_Shakti_ worship finds expression in licentious aberrations which, however lofty may be the speculative theories that gave birth to them, represent the most extravagant forms of delirious mysticism. Yet such men as Mr. Surendranath Banerjee[7], who in his relations with Englishmen claims to represent the fine flower of Western education and Hindu enlightenment, did not hesitate to call the popularity of _Shakti_ worship in aid in order to stimulate the boycott of British goods. To prevent any blacksliding the agitators had ready to hand an organization which they did not hesitate to use. The gymnastic societies founded in Bengal for physical training and semi-military drill on the model of those established by Tilak in the Deccan were transformed into bands of _samitis_ or "national volunteers," and students and schoolboys who had been encouraged from the first to take part in public meetings and to parade the streets in procession as a protest against Partition, were mobilized to picket the bazaars and enforce the boycott. Nor were their methods confined to moral suasion. Where it failed they were quite ready to use force. The Hindu leaders had made desperate attempts to enlist the support of the Mahomedans, and not without some success, until the latter began to realize the true meaning both of the Partition and of the agitation against it. Nothing was better calculated to enlighten them than another feature introduced also from the Deccan into the "national" propaganda. In the Deccan the cult of Shivaji, as the epic hero of Mahratta history, was intelligible enough. But in Bengal his name had been for generations a bogey with which mothers hushed their babies, and the Mahratta Ditch in Calcutta still bears witness to the terror produced by the daring raids of Mahratta horsemen. To set Shivaji up in Bengal on the pedestal of Nationalism in the face of such traditions was no slight feat, and all Mr. Surendranath Banerjee's popularity barely availed to perform it successfully. But to identify the cause of Nationalism with the cult of the Mahratta warrior-king who had first arrested the victorious career and humbled the pride of the Mahomedan conquerors of Hindustan was not the way to win over to it the Mahomedans of Bengal. In Eastern Bengal especially, with the exception of a few landlords and pleaders whose interests were largely bound up with those of the Hindus, the Mahomedans as a community had everything to gain and nothing to lose by the Partition. For those amongst them who were merchants the boycott spelt serious injury to their trade and led in some instances to reprisals in which the Hindus fared badly. Whenever it happened in this way that the biter was bit, the Bengalee Press accused the Government of encouraging the revival of sectarian strife, just as it denounced every measure for the maintenance of order which the Government was compelled to take in the discharge of one of its most