communities are fully charged. English men in general and Irishmen in general cannot claim to be free from moral responsibility for the crime, just as when an Indian murderer kills any European, or vice versa, neither Indians nor AngloIndians (old style) can claim to be perfectly innocent. They alone can claim to be quite innocent who are real lovers of humanity, irrespective of race, nationality, colour or creed; but such men are few in number.

There is much truth in Mr. De Valera's statement, in the course of which he says that:

The killing of any human being is an awful act, but it is as awful when the victim is a humble worker or unknown peasant as when he is placed in the seats of the mighty and known in every corner of the earth.

He did not know who the shooters of Sir Henry Wilson were, or why they shot him, but he knew the attitude of mind which a campaign of outrage and aggression begets. He knew that life has been made hell for the Nationalist minority in Belfast and its neighbourhood during the past couple of years.......

He shared the belief that Imperialism was responsible for the outrage and could imagine relatives taking the law into their own hands. He did not approve, but he did not pretend to misunderstand.

Murder of Herr Rathenau.

The murder of Herr Rathenau, German Foreign Minister, has also caused a great sensation. It is another horrible crime, due, not to racial hatred, but probably to party machinations. It has been suspected to be the signal for the monarchist and militarist elements to rise against the Republic.

Various wrong ideas prevail all over the world regarding murders. One is that political murders are not as sinful as murders for private reasons. Another is that political murders are more heinous than murders due to non-political causes. A third is that it is more detestable and wicked to kill an obscure non-official than to kill an officer, particularly a high officer. A fourth is that it is more wicked and horrible to kill an officer, particularly a high officer, than it is to kill a nonofficial, particularly an obscure nonofficial. A fifth is that it is not so wicked

for a member of a subject race to kill a member of an imperial race as it is for a member of an imperial race to kill a member of a subject race. A sixth is that it is not so heinous for a member of a conquering race to kill one of a subject race as it is for anybody to kill one belonging to a conquering race. A seventh is that it is comparably excusable to kill one belonging to a hostile party or faction. An eighth is that murder of a white by a nonwhite or vice versa is not so wicked as murders of whites by whites or of nonwhites by non-whites. And so on and so forth.

But murder is murder, whoever and whatever may be the murderer and the murdered.

Lynching Again.

Some time ago the Americans sent a committee or commission to enquire into and report upon the doings of the Black and Tan (the British soldiers) in Ireland, and an illustrated report was published. We have seen a copy of it. It makes gruesome reading.

Not less gruesome, however, are the accounts of lynchings in America which appear occasionally in American newspapers. Take the following from New York Nation of May 17 last:

the

The

Three Negroes, charged with assault and murder of a 17-year-old white girl, were roasted to death by a mob at Kirvin, Texas. first Negro burned is alleged to have confessed and implicated the other two, although eveu under torture they steadfastly denied their guilt. Before they were set afire, the three men were mutilated. This triple orgy, unique even in the annals of our South, where human beings are burned alive every year, took place in front of a church. Almost simultaneously three hundred Americans, among them seventeen State governors, thirty mayors of large cities, some of them in the South, representatives of every important religious denomination, and many judges of State supreme courts, presented a petition to the United States Senate to pass the Dyer anti-lynching bill. Is more convincing evidence needed for such legislation than this recent Texas savagery, a horror unknown in the most primitive of the countries which we white men set up to govern?

Cruelty in India,

It is useless to try to ascertain with nicety whether we are less cruel

than other people. There is no doubt that this trait of ferocious animals exists in our nature. We are not referring to Chauri Chaura, Nankana Sahib, Kartarpur, or the Moplah rebellion, but things which are more ordinary.

It is a fact that the percentage of suicides among women in India is higher than in any other civilised country. What is the cause? Why are there cases of women in Bengal burning themselves to death by soaking their dress in kerosene oil and setting fire to it? In many homes, the lot of the daughterin-law is very miserable. This fact became prominent during the trial of the husband, mother-in-law and daughter-inlaw of a girl of 17 named Anandamayi who used to be kept confined in a cabin, two by two by two yards, starved and branded with hot irons. Such cases come before courts only rarely; but they are certainly of more frequent occurrence than the number of prosecutions would show.

