resemblance between the Congress movement on the one hand, and the Ulster agitation and suffragette movement on the other. The British bureaucracy out here also do not at heart, whatever they may say, make the mistake of thinking that the Congress wallas are the Ulsterites or male suffragettes of India. So the cessation of all activities on the part of Ulster and the suffragettes need not be taken as a precedent for not holding a session of the Congress.

Political agitaton.

A suggestion has also been made that so long as the war lasts, all political agitation, in the press or on the platform, should cease. That is a large order. Why not say that all newspapers should stop publication? We agree only to this extent that it is inexpedient at present to ventilate old and standing grievances in such a .way as to cause any ferment among the people. Before any suggestion to stop political agitation had been made, the Sikhs showed their sound judgment by refraining of their own accord from any agitation on Canada's treatment of Indian immigrants, who are mostly Sikhs.

But we must demand on our part that the bureaucracy also should not take this opportunity to give effect to unpopular measures. We do think it inexpedient to start any new agitation or continue any old one now. But is it utterly impossible for the bureaucracy to postpone for a time the carrying out of unpopular measures? Or do the servants of the Crown think that the most convenient and auspicious moment for giving effect to unpopular schemes is when people are not disposed to agitate? An example in Bengal is the partition of Mymensingh.

Mymensingh educational conference.

From the popular point of view the educational conference presided over by the magistrate of Mymensingh has been quite successful. No arbitrary limit has been set to the number of students in a school, the junior classes are not to be separated from the higher classes and formed into separate schools, living in living in hostels has not been made compulsory, new schools are to be opened, and applications for the recognition of new schools

are to be generously dealt with by the department. While it is right and proper and necessary in every country to have high ideals of education and a high stan dard of officiciency, it is not expedient in an illiterate country like India absolutely to insist on ideals and standards which stand in the way of the spread of education. This has been recognised by the conference. Mr. Spry, the district magistrate, did his work with tact and courtesy. The leaders of the people expressed their views with frankness. Volunteering.

It had not been anticipated that Indian sepoys would be empoyed to fight European soldiers in Europe. But it has been felt necessary to utilize the fighting capacity of sepoys in this way. Similarly when the enrollment of Indian volunteers is felt to be a necessity, Government would be able to find arguments in its favour.

Congress Presidentship.

Either Lala Lajpat Rai or Babu Bhupen dranath Basu will be elected president of the next session of the Indian National Congress. Both are worthy of the honour; and no comparisons as to worth ought to be made. As Babu Bhupendranath is older than the Lala, he may be elected for this year. Journalists will readily remember a fitting reason for his early election in the fact that when the latest press act was passed, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and he were the only two nonofficial members of the Viceroy's Council who had the steadiness of nerve and foresight to oppose the measure. Pandit Malaviya has been hohoured, Babu Bhupendranath should have his turn early.

Indian Loan to Persia.

Sometime ago Reuter sent a message that Sir Edward Grey had "said that the Government proposed to advance another £50,000 to pay the Swedish gendarmarie" in Persia, "of which half would be borne by India, to prevent the force collapsing." It would have been well if Sir Edward had proved that the people of India would derive as much benefit from the development of commerce in Persia as the British people.

N the national epic poem of ancient Rome -Virgil's Aeneid-a picture is drawn of Aeneas, the hero of the story, climbng to the top of a hill and gazing down vith envy upon what he sees from that ituation. The sight that meets his eyes is number of stately buildings whose place but a little while before had been occupied y a few savage huts. It is the city of Carthage in process of erection. Aeneas, leeing from his own city, which has been estroyed by enemies, "wondered at the ates, and the din, and the paved streets. Eagerly the Tyrians ply their work; some arry on the walls and build a massive itadel, and with their hands roll up tones; part choose the site for houses, nd mark it out with a furrow.........Here ome are digging a harbour, whilst there thers are laying the deep foundations of a heatre and hewing from the quarries huge olumns"......The quotation is from a useul prose translation of Virgil. "Happy eople!" exclaims Aeneas, who is destined fter many wanderings to found his own ity, the city of Rome, "Happy people, our walls already rise!"

