nd disturbing energies of Western civilisation. Saint and
prophet in the eyes of the multitude of his followers--saint in the eyes
even of many who have not accepted him as a prophet--Mr. Gandhi preaches
to-day under the uninspiring name of "Non-co-operation," a gospel of
revolt none the less formidable because it is so far mainly a gospel of
negation and retrogression, of destruction not construction. Mr. Gandhi
challenges not only the material but the moral foundations of British
rule. He has passed judgment upon both British rule and Western
civilisation, and, condemning both as "Satanic," his cry is away with
the one and with the other, and "back to the Vedas," the fountain source
of ancient Hinduism. That he is a power in the land none can deny, least
of all since the new Viceroy, Lord Reading, almost immediately on his
arrival in India, spent long hours in close conference with him at
Simla. What manner of man is Mr. Gandhi, whom Indians revere as a
Mahatma, _i.e._ an inspired sage upon whom the wisdom of the ancient
Rishis has descended? What is the secret of his power?

Born in 1869 in a Gujarat district in the north of the Bombay
Presidency, Mohandas Karamchamd Gandhi comes of very respectable Hindu
parentage, but does not belong to one of the higher castes. His father,
like others of his forebears, was Dewan, or chief administrator, of one
of the small native States of Kathiawar. He himself was brought up for
the Bar and, after receiving the usual English education in India,
completed his studies in England, first as an undergraduate of the
London University and then at the Inner Temple. His friend and
biographer, Mr. H.S.L. Polak, tells us that his mother, whose religious
example and influence made a lasting impression upon his character, held
the most orthodox Hindu views, and only agreed to his crossing "the
Black Water" to England after exacting from him a three-fold vow, which
he faithfully kept, of abstinence from flesh, alcohol, and women. He
returned to India as soon as he had been called to the Bar and began to
practise as an advocate before the Bombay High Court, but in 1893, as
fate would have it, he was to be called to South Africa in connection
with an Indian legal case in Natal. In South Africa he was brought at
once into contact with a bitter conflict of rights between the European
population and the Indian settlers who had originally been induced to go
out and work there at the instance of the w