The whole air was full of suspicion. The mere choice of Surat for the Congress after Nagpur was abandoned—how suspicious that was! Surat, too close a neighbour to Bombay, the very stronghold of “Bombay Moderates”—Parsis, mere Parliamentarians, unredeemed by the fire of sacrifice, men who would make the best of both worlds, men who took titles from an alien Government! It was in Surat that Sir Pherozeshah Mehta had founded his fortunes. Now he dominated all the west coast, all the Presidency of Bombay, and here he was seen with Mr. Dinshaw Edulji Wacha, most statistical of Parsis, himself President of the Calcutta Congress in 1901. All the other obedient satellites were circling round him too, bent on conciliating a Government that answered conciliation with titles or contempt. Was a National Congress to be manipulated by mitred Parsis? It was all very well to plead Sir Pherozeshah’s services to India in the past—in the days when, as a disciple of Ranade himself, he had stood almost alone against the bureaucracy, had displayed a courage equal to Mr. Gokhale’s, an eloquence hardly second to Surendra Nath’s, a power of sarcasm hardly rivalled by Moti Lal’s; had been chosen President of the young Congress in 1890; had conquered for Indians the control of the Bombay Corporation; had converted his city into a model of local government; had swept away her slums and purged her administration. To the suspicious Nationalist these things were nothing now. They belonged to the past, to the scrap-heaps of dead reputations. The crisis called for other arms, other methods. It was no longer a battle of slums and water, no longer a thing of appeals for sympathy and dear old Lord Ripon’s reforms. Even Sir Pherozeshah’s address at the Bombay Congress only three years before was now suspect. He was chairman of the Reception Committee, and one remembered the passage which ran:—