Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/238

 "morrow" but another to-day! If we know what to do to-day, if we do rightly what should be done to-day, will not the morrow take care of itself? Such is the spirit that seems to me to underlie and inspire Mr. Gandhi's sense of moral, dynamic responsibility. How can we qualify by any descriptive epithet his heroism in living this doctrine as a Hindu alone can live a philosophic creed or a religious dogma?

When we come to Sir Subramanya Iyer, we come to much less rarefied atmosphere. An atmosphere which magnetises a vast community and lifts it out of mundane calculations and craven contentment, and frees it from a vicious bondage to perpetual distrust. Who can succeed in so revitalizing a task? Men like Tilak, who have made the penitentiary another home, sink deep in the public mind; but they fail at a crisis to fire the imagination with a sudden resolve to dare and stand together. They fill the mind with a sense of injustice endured by them on behalf of their country. That is a great service no doubt. But, their very suffering renders them incapable of suddenly revealing themselves as if under a flash light, when a great cause lies to be strangled, to give with a swift and peremptory wave of a bared,