Page:Heroes of the hour- Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak Maharaj, Sir Subramanya Iyer.djvu/287

 movement. In 1916 when the Press Act was applied to "New India," Sir Subramaniem, convinced that the object of the Executive attack on New India was to handicap it as a Home Rule organ, came forward to signify his protest against the application of the Act to the paper. In 1917 when Lord Pentland's speech of 22nd May threatened action against Mrs. Besant, he it was that replied to Lord Pentland's call for public co-operation with an unconcealed earnestness that shewed at once that if the Government proceeded to take arbitrary action against Mrs. Besant he for one would not quail from all constitutional remedies open to him to get that action reversed. If the Governor had read that letter to purpose, and if he had known what kind of man it was who wrote it and how he had come by the influence he exercised, the Press Communique that was issued by the Governor would not have been what it was. On the other hand taking his copnsel, if he took any at all, of men who had no part in the public life of the presidency since the Congress was started, i.e. of people who had remained strangers to the world outside their residence during an entire