Page:The Life of Lokamanya Tilak.djvu/396

 incorrigible Bureaucrats. To placate the Moderates and the Government he made a declaration of his loyalty,—a declaration which created hopes in the mind of Mrs. Besant of Congress compromise. The outbreak of War found him a staunch ally of the Government. He offered any kind of help he could. But neither the autocrats of the Congress nor those in the Government were willing to grasp the outstret- ched hand of friendship. ^

The events of the last six years and Mr. Tilak's glorious part therein are too fresh in the reader's mind to need any reiteration. These crowded years of public Hfe form the noblest page of Mr. Tilak's life. It is a period when he emerges triumphant | 3ver his opponents. It is a time when we see him, not, as in 1889-1905—a brave soldier, hopelessly fighting against tremendous odds, not, as in 1905-1908, a party leader tr3dng to force his way through co- lumns of opposition, but an all—India leader, a tactful negotiator, a skilled diplomat, a far-seeing statesman, an all-wise prophet. We see the constructive side of his work in all its splendour. We see him brave as yore, assertive as before, but with a meUow splendour which refined and softened the sternness of his dominating personality.

Such a leadership is the accident of a century! How lucky for India then, that no sooner did the Lokamanya expire, than his place has been conspicuously filled up by Mahatma Gandhi, whose unapproachable sanctity has raised politics to the height of rehgion. The leadership of the Lokamanya was pronouncedly intellectual and that of the