Gentlemen, when we started this agitation--basing it on the ideal to which I have just referred--ever since then we have been living under a cross fire. The bureaucracy has been against us, as it is natural they would be against us, as it is natural they should be against us. But I am sorry to say that along with these there is a party of Bengalees in Calcutta who also have set themselves against the fulfilment of this noble ideal. When I read the criticisms which appear in the _Statesman_ or the _Englishman_ I feel glad because I know that we have succeeded in exposing the illogical position which they take. But when I read similar things in the _Bengalee_, I assure you, I feel a great pain in my heart. I cannot understand it. Is this ideal to be pursued from the consideration of purely personal question? We have been told that the leaders of yesterday are the only people who can lead us. I do not deny their claim to lead. But I am not one of those who would follow a leader simply because he was a leader yesterday. I want him to lead. Anybody who leads the real politics of the country at the present time is a man whom I honour and I am prepared to bow down and take the dust of his feet. But if a man comes to me and says: look here you will have to do this--it does not matter what the people of Bengal want--I am the leader of Bengal--this has been done by me--it has got to be supported--well, my answer to him is: "thou imposter!" No one has got that right. We stand or fall as we pursue or desist from the popular cause. I am nothing. No leader is anything. The strength belongs to the nation whose representative I am, whose representative every one of us may become. It is not my own strength. It is the peoples' strength. Take your stand on that and we will worship you as a leader, as a martyr, as anything which you can claim but fall short of that ideal once by a hair's breadth, your claim is no longer to be recognised. If I have expressed myself strongly, believe me, gentlemen, it is because I have felt deeply--I feel, I have been stabbed to the heart by this attitude--this contempt of public opinion. WAS THERE AN UNDERTAKING? Now, gentlemen, you all know that we are expecting a scheme of self-government from the British Parliament. What that scheme is I do not know. No one has got the right to know but we are expecting some scheme. We heard that Mr. Montagu had shown or talked about the outline of that scheme to some Indian leaders--Mr. Surendranath Banerjea of Bengal, Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya of the U. P. and Mr. Shastri of Madras and certain other gentlemen. I do not know if it is true but I suspect it is. We are also told--it is not admitted--we are told that some of these gentlemen had given a promise to the Secretary of State that they would get the people of this country to accept that scheme. I am not saying that this is admitted but that is what I have heard. THE CONFIDENTIAL LETTER.