ch is said during a century to have brought to the East India Company
profits amounting to L440,000,000. Even in our own day, when China, by a
heroic effort, had within ten years cured herself of this disastrous
sickness, the sustained pressure of public opinion was requisite to
compel the most highly civilised of the European states to renounce the
profits derived from the poisoning of a nation. The facts need hardly
surprise us, seeing that this same western state continues to draw
revenues from the poisoning of its own subjects.

"On the Gold Coast," writes M. Arnold Porret, "a missionary once told me
how the negroes account for the European's white skin. God Almighty
asked him, 'What hast thou done with thy brother?' And he turned white
with fear."[9]

European civilisation stinks of the dead-house. "Jam foetet...." Europe
has called in the grave-diggers. Asia is on the watch.

On June 18, 1916, at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Rabindranath
Tagore, the great Hindu, spoke as follows: "The political civilisation
which has sprung from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole
world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is
always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. It is
carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the
resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It
is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a
peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own
boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally
fixed in their weakness.... This political civilisation is scientific,
not human. It is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon
one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul.
It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it
enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in
the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism. And it
can safely be prophesied that this cannot go on...."[10]

"This cannot go on." Do you hear, Europeans? Are you stopping your ears?
Listen to the voice within! We ourselves must question ourselves. Let us
not resemble those who ascribe to their neighbour all the sins of the
world, and think themselves blameless. For the curse under which we are
labouring to-day, each one of us must bear his share of responsibility.
Some have erred by deliberate