A commentator remarks upon the above assage that "the passion for the city is he keynote of the Aeneid"—a saying which eveals in a flash one whole side of the enius of Virgil, and flings into prominence that was perhaps the deepest instinct in he spirit of the Roman people, the builders oth of edifices and laws which have lasted ntil the present day. "The passion for he city is the keynote of the Aeneid," and he poem is therefore a reflection of the oman spirit. But it is more even than is. Like Plato's Republic, or the Roman Catholic Church, or the Feudal System, or he American Colonies, or the British Conitution, or the present day faith called ocialism, it is a reflection of the spirit of urope. A poet is both an interpreter nd a prophet unconsciously to himself of he doings of his people; Virgil is an interreter and a prophet not of the Roman pirit alone, but of the spirit of an entire

civilisation, which had its roots extending far into the past when Virgil helped to water them, and which still stretches its branches over living heads with constantly renewed protection to many peoples against sunshine and storm. The tendency and temper which has been predominant in the West from ancient times until our own finds its unconscious revelation in Virgil, whose words might express the passion at the heart of many persons in the present day whether they have ever opened a book of Latin poetry or whether they have not: "Happy people, your walls already rise !"

The remarkable fact about the European city is that it has been built many times, and as often destroyed, and afterwards built up again, and that the work of destruction and reconstruction is going on as rapidly as ever in the present day. The genius of Rome, which was the genius for health and home, city and law, civilisation and religion and government, did not die when the Roman Empire was broken up, but descended into the Roman Catholic Church, and revived again in a manner beyond explanation in the barbarian bosoms which submitted to the Roman Catholic Church and evolved the orderly structure of the Feudal System. Europe in possession of the Feudal System, with its serviceable institutions and its lordly social and ecclesiastical theories, enjoyed the most moral, the best planned, the most all-defensive and all-inclusive social frame which the West has yet contrived. Nothing so good and complete in the general survey has been produced in Europe since the Feudal frame-work fell, but the destructive forces which were irresistible, proved also in the long run to be reconstructive forces, rebuilding the city in accordance with their own plan. Trade and science and the spirit of nationalism seemed at first to be purely destructive. agencies, but by and by it was to appear what a debt Europe was to owe to anarchy. No sooner did trade and commerce begin to expand than they were conscious

of themselves as intruders subjected to the ban of the church, which discountenanced the giving and taking of interest. The conservative, religious impulse proved the weaker of the two, and many good consciences must have been shocked, many social engineers and architects must have heard the rafters of their city rattling about their heads. It was as fortunate as it was inevitable that interest (in the economists' sense) triumphed over religion, since the accumulation of selfish wealth meant the encouragement of individual enterprise. The objection raised by the Church in those days to what has grown to be a nerve of modern industrialism has been revived in our own time by the socialists with much greater breadth of vision. The Roman Catholic Church joined with the Feudal System had maintained a sense of social responsibility through all ranks of society, so that no man could starve without his fellows feeling guilty for his death. This social feeling the selfishness of trade and interest came to disturb, and it was a just instinct which led the Church to foresee and fear the dissolution of ancient social fastenings. No Churchman indeed foresaw so much as the extremes of modern industrial competition pushing the weakest to the wall, and even proclaiming that it was good that as many as possible should go to the wall: no Churchman dreamed of large classes of men living in idleness and uselessness, or as shareholders, recipients of dividends which the new class of wage-earners would be sweated to produce for them: the mediaeval condemnation of interest was founded upon mere respect for authority, combined with the fear of the dimly realised changes it was destined to bring about. Nevertheless it is possible to be glad that that condemnation was pronounced, and that it failed, and that it is going again to be pronounced after the flight of so many centuries, with a fair prospect of getting itself accepted. The destruction of ancient religious ideas upon the subject of interest has meant a phenomenal growth in human power over the production of wealth, accompanied by phenomenal misery: the restoration of the ancient religious ideas at the demand of the city builders may mean a juster and more generous distribution of the means of life than has hitherto been possible in the history of the world. Thus the destruction of the old city built

and maintained with piety has been the prelude through pain of the building of a greater city.

