Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/205

 ation may infuse more or less life in the individual members of the Bureaucracy, but it cannot remove the growing estrangement between the rulers and the ruled, unless and until the people are allowed more and more effective voice in the management of their own affairs in an ever expansive spirit of wise liberalism and wide sympathy, aiming at raising India to the level of Self-Go verning countries."

The Poona District Conference, which met on 20th, 2 1st and 22nd March, 1908 bespeaks the resource- fulness, patience, tact and the organizing power of Mr. Tilak. Immediately on his return from Surat, while the dust of controversy still darkened all quarters, he sent round his lieutenants all over the district and established Taluka Associations. Two months of pro- poganda work left nothing to be desired either in the thoroughness of the preparations or in the representa- tive character of the delegates who attended the Con- ference from different parts of the district. But that the Moderates should have, so soon after the breach at Surat stood on the same political platform with Mr. Tilak is as great a compliment to their good sense as to Mr. Tilak's tact in managing men. Perhaps the Moderates felt it their duty to accept what they might have thought to be Mr. Tilak's challenge and so they mustered strong. They must, however, have been surprised to find the intellectual tenacity and political zeal of the delegates hailing from the nooks and corners of the district. The late Rao Bahadur Joshi, the famous Statistician, was the President. Fourteen Resolutions were passed. One of them appealed to the leaders of the various parties to sink, differences and restore