The Vanity of Reaction THE devices of reactionary absolutism have a curious family resemblance all the world over. Reaction is never intelligent and never imaginative. Limited to the narrow horizon of its own selfish interests, committed to the preservation of the impossible and the resuscitation of corrupt systems and dead forms it has neither the vision to understand and measure the forces that have been new born to replace it, nor the wisdom to treat and compromise with the strength of Demogorgon while yet unripe so as to prolong its hour of rule for a little, — the only grace that Heaven allows to doomed institutions and forfeited powers. Like Kamsa of old, it se

The Voice of the Martyrs WE ARE now rejoicing over the release of Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal, but who among us is prepared to forget that so many have suffered for the country not less or more than he, and are still suffering? Yesterday when we welcomed the great orator, the man of high thoughts and inspired eloquence, the prophet of new ideas to his people, our thoughts went for a while to those who are now in British prisons, to Bhupen, to Basanta, to the Editor of the Barisal Hitaishi and the Rangpur Vartabaha, to the aged Moulavi spending the last years of his noble life in the severities of a criminal jail, to our fellow martyrs of East Bengal, to the few who

Nationalism not Extremism IT IS a curious fact that even after so many months of sustained propaganda and the most clear and definite statements of the New Politics, there should still be so much confusion as to the attitude of the Nationalist Party and the elementary issues they have raised. This confusion is to some extent due to wilful distortion and deliberate evasion of the true issues. The ultra-loyalist publicists especially, Indian or Anglo-Indian, are obliged to ignore the true position of the party, misnamed Extremists, because they are unable to meet its trenchant and irresistible logic and common sense. But with the great majority of Indian poli

The Village and the Nation WE WROTE yesterday of the necessity of going back to the land if the Bengali Hindu is to keep his place in the country and escape the fate of those who divorce themselves from the root of life, the soil. But there is another aspect of the question which is also of immense importance. The old organisation of the Indian village was self-sufficient, self-centred, autonomous and exclusive. These little units of life existed to themselves, each a miniature world of its own petty interests and activities; like a system of planets united to each other indeed by an unconscious force but each absorbed in its own life and careless of the other.

The Demand of the Mother WE have lost the faculty of religious fervour in Bengal and are now trying to recover it through the passion for the country, by self-sacrifice, by labour for our fellow-countrymen, by absorption in the idea of the country. When a nation is on the verge of losing the source of its vitality, it tries to recover it by the first means which the environment offers, whether that environment be favourable or not. Bengal has always lived by its emotions; the brain of India, as it has been called, is also the heart of India. The loss of emotional power, of belief, of enthusiasm would dry up the sources from which she derives her strength. The cou

-125_The Soul and India's Mission.htm The Soul and India's Mission Wind and Water WIND and water are always types of the human soul in our literature. Wind is so light a substance that we cannot grasp it, water so fluid that we cannot seize it. When the soul is in a state of lightness and fluidity, it is then that it is compared to wind and water. When it is hard and rigid, then it is a stone. Wind and water are the light and fluid soul, stone the hard and rigid. Soul is

SIX Its Limits THE three canons of the doctrine of passive resistance are in reality three necessities which must, whether we like it or not, be accepted in theory and executed in practice, if passive resistance is to have any chance of success. Passive resisters, both as individuals and in the mass, must always be prepared to break an unjust coercive law and take the legal consequence; for if they shrink from this obligation, the bureaucracy can at once make passive resistance impossible simply by adding a few more enactments to their book of statutes. A resistance which can so easily be snuffed out of being is not worth making. For the same reason they must be prepare

A Great Message THE stupendous success of the reception to Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal, a success which outdid all previous occasions of the kind, was a convincing proof of the popular feeling and left no doubt in the minds of those who saw it that the nation is alive. We have always believed that God is at work in the hearts of the people to effect His mighty purpose. When Sj. Bepin Chandra spoke at College Square in answer to the welcome he received from the people of Calcutta, the same deep conviction breathed from his lips and expressed itself in words of an inspired fervour, "The man is nothing, the personality is nought, and it is a vain egoism to think that we are do

British Justice THERE has been much to edify and instruct in the recent antics of the bureaucracy and, in the light of the object lessons they present, the people of India have been revising old ideas and out-worn superstitions with a healthy rapidity. The belief in British liberalism, in the freedom of the Press, in the freedom of the platform, in the Pax Britannica, in the political honesty of Mr. John Morley and many other cherished shibboleths have departed into the limbo of forgotten follies. But the greatest fall of all has been the fall of the belief in the imperturbable impartiality of British justice. There are two kinds of strain which no empire, however firmly bou

How to Meet the Inevitable Repression THE Swadeshi that you have started in Bengal is a move in the right direction, said some highly placed members of the Indian Civil Service to an Indian on their way back to this country from England; but they continued, we shall try to break the back of it in every possible way, we shall put the staying power of the Bengalee people to the severest test, before we allow them to develop their new nationalism. Thus spoke they, and what has happened since has certainly been singularly confirmatory of their frank avowal. The Declaration of the 7th of August, 1905, came as a surprise upon the English people; to th