and

The slicing off of the tips of women's noses is another dastardly practice of scoundrels. It is a great pity that the criminals generally get off with such light sentences as six months' imprisonment for disfiguring a woman for life. The punishment should be more exemplary and deterrent. In such cases one feels

inclined to demand a nose for a nose.

the

Whatever the other disadvantages and harmful results of child-marriages, so long as there was a strict general adherence to the orthodox custom of postponing the living together of husband and wife till after the performance of a post-puberty religious ceremony, the physical sufferings of child wives were somewhat minimised. But with decrease of orthodoxy, the physical sufferings of many immature wives at the first stage of their conjugal lives must be acute and prolonged. They are, however, dumb sufferers and therefore we escape being arraigned at the bar of civilised humanity as a cruel people. But nemesis over-takes us all the same. Our vital statistics, our poor physique, our miserable intellectual output, all tell the tale.

The Palestine Mandate.

What is the matter with the Palestine Mandate that it should have lost favour with the ruling classes of Britain? Is there no oil there? Or is there less oil than would be considered sufficient compensation for encountering Arab hostility? Or are the Jews, whose wealth is "the hidden hand" behind many British happenings, not so eager to make their homes in their home country as it was expected they would?

We refer to oil, as, according to the New York Nation, there was a strong "diplomatic smell of oil" at the Geneva conference. That journal says:

For a brief moment the clouds lifted at Genoa, and we glimpsed the underlying economic struggle. The talk of "Germany,' of "Russia," of "France," of "England," and of their political spokesmen faded; instead the excited correspondents cabled columns about the "Royal Dutch," the "Shell," the "AngloPersian," and the "Standard Oil." The great oil companies assumed the center of the stage; the politicians appeared plainly as the puppets ; for a day or two we were even permitted to read the names of the men who pull the strings.

Protest of Natal Indian Congress.

A telegram received from the Natal Indian Congress states that a mass meeting of the congress protested (a) against the rural dealers licensing ordinance passed by the Natal Provincial Council depriving Indians of their existing rights, (b) against the ordinance defranchising Indians in townships, and (c) against the ordinance segregating Indians in Durban. The meeting emphatically declared that the Indian community would be doomed if the Union Governor-General sanctioned these measures. That is certainly our opinion,

too.

Mr. Sastri in Australia.

It cannot be said that the feeling against Indians in the British colonies is strongest in Australia "or that their lot is the hardest there. In fact, there is no such feeling against them there as exists in South Africa or Fiji, for example. And in some of the states of Australia the Indians had been enjoying the franchise from before Mr. Sastri's visit. He has, however, for reasons which we do not know, chosen to

visit Australia first, in order to plead with the citizens there to have pity on the Indians residing in that island continent and improve their condition and status, whatever that may mean. That may or may not be a useful role but it is undoubtedly not a proud role; though a proud role; though to those Indians who pretend to be proud of being British subjects it may seem such. Let us, however, hope that after finishing his softest job first, Mr. Sastri will tackle the tough jobs elsewhere.

He has said that he does not want Australia to give up her "white Australia policy". He is welcome to cherish and preach such an opinion as his own. But we must protest if he says or suggests that that is the representative Indian opinion. Both moderates and extremists are of one mind in this, that those who will not give us the right of free ingress, egress and choice and pursuit of occupation in their country, must not claim such right in India. We may not be able enforce our will, but let there no mistake about what think and want. We do not to or entreat any people to confer any boon on us. What we say is this: It is neither gentlemanlike nor sportsmanlike to seek those advantages from any country which you deny to its children in your own country; if "White This or That Country" be the right policy,

to

be

we

pray

"Brown or Black or Yellow This or That Country" is just as good a policy. We do not want to be exclusive, have not been exclusive through the ages; but surely it is less than human not to think of excluding those who exclude or seek to exclude us. Exclusion may not be the right method or policy for us; but the thought of reciprocal action cannot be shut out from the mind.

Mr. Sastri knows that there is no party in India which does not want honorable and citizenlike treatment for Indians residing in the British colonies; there we are all of one opinion. And Mr. Sastri's mission, we take it, is to secure such treatment. Why, then, does he talk Indian party politics abroad? Does he

not know the old Sanskrit verse which says that though the five sons of King Pandu are Pandavas when pitted against the hundred sons of Dhritarastra, both the parties combined make one hundred and five princes of the line of Kuru when pitted against some common antagonist? And why talk of any party in India seeking to break up the British Empire, when the Congress has yet to declare itself in favour of independence? Does Mr. Sastri think that any colonists can be greater lovers of India than even the rankest extremists ?

