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206 “ But what do you think of the 1914 Congress and Conferences? ” I insisted.

He spoke almost with reluctance but in clear and firm accents. He said: “ I do not find the proceedings of the Christmas Conferences very interesting and inspiring. They seem to me to be mere repetitions of the petty and lifeless formulas of the past and hardly to show any sense of the great breath of the future that is blowing upon us. I make an exception of the speech of the Congress President which struck me as far above the ordinary level. Some people, apparently, found it visionary and unpractical. It seems to me to be the one practical and vital thing that has been said in India for some time past.”

He continued: “ The old, petty forms and little narrow, make-believe activities are getting out of date. The world is changing rapidly around us and preparing for more colossal changes in the future. We must rise to the greatness of thought and action which it will demand from the nations who hope to live. No, it is not in any of the old formal activities, but deeper down that I find signs of progress and hope. The last few years have been a period of silence and compression, in which the awakened Virya and Tejas of the nation have been concentrating for a greater outburst of a better directed energy in the future.

“ We are a nation of three hundred millions,” added Mr. Ghosh, “ inhabiting a great country in which many civilisations have met, full of rich ma-