle in Madras THE new spirit of spiritual and political regeneration which is today becoming the passion of the country, has arrived at a crisis of its destinies. All movements are exposed to persecution, because the powers that be are afraid of the consequences which may result from their sudden success and cannot shake off the delusion that they have the strength to suppress them. When Kamsa heard that Krishna was to be bo

The Proposed Reconstruction of Bengal* PARTITION OR ANNIHILATION? IN THE excitement and clamour that has followed the revolutionary proposal of Lord Curzon's Government to break Bengal into pieces, there is some danger of the new question being treated only in its superficial aspects and the grave and startling national peril for which it is the preparation being either entirely missed or put out of sight. On a perusal of the telegrams which pour in from Eastern Bengal one is struck with the fact that they mainly deal with certain obvious and present results of the measure, not one of which is really vital. The contention repeatedly harped

EARLY POLITICAL WRITINGS From 1890 to May 1908 NOTE The articles in this Volume are not an index of Sri Aurobindo’s later views on the leading problems of the day. His views had undergone a great change with the development of his consciousness and knowledge. The latest views of Sri Aurobindo on these problems appear in Volume 15 : "Social and Political Thought". India Renascent* THE patriot who offers advice to a great nation in an era of change and turmoil, should be very confident that he has something worth saying before he ventures to speak; but if he can really put some new aspect on a momentous question or emphasise a

New Conditions A GREAT deal of the work done by us during the last three years has been of a purely preparatory character. The preparation of the national mind was the first necessity. All that the old schools of politics did was to prepare the way for the new thought by giving a full trial to the delusions that then possessed the people and demonstrating their complete futility. Since the awakening of the nation to the misdirection of its energies a fresh delusion has taken possession for a time of the national mind, and this is the idea that a great revolution can be worked out without the sacrifices of which history tells in the case of other nations. There is a general shrinking fro

A Statement MR. John Morley has committed himself in the House of Commons to a trenchant and unqualified statement that the whole blame for the disturbances in East Bengal lies upon the Hindus who, by a violent and obstreperous boycott attended with coercion and physical force, have irritated the Mahomedans into revolt. Whether Mr. Morley made this statement out of a sweet trustfulness in the man on the spot or relying upon his philosophical judgment and innate powers of reasoning does not concern us at all. Everyone knows that the statement is untrue. The boycott was no doubt the final cause of the hooliganism in the East just as the Russian revolutionary movement was the f

Look on this Picture, then on That BRITAIN, the benevolent, Britain, the mother of Parliaments, Britain, the champion of liberty, Britain, the deliverer of the slave, -- such was the sanctified and legendary figure which we have been trained to keep before our eyes from the earliest years of our childhood. Our minds imbued through and through with the colours of that legend, we cherished a faith in the justice and benevolence of Britain more profound, more implicit, more a very part of our beings than the faith of the Christian in Christ or of the Mahomedan in his Prophet. Officials might be oppressive, Viceroys and Lieutenant-Governors reactionary, the S