Incidentally, we have a few words to say on one of Mr. Sastri's observations. He said in the course of one of his speeches in Australia that the Brahmans of India have been able to preserve the purity of their blood. What he meant to suggest thereby, we cannot definitely say; we can only guess. Probably he meant that as by means of the caste system the Brahmans have been able to preserve the purity of their blood, so the white colonists may be able to remain white, even after allowing black, brown or yellow immigration, by not intermarrying or interdining with them; we hope Mr. Sastri did not further suggest that the white colonists should treat coloured immigrants as the Brahmans have treated the "untouchables" for countless generations. But is there any politically-minded Indian of any party who is prepared to accept for his countrymen the position of an inferior caste, not to speak of the position of "untouchables", in any foreign country?

As for the claim that the Brahmans have been able to preserve the purity of their blood, is Mr. Sastri so ignorant of Indian history and of anthropology, as to think that the Brahmans or, for that matter, any race, caste or tribe in any country, have pure blood? Purity of blood is a myth. Go where you will in India, you will find both fair-complexioned and very dark-complexioned and straight-nosed and snub-nosed, Brahmans. On the other hand, we are personally acquainted with Nama-sudras, for example, who are as fair-complexioned as Kashmiri Brahmans.

A. G. Gardiner on Bottomley. Writing on "The Fall of Bottomley" in The Nation and The Athenaeum, Mr. A. G. Gardiner exclaims :

"Well, Bottomley is condemned and the British jury system is acquitted, and now that the nuisance that has poisoned the public air for a generation has been swept away, we may usefully ask why it was allowed to pollute the world so long and so triumphantly. It cannot be a pleasant inquiry, for it involves a good deal more than Bottomley. It involves that enormous public which made him its idol and gave him his sinister power. It involves..."

Proceeding Mr. Gardiner adds :

"It involves the Press, which, until Truth addressed itself to the task of getting rid of this public shame, preserved a craven silence in regard to Bottomley's proceedings, printed his name with respect, accepted his advertisements, published, even while the case was going on, articles which were undisguised eulogies of the man. It involves distinguished men, in and out of Parliament, who gave Bottomley the prestige of their patronage and approval. It involves finally and most seriously the Government itself which employed Bottomley, on what terms we now know, and in doing so covered his villainies with the hall-mark of the State.

If in a country "where education and political power are universal, so base and evil a man should have been able for years to command the greatest popular following of any one in public life", we must not think that democracy or what passes by that name is a sure cure for all the ills that infest human society. When all the distinguished men in Britain kept quiet and consulted their own convenience, Truth, by no means the most wealthy journal, dared to expose the scoundrel. That ought to be an encouragement to honest journals in India.

the

Referring to Bottomley's case, editor of The Nation and The Athenaeum observes :

"Bottomley's career of prey is over, and for good. The special shame of it is its cashing of war-emotions for private plunder. He was used by the Government for recruiting purposes and he played it false. The war-spirit is served by crooked instruments, which become its later Nemesis."

So, we must not think that those who are used by Government must necessarily be angels. Government may know some to be rogues and yet use them.

Independence Won, and Independence Given.

There are some Kings who are born independent, there are some who win independence, there are others who are given independence. The quality and satisfactory character of the last brand of independence will appear from the following paragraph extracted from the New York Nation :

Feisal, crowned King of Irak, in the expectation that he would be a docile satrap of Britain in Mesopotamia, satisfied with a title in lieu of independence, is chafing at his role. He asks that the British withdraw their Indian civil-service advisers as they had promised; he refuses to prohibit demonstrations in favor of abolishing the British mandate over Mesopotamia, and declares that "We Arabs hate to submit to any foreign authority. We hated the Turks, and we are not going to accept another bondage now." Meanwhile the other new puppet king, Ahmed Fuad of Egypt, announces that the Sudan, historically part of Egypt, is part of his kingdom of Egypt. The British, who were a bit vague about the matter in earlier negotiations, are now very sure that it is not. The Sudan, Lord Curzon says, is still British. (Incidentally the Sudan, controlling the head water of the Nile, controls all Egypt by that fact.) So the business of granting "self-government" without granting self-government runs into snags. It may be a very fine thing on paper to grant the name of independence while holding the reins unobtrusively in the hands of the Chirstian empires; in practice it does not work. Human nature half apostles of liberal imperialism must learn. intrudes upon paper theories, as the half-andYou either let a people run its wayward course of chaotic self-government, taking upon itself the burden of its mistakes, or step by step you are forced into the historic horrors of imperialism you shoot down patriots as "bandits," you employ Black and Tans, you have Amritsars, you arrest Gandhi. Outside of the mouths of pleasant speakers there is no such thing as liberal imperialism.

