Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/137

Rh derful. . . . that it would be folly not to accept it as a declaration of God's will. . . . We cordially confess that, in the main, England has chosen wisely and well."

This attitude of self-satisfaction was strongly resented by Mr. Tilak. "What hope is there" said he "when the rulers of the National Body frankly confess that the object of the Congress is nothing more than to focus the public opinion of the year?" We can, however, understand the difficulties of the Moderate leaders. It was a time of transition. The time-honoured methods of political life required to be replaced by a more militant form of agitation. That called for a type of courage, an amount of energy and activity, a degree of self-sacrifice, clearly wanting in the Moderate leaders. Altogether a new type of leadership was in requisition. But in the language of Napoleon: "the pear" was "not yet ripe." The psychological moment for Mr. Tilak to lead a frontal attack both against the Moderates as well as the Bureaucracy had not yet arrived. As Lord Curzon marched from one autocratic act to another, it slowly came nearer and nearer.

Between 1899, when Mr. Tilak resumed his editorship of the Kesari and 1905, when the Partition of Bengal, carried out in haste and repented at leisure, put the final seal to the bitterness and helplessness that prevailed, Mr. Tilak's contribution to the public life was not what it could have been; for from the middle of 1901 to the close of 1904 he was involved in the earlier stages of the well-known Tai Maharaj case. He had to prepare the cases in the several suits, civil and criminal, brought by or against him and had to examine witnesses on commission for months together at