pathetic with the people. The government is strictly autocratic. The masses of the people have nothing to do with it except to obey its mandates. In Civil Service there are only 65 Hindus employed as compared with 1200 Englishmen, or slightly more than 5 per cent. In fact the policy of the government is to prevent the idea of self-government arising among the people.

The United States came into the possession of the Philippine Islands and after some fifteen years of occupation sixty per cent of the Filipinos are educated according to the most improved methods. The product of their work formed one of the most superior educational exhibits at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Congress has definitely adopted a program which will lead in a few years to complete self-government in the Philippines. Industry there is being reconstructed according to most modern methods, and the Filipinos are looking forward to a career of prosperity and freedom.

On the other hand, after one hundred and fifty years of opportunity England has done nothing for India, and the land lies desolate in poverty and ignorance. During the past fifty years the Hindus have begged England to change her policy and begin to do something for India's benefit. Since the only response is the same old policy of pretense and suppression, they are at last rising in revolt. No promises of reform will be of any avail; the fire of liberty is spreading and sooner or later the country will be free.

THE

THE NEW NATIONALISM IN INDIA.

BY BASANTA KOOMAR ROY.

I.

HE present revolutionary activities for the establishment of a republic in Ireland and the subsequent execution of its leaders including Sir Roger Casement has naturally made many think of the outlook in India, for the case of India is somewhat analogous to that of Ireland. India may be called the Ireland of Asia, and Ireland the India of Europe. The history of these two countries unfolds a parallel story of past prosperity and present poverty and helplessness. Both were conquered by blood and iron, and it is mortifyingly true that both Erin and India are kept under foreign domination primarily by disunion among the factious classes and

creeds that are not far-sighted enough to merge their minor differences for the larger interests of the respective countries.

But it is a healthy sign of the times that the New Nationalists of both these countries have learned to subordinate their provincial or creedal interests to that of the country as a whole. The selfdenying devotion of the patriots of Ireland was most emphatically proven in the past revolution. These martyrs have indeed "raised Ireland to a tragic dignity," to use the words of John Quinn. Those that are acquainted with the current affairs in India cannot conveniently deny that that country, too, is animated with an unrest which increases, as days pass by, in intensity and extensiveness. The present fad in England and America to attribute the spirit of unrest in India to German agitation is certainly an insult to the intelligence of the people of India. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, on his return from a trip to India, thus wrote in the pages of The Nineteenth Century and After for August, 1906: "To the Briton, his master, the Indian is naturally reserved; to the American he is drawn by sympathetic bonds. That there is a strong and growing desire on the part of the educated Indians ultimately to govern their own country goes without saying. They would not be educated. if the aspiration did not arise within them. Education makes rebels against invaders. Material benefits conferred by them, however great, count for little against the spirit of national independence.... The problem is internal, not external. It is within, not without India that the wolf lurks."

When Lord Morley was Secretary of State for India he wrote as follows in the same magazine for February, 1911: "All will agree, that whatever the proportions, depth and vitality of unrest (in India) it is in spirit near enough downright revolt to deserve attention."

Five months before the present European war began, Mr. Shaw Desmond wrote thus in the London Magazine for March, 1914: "England may some day have a terrible reckoning for her 'official versions.' The thousands in these islands who have relatives and friends in India may have to pay in blood and tears for them. The horrors of the Indian Mutiny may again be written scarlet across the history of India.... India is the powder magazine of the world, into which a spark at any moment may be thrown, followed by such an explosion as will reverberate around the globe. If English officialdom has any imagination, it will tackle the problem of India ere it be too late."

. With all the alarming statements of Lord Morley, Shaw Des

mond and numerous other English writers and statesmen we know that an organized armed revolt is an extremely difficult thing in a country that has been forcibly disarmed ever since the Sepoy war of 1857. And the constructive thinkers of India know that their motherland did not come to the present predicament in a day, and that the situation, however humiliating, cannot be relieved over night. The task of nation-building is slow and difficult in India or America, China or Persia, Ireland or Russia. But after all, the slow and secret work of the New Nationalists of India has begun to bear fruit. India may not be freed in a year or two, but it is a fact nevertheless that the spirit of New Nationalism in India may be oppressed, but can never be suppressed. When the spirit that animates the educated permeates the masses, as it is doing, the Hindusthanees will speak with an irresistible voice and will act to shatter the chains that fetter the motherland.

