I was dining that night with such of the Servants of India as had not gone home for the family festival. Mr. Paranjbye was there too—Senior Wrangler of his year, Fellow of St. John’s, present Head of the Fergusson College close by, famous among European mathematicians, and almost tolerated in the Anglo-Indian society of Poona for his skill at lawn tennis. Mr. Kelkar had come as well—editor of the _Mahratta_, a leader in the Extremist camp, Mr. Tilak’s vigilant captain. And a few more Brahmans and others sat with us, not too sacrificial in purity to eat beside a carnivorous European. That “inscrutable dispensation” was discussed amid laughter, but Mr. Gokhale retained his accustomed serenity. He had written the words with entire seriousness. The dispensations of Providence were inscrutable, but still he believed the British connection was ordained for India’s good. It had secured various things which any one could count, but above all it had instilled into the Indian nature a love of freedom and a self-assertion against authority that Indians used to lack, but English people often possess in enviable abundance. I remember quoting the common opinion that Anglo-Indians have lost sympathy with Indians because they no longer make India their home, but keep one eye on England and are always on the flit. But Mr. Gokhale disagreed. He thought it an advantage that fewer English people now settled in the country. The fairly permanent residents, like shopkeepers and planters, were as a rule the worst mannered and most domineering, and they took hardly any part in public life. The standard of manners in general, he thought, had gone down. It might be that, in old days, the Englishman found it easier to be sympathetic with natives whom he could treat as dear good things. But educated Indians had come to detest such sympathy as only fit for pet animals, and both races were beginning to notice the change. For his part, he thought that since Lord Ripon left India in 1884, the type of Englishman that came out had slowly been declining. “It is unfortunate,” he said, “that our Congress movement should have coincided with the past twenty-two years of violent reaction and Imperialism in England. You can hardly imagine how intolerable our life became at the time of the Boer war. The insolence of Anglo-Indian papers, like the _Englishman_ or the _Civil and Military Gazette_ towards our people goes beyond all bounds. Yet the _Civil and Military Gazette_, which is the worst offender, has only received a mild remonstrance from the Lieut.-Governor of the Punjab, while the editors of Indian papers are in gaol.[9] Such treatment, however, is the inevitable penalty of a conquered race, and, I think, within the last year manners have mended a little. Lord Minto, at all events, is very much the gentleman himself.