India wants to get on; we bar the way, so India feels unrest. Now if you will consider this unrest you will admit that it is not a bad symptom but a good one; it is a sign of an increasing life. Neither is it uncomplimentary to us that it should have arisen. It is the greatest compliment our rule could have. A hundred and fifty years ago--even, perhaps, fifty years ago--India could not have felt this. She was exhausted, weary, wanting peace. We gave her peace, and so she has grown strong and overcome her weariness. That is our doing. No one else could have done that. We gave her a complete rest cure. We said, "Keep still, and eat and drink; we will do all the thinking--the ruling that has to be done. Do not be afraid, for we can do it well. Have confidence. Get back your nerves and strength. We will look after you." We did. How well we did it history tells. We did not spare ourselves. I do not say we acted from any altruistic motives. I do not say we have not made mistakes. But we did it. The task was great; the greatest, perhaps, the world has seen. India is rested, and she wakes, she moves. Why are we angry? Should we not feel proud? Can we not give her a hand, and say, "Rise up and try to walk. I will hold your hand at first, till you are stronger. Then when you are grown you shall walk free, beside me, as my daughter whom I have brought up"? I see continual denunciations of the unrest in India. Why? I see continual regrets that the past is passed--but why? Continual threats are breathed towards India. Why? For myself, I hail it as the happiest omen that could be. It has unfortunate exhibitions sometimes; that is partly our fault, I fear, because we do not recognise that the past is gone for ever. India has grown, and we forget. We give no outlet to these true energies that have developed. India was our patient; now she is recovering shall we make of her a subject, or a daughter? She must be one or other, or leave us altogether, for the past is passed. CHAPTER III THE CIVILIAN Let us now consider the Government and its ideas; that is to say, the men and the laws by which they govern. First, take the _personnel_, for there is no complaint more insistent on all sides than that the officers of to-day are not the same as those of fifty or more years ago. They are out of touch with the people.