not only for the people and the present but also for the past of India, the Ancient of Days,' an enthusiasm which, on occasion, obtained recognition even from that Western-educated opinion with which he was so often at issue. At present this opinion is generally voiced by lawyers, men the substance of whose days is incessant contention. But things were not always so; and it is pleasant to learn from Lord Ronaldshay's page 390 that the late Gopal Krishna Gokhale, foremost among Lord Curzon's political adversaries and bred in the more reflective school of education, recognised unstintingly the impelling force which drove the Viceroy on. Before the National Congress in December 1905 Gokhale made 'a passionate and acrid onslaught' on all his doings. Six months later after receiving the news of Lord Curzon's great bereavement, he was writing to him in deep sympathy acknowledging the rare spirit that had lived for lofty ends and made a religion of all its work.' Gokhale felt that to Lord Curzon many things could be forgiven because of the main direction and underlying motive of all his days.

In a minute dated May 11, 1902, regarding preparations for the Durbar of January 1903, Lord Curzon observed that the thing most needed in India was the sense of common participation in a great political system and of fellow citizenship of the British Empire.' The Durbar, he said, was intended primarily to bring home to all the people of the Indian Continent the vital fact that they were partners in a harmonious whole. Yet he was anxious to assist the Indian National Congress to a 'peaceful demise,' and bitterly antagonised the 'new Nationalists,' especially in Bengal. To some extent this antagonism was the result of an unfortunate manner; but mainly it sprang from the natural conflict between his zealous reforming spirit and the impatience of Western control which was then beginning to show itself in India and Asia. His first offence was curtailment of the power of the elected element in the Calcutta Corporation, an arrangement undone in 1923 by a Bill piloted through the Legislative Council by Sir Surendra nath Banerjee, once Lord Curzon's stoutest opponent, and in later times, by a turn of fortune's wheel, a member of the Bengal Government. The undoer lived

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to see substantial reason for regretting his achievement. Lord Curzon's next offence was his Universities Bill, which came too late and ran too sharply counter to ♫ popular prejudices and vested interests to do much more than point the way to better things. Next came the "unfortunate passage in his speech at the Calcutta University Convocation, which, it is safe to say, would never have found utterance had Sir Walter Lawrence been still at his elbow. His last and greatest offence 1 was the partition of the old unwieldy province of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, in such a manner as to split Bengal itself into halves, creating two new provinces. Had this measure not been preceded by the highly contentious period of University legislation, and had it not synchronised with the thrill which passed through Asia on the close of the Russo-Japanese war, it might not have been so violently resented by Bengali Hindu sentiment as it was, a resentment which was heightened and sustained by the apprehensions of powerful vested interests. Psychologically the line of division adopted was unwise; but no one then suspected that it would afford a welcome opportunity to a band of revolutionary conspirators, or that when the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam came into being, it would lose its first LieutenantGovernor within a year; would be for some time financially and administratively starved, and would be abolished when it had begun amply to justify its creation. Its abolition only temporarily placated Bengali Hindu sentiment; it annoyed the Muhammadans and weakened their trust in British stability of purpose. Extremist hostility in no way relaxed. The stream of subterranean revolutionary conspiracies flowed on in Bengal.

Sir Walter Lawrence says that Lord Curzon did not attempt to forecast the distant future of India. From Lord Curzon's own words we would gather that he made such attempts and desisted, not arriving at any satisfactory result. Whither was Britain leading India? What was it all to come to? What was the goal? The future of the Indian race was the most hazardous as well as the most absorbing of speculations.' He did not think that it lay with the Nationalists representing as they did only certain castes and professions, always apart

from the soldiers, the hereditary rulers of bygone days. Yet Nationalist ambitions were expanding; their numbers were growing; their tempers were not improving; and they could appeal to the British democracy in persuasive language. It was all a puzzle. Unable to avoid presentiments of the eve, he turned for relief to the great problems involving the welfare of the millions which Indian administration presents, to foreign defence and domestic administration. As Lord Morley afterwards said: 'The outcome, the final outcome of British rule in India may be a profitable study for the musings of meditative minds. But we are not here to muse. We have the duty of to-day to perform. We have the tasks of to-morrow spread out before us.'