In the same way, when the New Learning came to Europe with the revival of the knowledge of Greek literature, and when the discovery was made that the earth moved round the sun, the ancient traditions and the ancient established order suffered. Simultaneously the detection of abuses which had crept into religious insti tutions combined with other forces to lift the wave of the Reformation and shatter the unity of the Church of Christendom. Europe was given over to a period of intel lectual and ecclesiastical disruption, out of which in course of time appeared new shapes of good which to present day thinking enormously overbalance what ever the loss may have been. The Protestant churches have never approached the dignity and charity and splendour of the Roman Catholic Church, of which they are fragments: the American Colonies on the other hand, the enlarged freedom of indivi duals, and the collaborative, unexpected structure of modern science and philosophy open up boundless vistas of growth, and are remarkable instances of re-construc tion issuing out of dissolution. And of equal moment to the future of mankin was the outburst of mechanical convention in the service of industry, which was one of the fruits of the resurrection of science. The spinning-jenny, the power loom, or the steam engine were at first purely destructive and anarchical forces. overturning ancient habits of life and liveli hood, altering the very Dwellings of the people, reducing multitudes to starvation and not sparing even the children, who were drawn into the newly erected Fac tories, and brutally ill-treated in a manner which darkens the blackest page of all in English domestic history. Lord Shaftes bury and his friends engaged in their long struggle, and eventually passed their fac tory Act in defence of the children since when there has been no limit to a legislation which has become mor and more socialistic in character. Th one thing certain about socialism is that it is not anarchy: so that ou of every

blow dealt to social order in Europe has come by and by some new creation. The passion for the city in the largest sense of the word has beer the keynote of European history. In the

niddle ages men summed up their aspiraions in the phrase "the City of God." The vatchword of to-day is "the City of Humanity."

The contrast between the turn events ook in Europe and the turn taken by vents in India throws light upon the differng mental characters of men in the West ind the East. India built an extraordiarily good house to live in when she nvented the village community and the caste system. The house once built however, ircumstances and piety consecrated it, and orbade all efforts of destruction, and consequently all attempts to surpass what ad been done before. Europe chose restlessess. India preferred stagnation. The Vest, urged by ungovernable forces emergng from its own spirit, flung down every altar and trampled upon every sacred idea. The East, more self-controlled, preserved the reverence for its gods and submitted its neck to the sanctimonious yoke of custom. Europe has been the more daring, India he more religious. But in what sense of he word? Is it religion which makes a ivilisation great? I believe it is; and hat the religion which tries new experinents and breaks down old moralities is a obler religion than that of pure conservaism. In the profoundest sense of the word he West is more religious than the East! nder the mask of materialism which is all hat to superficial perception is visible in he West, exists the spiritual life of courge and of the faith that marches in blind onfidence or anguish towards the future. Men in the West have not been so subject o the tyranny of their own conceptions ts men in the East. They have entertained he loftiest ideals of Church and State, hey have governed their course with the id of conscious aspirations, but these seasons of apparent certainty and knowedge have alternated with seasons of the rruption of blind impulses and powers truggling towards the birth, driving men vhither they knew not, and strewing their ath with the wreckage of temple and 1ome. The re-birth of science in Europe was such a season. The idea that the earth moved round the sun offended church and state, and gave every man a sense of nsecurity. The The pioneers of scientific nvestigation had only their private passion to depend upon. It was strong enough to carry them across their own fears, ind the fires of persecution. They wrecked

a world, and re-made a world. Today the man of science is the representative not of disloyalty to truth but of the noblest loyalty for it. The veracity of Europe is grounded upon the man of science. No such reverence for fact is to be found as in him. When Darwin uttered the word Evolution, and traced man's origin from a common ancestor with the monkey, the house of idealism in Europe fell with a crash. Men had had in the past to accept the knowledge that their earth was not the centre and cynosure of the universe, as they had formerly supposed. There remained to support their pride the fond idea that there was a fundamental difference of origin separating them from the rest of living creatures. This remaining shred of comfort was now taken away: Darwin had afflicted everyman with a sense of degradation. As time passed by however it was perceived that what mankind had lost in one direction they had gained in another. If man had been taught to think less of himself, he had been compelled to conceive more highly of the universe. This fact enlarged rather than lessened his dignity. His pride now was in the whole, the greater than he, rather than in himself. It is a more awful situation to belong to the Milky Way than to resident upon a stable star, and the fate of mankind only gains in grandeur by the knowledge of the evolutionary past. Galileo and Darwin who seemed at first to be enemies and destroyers of human ideals and faiths, have become the architects of of new and nobler conceptions. The two grandest ideas that men have ever

possessed are the idea of Gravitation and the idea of Evolution. Any doubter about human progress can be pointed to these imaginative treasures.