Signs are in evidence that men, women and children of all walks of life are being inocculated with the virus of New Nationalism. Bandemataram (Hail, Motherland!) is the slogan of India to-day. This rallying cry inspires and encourages the patriots of India under most trying conditions. But this little word is just as obnoxious to English ears as the Lord's Prayer is to those of Satan. The peaceful Hindus are assuming an aggressive attitude. The young men who ordinarily would feel qualms of conscience to hurt an insect are killing oppressive British officials and are most cheerfully hanging from the gallows with the word Bandemataram on their lips. Young man of respectable families are organizing themselves into parties to rob the rich men's hoarded treasures to gather funds for revolutionary activities. These bands of political dacoits are doing most daring deeds for their purpose in automobiles, boats or on foot. The Calcutta police have built drop gates in the main thoroughfares of the city to make the capture of the automobile dacoities easy, and yet these daring young revolutionists elude the special guards. This leads many people to think that a great many in the police department are working for the revolutionist propaganda.

Not long ago one such party invaded, in masks, the home of a rich man. The men of the family resisted, so they were confined in a room at the point of the pistol. In reply to inquiries about the key of the safe the young men were told that it was with the lady of the house. So the young men went to the lady of the house for the key. The lady hesitated, and one of the young men in the party said: "Mother, we are here to-night to gather money for the

liberation of our great motherland. It is just as much your work as ours. We keep accounts of everything we take from our people, and in that day of great adjustment you will get back a thousandfold what we take to-night." The lady smilingly blessed the party and cheerfully gave up the key and said: "My son, take all we have for the noble cause you represent, and tell us if we can do anything more." The young men, one by one, touched the feet of this noble patriotic woman in reverence and soon departed with a big booty of cash and jewels.

Political dacoities on land and water are the order of the day. Dozens of cases are reported every week. Assassinations of oppressive officers are quite common. Conspiracies with widespread ramifications to overthrow the British rule in India are not infrequent. The mutiny of the Sepoys at Singapore and the subsequent massacre of the Hindu and Mohammedan leaders, the riots of Ceylon with their bloody retribution, the massacre of the British officials in the fort of Jhansi, the open trench fighting between the revolutionists and the armed police in Orissa, the destruction of guns in the fort of Delhi are but a few instances of the growing spirit of revolt in India. And above all, the riotous disturbances of the Punjab were of such a serious nature that they barely escaped setting fire to the "powder magazine of the world." Even the English lieutenant-governor of the province has been constrained to make the following confession: "The crimes did create a state not only of alarm and insecurity but of terror and even panic, and if they had not been promptly checked by the firm hand of authority and the active cooperation of the people would have produced in the province, as was intended by the conspirators, a state of affairs similar to that of Hindusthan in the Mutiny-paralysis of authority, widespread terrorism and murder not only of the officers of the government, but of loyal and well-disposed subjects."

II.

It was discontent with the British domination of India that brought about the unsuccessful Sepoy revolution of 1857. And it is discontent again that is heading that country toward another titanic struggle.

The English went to India for trade and commerce, and it was by the courtesy and the kindness of India's ruling potentates that they were able to spread their commercial interests in the beginning. They gradually gained territorial concessions. As in America, even so in India, the French were first in the ascendency. The British

took the side of some of the princes of India, and the French of others, and in the struggle the British gained the upper hand. The princes that sold their birthright to be free for purely selfish reasons were discontented, and those that were vanquished were discontented, of course. The highhandedness of England's trade methods killed many of India's thriving industries. The country was fast going down the hill of prosperity, consequently the people became discontented. Finally the crime of British aggression as evinced in the constant annexation of the states of Indian princes. brought about the Sepoy war of 1857.

It was not a mutiny of a few soldiers. It was rather an organized revolt of the people to free themselves from the growing tightness of the octopus-hold of the British. The British won the victory no doubt, but it was with the help of the renegade Hindu princes and their soldiers. But it plainly showed, however, that the British could not stay a single day in India to rule, were it not for the help of such moral invertebrates.

When peace followed the horrors of this war, the people became, through strain and despair, hungry for peace and rest. So the candid proclamation of Queen Victoria encouraged the people. She pledged before God and man: "We hold ourselves bound to the natives of our Indian territory by the same obligations of duty. which bind us to our other subjects, and these obligations by the blessings of Almighty God we shall faithfully and conscientiously fulfil." The Hindus, with their characteristic credulity, believed every word that their English rulers used to flatter their vanity with. The most dangerous of such pledges was the promise of British citizenship and training the people for self-government. The Hindu made no allowances for political expediency. He did not for a moment doubt the integrity of his rulers' intentions.

But as time went on the platitudes of Queen Victoria's historic proclamation began to show themselves in the hideously true diplomatic colors. The leaders of Indian thought slowly began to realize the abnormal state of India's political and economic relationship with England. So men like Mahadev Govind Ranade, Dadabhai Naoroji, Woomesh Chandra Bannerjee and Balgangadhar Tilak became impatient to do some constructive work for the political salvation of India.

The Indian National Congress was the outcome of this desire, and it met for the first time in Bombay in 1885. The principal object of this institution was to present, as a political body, India's griev