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 12LETTERS FROM ABROAD

life must pierce the upper strata of our soil of desert sands till they reach the spring of water which is exhaustless. The most difficult problem is ours, which is how to gain our freedom of soul in spite of the crampedness of outward circumstance, how to ignore the perpetual insult of our destiny so as to be able to uphold the dignity of man. Our Santiniketan is for this tapasya of India. We who have come there often forget the greatness of our mission, mostly because of the obscurity of insignificance with which the humanity of India seems to be obliterated. We do not have the proper light and perspective in our surroundings to be able to realise that our soul is great, and therefore we behave as if it is doomed to be small for all time.

We are in a most beautiful part of France. But of what avail is the beauty of Nature when you have lost your trunks which contained your dresses and underwear. I could have been in perfect sympathy with the trees surrounding me, if, like them, I were not dependent upon tailors for maintaining self-respect. However, the most important event for me in this world at present is not what is happening in Poland, or Ireland, or Mesopotamia, but that all the trunks belonging to our party have disappeared from the goods van in their transit from Paris to this place. And