European science and European ways of thinking generally have now come to India, and are presented to the minds of young men in colleges. Immediate consternation and confusion has been the result: a necessary but not unfavourable symptom. The desire for wealth also is entering India, and here again there is reason for hope rather than for fear. Along with science will come the morality of science, which is love of truth, the discipline of faculties, and the freedom of the imagination; and along with wealth will come the morality of the creator of wealth, which is honesty in deed and word, punc

tuality in habit, and the service of social welfare.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Feudal System, when both were at their best, represented the common will, the common safety, and the common feeling of the peoples of Europe. Private wealth, science, the Renaissance and the Reformation were the swinging of the pendulum towards the opposite extreme of individual liberty. The Feudal System became an anachronism and the Church a tyranny arresting the development of personality, which was the unperceived goal towards which the efforts of men were stretching when ancient institutions and timehonoured ways of living and thinking ceased to satisfy them. The pendulum seems now to have travelled to its farthest limit in the direction of pure individualism, and to be about to turn towards the strengthening of everyman's sense of responsibility to society. The social ill effects of the extreme development of individualism in modern industry are bringing about the reaction, of which the promise or foreboding is felt in literature and in the spread of the movement called Socialism. The

passion for the city is becoming once again consciously the keynote of European history, and the hearts of men are hungry like the heart of Aeneas to see the walls rise.

One of the best preachers of Socialism is a man who took explicit pains to separate himself from socialists-John Ruskin. All over the writings of John Ruskin are scattered denunciations of the existing commercial-minded civilisation, and all over his books are scattered formative ideas with regard to the building of the city of the future. In "Sesame and Lilies" this city is called by the name of "sure good," and "sure good," says Ruskin, "is first in feeding people, then in dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people with arts or sciences or any other subject of thought." The realisation of "sure good" will necessitate a vast amount of state action and interference with individual liberty, from which necessities Ruskin does not shrink, and in so far is to be reckoned a socialist. The name of Ruskin in fact is one of the symbols nowadays borne upon the banner of socialism, along with the name of Carlyle, another disbeliever in Democracy, who nevertheless assisted to roll the wave of democratic progress onward. For Demo

cracy or socialism (the two terms some people regard as synonymous) absorbs the spirit of its critics and opponents, and gathers into itself the strength of every powerful and respect-worthy adversary This is one of the signs by which socialism may be known for a stirring of the depths of life in Europe, and not for a temporary current breaking the surface. it dis

The socialist movement while cards the name of religion is in essence profoundly religious. As if he felt that he might be laying himself open to the charge of materialism when putting forward his definition of "sure good," Ruskin has taken the pains to explain the close interconnection which he conceives to lie be tween ordinary, everyday, practical social service and the spirit of pure religion "In contention with material evil you w find out the nature of all evil." But further, upon personal and social dedication to the arts of feeding and dressing and lodging people "will be founded indeed at last,an infallible religion. The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and the most terrible is the corruption of even the sincerest religion which is not daily found ed upon rational, effective, honourable and helpful action."

In other words the building of the City of Man is the way to the building of the City of God. Men cannot afford to des pise wealth, and material things and the knowledge of their own welfare.

there

The greatest philosopher today living in Bengal said to me upon the occasion of his return from England that the vulga rity of the West was money-making, and that the vulgarity of the East as represented by India was effortlessness. I do not know whether Dr. Seal would agree with me in adding that money-making is a hope ful type of vulgarity, because something better may by and by come out of it whereas effortlessness gives us nothing to look forward to. Be that as it may, is something greater than vulgarity in the dignity and calm of life in the Indian villages, and there is something which does not look like effortlessness in the apprenticeship of apprenticeship of Indian young men to various pursuits of knowledge and to business habits. The peasant dwelling upon the soil sustains the ancient meditative life in India, and the young men entering upon novel ways and the humblest services represent the new forces