d in a matter of such moment we must take possibilities
as well at probabilities into consideration.

The Imperial problem in India is not to get this or that law
changed, or so and so many troops increased, or such and such
measures of repression or concession adopted. It is to bring
about a new mental and spiritual attitude, and to replace
the narrow "Nationalism" of the present day by a broad
and truly liberal Imperialism in the practical sense of securing
general recognition for India's difficulties and divisions, and for
the natural and necessary maintenance of the British connexion
and of British rule. The statesman who can suggest
practical means for carrying out this intellectual conversion
will certainly have saved England and India much unhappiness
and disaster.

On the other hand, I am bound to say that there are also many Mahomedans
who, though professing similar apprehensions, show no disposition
towards fatalistic resignation. For they believe that, whatever may be
the fate of the British _raj_, the future must belong to the more virile
peoples of India, and certainly those who do not merely put their trust
in the fighting traditions of a conquering race may find a good deal of
encouragement for the faith within them from the vital statistics of
Hindus and Mahomedans respectively in India.

Whilst it is most important that nothing should be done to give colour
to the idea sedulously promoted by the Hindu politician that Government
intend to favour, or, as he generally puts it, to "pamper," the
Mahomedans at the expense of the Hindus, it is equally important that
Government should do nothing to strengthen the apprehensions entertained
by so many intelligent and educated Mahomedans. Those apprehensions are
no doubt exaggerated, and may even be quite unfounded; but they
correspond exactly with what I have been told were Tilak's hopes and
anticipations, and if we will only take the trouble to try to see things
as they may well strike an Indian Mahomedan we can hardly dismiss them
as wholly unreasonable.

The antagonism between the two communities is not the creation or the
result of British rule. It is the legacy of centuries of conflict before
British rule was ever heard of in India. It has been and must be one of
the chief objects of British statesmanship to compose this conflict, and
the Mahomedans do not deny that their British rulers have always
desired to deal