"The rural classes have the greatest stake in the country because they contribute most to its revenues; but they are poorly equipped for politics and do not at present wish to take part in them. Among them are a few great landlords and a larger number of yeoman farmers. They are not ill-fitted to play a part in affairs, but with few exceptions they have not yet done so. But what is perhaps more important to appreciate than the mere content of political life in India is its rate of growth. No one who has observed Indian life during even the past five years can doubt that the growth is rapid and is real. It is beginning to affect the large landholders: here and there are signs of its beginning to affect even the villages. But recent events, and above all the war, have given it a new earnestness and a more practical character. Men are coming to realise more clearly that India's political future is not to be won merely by fine phrases: and that it depends on the capacity of her people themselves to face difficulties and to dispose of them. Hence comes the demand for compulsory education, for industries, for tariffs, for social reform, for social, public and even military service." In the next paragraph, the authors approvingly give an extract from an official report in which it is frankly admitted that the rural population "may not be vocal, but they are certainly not voiceless." The last meeting of the Indian Congress was attended by 700 farmer delegates. Thousands of farmers have joined the Home Rule Leagues. The statement that "hitherto they have regarded the official as their representative in the Councils of the Government" is entirely devoid of any truth. In their eyes the official is the Government itself. Some of them may think that the official _represents_ the Government, but to say that they regard the official as "_their representative_ in the Councils of the Government" is a mere travesty of truth. The paragraph on the "interests of the ryot" bristles with so many unwarranted assumptions that we must enter an emphatic protest against its misleading nature. But it gives us pleasure to accord our whole-hearted support to the following statement with which the paragraph opens: "It is just because the Indian ryot is inarticulate and has not been directly represented in our deliberations that we feel bound to emphasise the great claim he has upon our consideration. The figure of the individual cultivator does not often catch the eye of the Governments in Simla and Whitehall. It is chiefly in the mass that they deal with him, as a consumer of salt or of piece-goods, or unhappily too often as the victim of scarcity or disease."