Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/291

 When the Joint Parliamentary Committee had finished its labours and the passing of the Government of India Bill had been duly ensured, Mr. Tilak hastened back to India. He left England on October 30th, 1919 and reached Bombay, hale and hearty, on 27th November 1919, just a month before the Amritsar Con- gress. Some of his opponents have said that his mission to England broadened his outlook. Mr. Tilak never required any contact with England to broaden his vision for the simple reason that his outlook was never parochial. His Ufe in England only deepened his faith in foreign propaganda and he intended to take the earliest opportunity of establishing permanent poUti- cal missions at London, Paris and New York.

An esteemed friend and associate of Mr. Tilak refers to his work in England in the following admiring language :—

" Then again Mr. Tilak had to fight against great odds, before the Deputation arrived, in the matter of getting the London public to properly understand and appreciate the Congress scheme of Reforms. At every meeting, he impressed his audience with his remarkably terse statement of facts and brilliant reasoning. You all know what remarkable powers, Mr. Tilak possesses of narrowing down the issues in a controversy and I may say he had never before an opportunity, like the one he had in England, for displaying his powers of elucidating matters of controversy and standing erect upon his own platform among the ruins of his opponents. He had quite a large variety of op- ponents from the agressive Sinn Feiner and bona fide Re- volutionist in England, who would if he could, blast