political wisdom and courage; for it is they who bore the brunt of the battle against the wreckers of the new Constitution during the elections and won it, and it is they who, forming the majority in the new assemblies, have shown sagacity and moderation in the exercise of their new rights and the discharge of their new responsibilities as the means to closer co-operation between Indians and British. But the opposing forces arrayed against co-operation, as I have shown in the previous chapter, are still formidable. They assume many different shapes. They exploit many different forms of popular discontent. If they have failed to lay hold of the better and more educated classes, they have captured in some parts at least the masses that were never before anti-British. They have inflamed the racial hatred which untoward incidents helped to stir up. In Mr. Gandhi they have found a strangely potent leader who appeals to the religious emotions of both Hindus and Mahomedans to shake themselves free from the degrading yoke of an alien civilisation, and implores them to return to the ancient and better ways of India's own civilisation. It is just there that Mr. Gandhi strikes a responsive chord in many thoughtful Indians who repudiate him as a political leader. For their faith in either the material or moral superiority of Western civilisation is, one must admit, far less general and deep-seated than it still was only a generation ago. The emergence of Japan and her sweeping victories on land and water over the great European power that tried to humble her dealt the first heavy blow at their belief in the material superiority of the West. Just as severely shaken is their belief in its moral superiority, even with many whose loyalty to the British cause never wavered during the Great War and who still pride themselves on India's share in its final victory, when they see how the world of Western civilisation has been reft asunder by four years of frightful conflict which drenched all Europe with blood and left half of it at least plunged in black ruin. We have preached to Indians, not untruly, but with an insistence that seems to them now more than ever to savour of self-righteousness, that our superior civilisation redeemed them out of the anarchy and strife which devastated India before British rule brought her peace and order and justice. Now they ask themselves how it comes, then, that the Western civilisation which they are told to thank for their own salvation has not saved Europe itself from the chaos which has overtaken it to-day. Still more searching are the questions that they ask when they see the great powers that have been fortunate enough to emerge victorious from the struggle still postulating the superiority of Western civilisation as sufficient grounds for denying to other races who do not share it or have only recently come under its influence the right to equal treatment. Their gorge rises most of all