racter, steadier work, and
purer motive; and gradually meanness, trickeries, and treacheries are
weeded out of the individual and national consciousness: there is a
realisation of a time come to restore the nation's independence, and
with passion and enthusiasm are fused a fine resolve and nerve. All the
excited doings of the feverish or pallid years are put by as unworthy or
futile. The great idea inspires a great fight; and that fight is made,
and, notwithstanding any reverse, must be recorded great. Whatever
concourse of circumstances mar the dream and delay the victory, those
brave years are as a torch in witness to the ideal, in justification of
its soldiers and in promise of final success.

IV

Let us examine now the deadening years that intervene between the great
fights for freedom. We have known something of these times ourselves,
have touched on them already, and need not further draw out the
demoralising things that corrupt and dishearten us. But what we urgently
require to study is the kind of effort--more often the absence of
effort--made in such years by those who keep their belief in freedom and
feel at times impelled in some way or other to action. They have
followed a lost battle, and in the aftermath of defeat they are numbed
into despair. They refuse to surrender to the forces of the hour, but
they lack the fine faith and enthusiasm of the braver years that
challenged these forces at every point and stood or fell by the issue.
They lie apathetic till, moved by some particular meanness or treachery,
they are roused to spasmodic anger, rush to act in some spasmodic
way--generally futile, and then relapse into helplessness again. They
lack the vision that inspires every moment, discerns a sure way, and
heightens the spirit to battle without ceasing, which is characteristic
of the great years. They tacitly accept that theirs is a useless
generation, that the enemy is in the ascendant, that they cannot unseat
him, and their action, where any is made, is but to show their attitude,
never to convince opponents that the battle is again beginning, that
this is a bid for freedom, that history will be called on to record
their fight and pay tribute to their times. Their action has never this
great significance. When stung to fitful madness by the boastful
votaries of power, their occasional frantic efforts are more as relief
to their feelings than destructive to the tyranny in being. Let us
realise this to