The battle, in fact, was not fought out chiefly at the polls. It was waged very fiercely in the press and on the platform between those who were bent on paralysing the reforms as the malevolent conception of a "Satanic" Government and those who were determined to bring them to fruition, not indeed in blind support of Government, but as a means of exercising constitutional pressure on the Government. Mr. Gandhi certainly succeeded not only in dissuading his immediate followers but in frightening a good many respectable citizens who have no heart for militant politics from coming forward as candidates. Could he have made "Non-co-operation" universally effective, there would have been no candidates and no nominations, no elections and no councils. But in this he failed, as some of the more worldly Extremists foresaw who obeyed him in this matter with reluctance. In the Bombay Presidency, Gokhale, though dead, had a large share in the victory of the old principles for which he had stood when there had been little will to co-operate on the part either of Government or of the majority of Western-educated Indians. For none fought the battle of the Moderates more steadfastly and faced the rowdiness of the "Non-co-operationists" more fearlessly than Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, who had succeeded him as the head of his "Servants of India" Society, and Professor Paranjpe, who had long been closely associated with him in educational work at the Ferguson College in Poona. Enough Moderates were found to stick to their colours in practically every constituency, and they secured their seats, in the absence of Extremist nominations, without contest, or after submitting their not very acute political differences to the arbitrament of the polls. Nowhere had the Extremists developed their plan of campaign on more comprehensive lines than in those great United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, which with their huge and dense population of over forty-eight millions under one provincial government form the largest and in some respects the most important administrative unit in British India. It was within the area which it now covers that the Mutiny broke out and, with the exception of Delhi itself, was mainly confined and fought out. The bitter memories of that period have not yet wholly vanished. It contains a larger proportion than any other province of historic cities--Agra, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Muttra, Jhansi, Benares, Allahabad, some of them still the nerve centres of Hinduism and of Islam. The Mahomedans form only a minority of about one-sixth of the population, but their influence must not be measured merely by numbers, for one of the distinctive features of the United Provinces is the survival of a great landed aristocracy in which the Mahomedans are largely represented. Nowhere else, indeed, is the land still held in such an overwhelming proportion by great landlords, or the rights of the humble tillers of the soil more precarious.