Addendum.

Having been undeceived by the logic of facts, we restore the following passage, omitted by us in an inrush of faith in man, from "The Present State of the Calcutta University, in the light of facts". On page 89, column 1, lies 43-44, after the words "financial mismanagement", add :

"To these we may now add another, namely, (10) that there should be a medical examination of every person appointed by the University. Darbhanga Buildings is not a Dome des Invalides. If you have already

from

taken one uncertified lunatic for a department, why again negotiate with a newspaper proprietor for engaging another sufferer cerebral malady ?" Non-co-operation and the University Deficit.

The statement of the causes of the huge deficit of the University, quoted in a previous Note. cannot be accepted without close scrutiny. During how many years has this deficit accumulated? Where was non-co-operation then? When has the Rangoon University and the Dacca Secondary Education Board begun to work? What numbers of candidates used to be sent up by Dacca and Burma ? The loss of these candidates cannot have caused the huge deficit to The any appreciable extent.

non-co

operation movement produced its startling effect in Bengal after Mr. C. R. Das had announced that he had given up his practice. What What was the date of that announcement ? In his speech made in the Bengal Legislative Council on the 1st March, 1922, the Hon'ble the Minister of Education, said with reference to the alleged deficit of 51⁄2 lakhs :

"I believe he [Prof. S. C. Mukherji] said that it was due to the non-co-operation movement. But is Prof. Mukherji sure that the loss is due to the effects of non-co-operation? Has he cared to enquire to what extent the loss may not also be due to the thoughtless expansion of the University in the past?" "...the financial management of the Calcutta University in the past was deplorable."

Referring to the opening debit balance of Rs. 2,49,108 of the Fee Fund in the year 1920-21, the Minister observed:

"......in the year ending June 1920 the Calcutta University spent Rs. 1,88,743 of the previous year's balance plus Rs. 29,171, totalling Rs. 2,37,000, over and above the huge fee receipts of Rs. 11 lakhs or so; that is to say an aggregate of Rs. 13,37,914. I put it to the house and to Prof. Mukherji, where was the non-co-operation movement in that year ?"

Before the consideration of the proposal of making a grant, there should be an independent audit of accounts up to date. In the mean time, in order to safeguard

the interests of post-graduate students, they should be, by a special ordinance, allowed to appear at their respective examinations in due course without attending lectures, as was the rule many years ago.

"Visva-Bharati."

In the course of a review of Tagore's "Creative Unity", The Times Literary Supplement remarks with reference to his University of Visva Bharati at Santiniketan :

What he says in depreciation of the type of education established by the British in India is probably only too true. The trouble has been that modes of education traditional in England (and perhaps not altogether satisfactory here) were unintelligently transferred to the very different Indian world. Those who introduced them never turned their thought to first principles and asked what precisely education was intended to accomplish. Rabindranath does raise this fundamental question and the ideal of a university which he sketches really brings thought and imaginatioa to bear upon the problem. His university is not to confine itself to intellectual culture, but "Cooperate with the villages round it, cultivate iand, breed cattle, spin cloths, press oil from oilseeds." How far the exigencies of time would admit of the poet's ideals being realized in practice one does not know; but one hopes that if the people of Bengal are now to frame their educational system for themselves, Dr. Rabindranath Tagore will be called into counsel.

We are glad to learn that Sir J. C. Bose and Dr. Brajendranath Seal have accepted the offices of Vice-presidents of the University at Santiniketan, and Sir Michael Sadler has written to say: "I accept with gratitude the honour of being enrolled as a foundation honorary member of your International University of Santiniketan. I hope that its work may be very fruitful in furthering the spiritual unity of fellow-learners in East and West."

The work of the new session will soon commence.

ERRATUM.

May M. R., P. 644, 2nd colum, 24th line, for "paternal" read "fraternal and".