Facts and Opinions Volume I - August 21,1909 - Number 9 Srijut Surendranath Banerji's Return The veteran leader of Moderate Bengal has returned from his oratorical triumphs in the land of our rulers. The ovations of praise and applause which appreciative audiences and newspaper critics of all shades of opinion have heaped upon him, were thoroughly deserved. Never has the great oratorical gift with which Srijut Surendranath is so splendidly endowed, been displayed to such faultless advantage as in these the crowning efforts of his old age. The usual defect of his oratory, an excess of language and rhetoric over substantial force, a defect which also limi

Facts and Opinions Volume I - Oct. 2, 1909 - Number 15 The Rump Presidential Election The Lahore Special Correspondent of the Rashtra Mat telegraphs to his paper a story of the proceedings at the Presidential election for the Rump Congress at Lahore, which, if correct, sheds a singular light on the proceedings of the valiant Three who are defending the bridge of conciliation and alliance between the bureaucracy and the Moderates which now goes by the name of the Indian National Congress. According to this correspondent, the account of Sir Pherozshah's election cabled from Lahore is incorrect and garbled. What really happened was that eighteen gent

Facts and Opinions Volume I - Dec. 11, 1909 - Number 23 The United Congress The controversy which has arisen between the Bengalee and the Amrita Bazar Patrika on the subject of an united Congress does not strike us as likely to help towards the solution of this difficult question. We should ourselves have preferred to hold silence until the negotiations now proceeding between representatives of both sides in Calcutta are brought to a definite conclusion either for success or failure. But certain of the positions taken up by the Bengalee cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. Our contemporary refers to the meeting in the Amrita Bazar Office

Exit Bibhishan MR. Gopal Krishna Gokhale has for long been the veiled prophet of Bombay. His course was so ambiguous, his sympathies so divided and self-contradictory that some have not hesitated to call him a masked Extremist. He has played with Boycott, "that criminal agitation"; he has gone so far in passive resistance as to advocate refusal of the payment of taxes. Eloquent spokesman of the people in the Legislative Council, luminous and ineffective debater scattering his periods in vain in that august void, he has been at once the admired of the people and the spoilt darling of The Times of India, the trusted counsellor of John Morley and a leader of the party o

The Transvaal Indians THE visit of Mr. Polak has excited once more a closer interest in the Transvaal question and associations are being formed for the agitation of the question. It will therefore be opportune to consider the practical aspect of the struggle in the Transvaal and the possibility of help from India. There can be no two opinions outside South Africa, and possibly Hare Street, as to the moral aspects of the question; for it must be remembered that the Indians in the Transvaal are not claiming any political rights, but merely treatment as human beings first, and, next, equality before the law. It is open to the South Africans to exclude Indians altogether,

The Power that Uplifts OF ALL the great actors who were in the forefront of the Italian Revolution, Mazzini and Cavour were the most essential to Italian regeneration. Of the two Mazzini was undoubtedly the greater. Cavour was the statesman and organiser, Mazzini the prophet and creator. Mazzini was busy with the great and eternal ideas which move masses of men in all countries and various ages, Cavour with the temporary needs and circumstances of modern Italy. The one was an acute brain, the other a mighty soul. Cavour belongs to Italy, Mazzini to all humanity. Cavour was the man of the hour, Mazzini is the citizen of Eternity. But the work of Mazzini could not hav

The Moderate Manifesto THE practical exclusion of the educated classes, other than Mahomedans, landholders and titled grandees, from the new Councils and the preference of Mahomedans to Hindus has rung the death-knell of the old Moderate politics in India. If the Moderate Party is to survive, it has to shift its base and alter its tactics. If its leaders ignore the strong dissatisfaction and disillusionment felt by educated Hindus all over India or if they tamely acquiesce in a reform which seems to have been deliberately framed in order to transfer political preponderance from Hindus to Mahomedans and from the representatives of the educated class to the landed ari

Facts and Opinions Volume I - Dec. 4, 1909 - Number 22 The Lieutenant-Governor's Mercy The outcry of the Moderates against the exclusion of their best men has led to certain concessions by which apparently the Government hope to minimise or obviate the formidable opposition that is slowly gathering head against the new Councils. These concessions remove not a single objectionable principle from the Bill. They are evidently designed to facilitate the admission into the Council of the two men in Bengal whose opposition may prove most harmful to the chances of the exceedingly skilful Chinese puzzle called the Councils Regulations, by which the consumm

Facts and Opinions Volume I - July 17,1909 - Number 4 An Unequal Fight Our controversy with the Bengalee is like a conflict between denizens of two different elements. Not only has our contemporary the advantage of prompt reply, but he has such a giant's gulp for formulas, such a magnificent and victorious method of dealing with great fundamental questions in a few sentences, such a generous faculty for clouding a definite point with sounding generalisations that he leaves us weak and gasping for breath. However in our own feeble way we shall try to deal with the several points he has raised. Their importance must be our excu