Page:Mother India.pdf/33

RV 15 enough about the ancestry of Peter Jones, and still less about his religion, his philosophy, or his views on art. But if Peter cultivates habits of living and ways of thinking that make him a physical menace not only to himself and his family, but to all the rest of the block, then practical John will want details.

“Why,” ask modern Indian thinkers, “why, after all the long years of British rule, are we still marked among the peoples of the world for our ignorance, our poverty, and our monstrous death rate? By what right are light and bread and life denied?”

“What this country suffers from is want of initiative, want of enterprise, and want of hard, sustained work,” mourns Sir Chimanlal Setalvad. “We rightly charge the English rulers for our helplessness and lack of initiative and originality,” says Mr. Gandhi.

Other public men demand: “Why are our enthusiasms so sterile? Why are our mutual pledges, our self-dedications to brotherhood and the cause of liberty so soon spent and forgotten? Why is our manhood itself so brief? Why do we tire so soon and die so young?” Only to answer themselves with the cry: “Our spiritual part is wounded and bleeding. Our very souls are poisoned by the shadow of the arrogant stranger, blotting out our sun. Nothing can be done—nothing, anywhere, but to mount the political platform and faithfully denounce our tyrant until he takes his flight. When Britain has abdicated and gone, then, and not