In his own 'British Government in India,' Lord Curzon ranks Warren Hastings and Dalhousie above all his other predecessors as administrators and rulers of men. He is perhaps hardly fair to Wellesley, to whom, as Lord Ronaldshay says, he possessed a 'more than superficial resemblance,' and dwells more sympathetically on Dalhousie, whose character and fortunes were not unlike his own. Of both it may be said that where they erred it was from a 'a certain hardness of texture which prevented them from making sufficient allowances for the susceptibilities and weaknesses of others,' and that neither possessed 'the equanimity which was the glory of Warren Hastings.' One certainly cannot imagine Lord Curzon passing through trials at all comparable in severity to those which beset that much-injured man and afterwards, in the evening of his life, writing calmly to a friend: 'I have had a handsome letter from the Chairman of the East India Company and of more unreserved graciousness than was ever written by or in the name of the Court of Directors. I have answered it feebly. The colours of my setting seem all too vivid.' The greatest of all the Governors-General was the first.

Nine eventful years elapsed between Lord Curzon's departure from India and the coming of the Great War. Bengal was distracted by Hindu and Congress antiPartition agitation, and by conflicts between would-be enforcers of a boycott of British goods and Muhammadans who opposed the campaign and desired to be left alone.

Under cover of the general ferment associations of young revolutionaries in the two new provinces developed their plans, and began a long intermittent campaign of robberies, bomb outrages and murders. The atmosphere was poisoned by seditious newspapers. The Congress split into Moderates and Extremists, in spite of its formal adoption of Swaraj (one's own dominion) as a watchword which was designed to rally all its adherents. The most prominent Extremist leader found his way to jail. A Muslim League was organised to secure the Muhammadan position in a time of constitutional change; the MorleyMinto reforms were enacted, and after long delay a much-needed Press Act was sanctioned by a very reluctant Secretary of State. The whole atmosphere then improved considerably, and India was visited by their Majesties the King and Queen. The capital was transferred from Calcutta to Delhi, and Bengal once more became one province. But Muslim sentiment was alienated by the alteration of the partition and by the Balkan war, and the Muslim League formally declared for the attainment of the system of self-government suitable to India.' Hindu revolutionists were busy here and there, and the Viceroy was bombed on the occasion of his State-entry into the new capital. Lord Hardinge's calm courage under this ordeal produced a profound impression; and in spite of all political discontents, when the Great War came, the country was quieter than it had been for some years; trade, commerce, communications, education were rapidly expanding; the enlarged legislative Councils were working well. Lord Morley, and after him Lord Crewe, had emphatically declared that they were not meant to lead to the establishment of a parliamentary system; but by abandoning official majorities on provincial legislative councils, Lord Morley stultified his own declaration.

At the outset of the War the ruling Chiefs set an example of enthusiastic loyalty to the whole country. The martial castes and races rendered invaluable service, and the politicians followed the initiative of one of their leaders who moved in the Imperial Legislative Council that India should be allowed to share in the financial burdens which the war must bring. In spite of the efforts of the Extremist Tilak to organise obstruction with the

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view to using the Empire's difficulties for pressing a demand for Home Rule in India,* all agitation was suspended for eighteen months and more. The whole country had been warned by robberies and murders in the Punjab, where concerted revolutionary efforts had been boldly met and thoroughly defeated, that the times were out of joint for it. But the war dragged on; this impression faded; and at the political meetings of December 1915, the President of the Congress, the late Lord Sinha, stated that a reasoned ideal of the future was required; an ideal which would satisfy the ambitions of the rising generations and arrest anarchism; an ideal which would at the same time meet with British approval. This was the establishment of democracy pure and simplegovernment of the people by the people." On the same occasion the President of the Muslim League blamed British foreign policy for the war with Turkey, and declared that India needed 'self-government suitable to the needs and requirements of the country under the ægis of the British Crown.' In April 1916, Lord Hardinge made over charge of the Viceroyalty to Lord Chelmsford. In the same month rebellion broke out in Dublin; and from that time agitation began, continued, and intensified under the fostering influence of a Home Rule League' dominated by Tilak and Mrs Besant. In August 1917, British policy was declared to be the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of selfgoverning institutions with a view to the progressive realisation of responsible government in British India as an integral part of the British Empire.' Substantial steps in this direction were to be taken as soon as possible, and the Secretary of State would proceed to India to discuss with the Viceroy what these steps would be. Progress toward the goal could be achieved only by measured stages. The British Government and the Government of India, on whom responsibility lies for the welfare and advancement of the Indian peoples, must be the judges of the time and measure of advance, and they must be guided by the measure of co-operation received from those upon whom the new opportunities

* See Mody's 'Life of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta,' vol. II, pp. 654-6.