able, he declared,
because they were not the outcome of ignorant fanaticism, but of a
definite policy adopted by European officers high in rank and
responsibility. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that a
Government that tolerated or condoned or palliated such things was
"Satanic," and that the whole civilisation for which such a Government
stood was equally Satanic. For Indians to co-operate with it until it
had shown "a complete change of heart" was a deadly sin. To accept any
scheme of constitutional reforms as reparation for the wrongs of the
Punjab with which the wrongs of Turkey were linked up with an increased
fervour of righteous indignation when the terms of the treaty of Sevres
became known, was treachery to the soul of India. Thence it was but a
step to the organisation of a definite "Non-co-operation" movement to
demonstrate the finality of the breach. Mr. Gandhi appealed in the first
place to the educated classes to set the example to the people. He
called upon those on whom the State had conferred honours and titles to
renounce them, upon barristers and pleaders to cease to practise in the
law-courts, and upon parents to withdraw their children from the
schools and colleges tainted with State control and State doles. If
parents would not hearken to him, schoolboys and students were exhorted
to shake themselves free of their own accord. To the people he opened up
simpler ways of "Non-co-operation" by abstaining from tea and sugar and
all articles of consumption and of clothing contaminated by alien hands
or alien industry. If all would join in a common effort he promised that
India would speedily attain _Swaraj_--the term mentioned was generally a
year--and, quit of the railways and telegraphs and all other instruments
and symbols of Western economic bondage, return to the felicity and
greatness of Vedic times. All this, however, was to be done by "soul
force" alone and without violence.

In the course of the only long conversation I had with Mr. Gandhi I
tried to obtain from him some picture of what India would be like under
_Swaraj_ as he understood it. In a voice as gentle as his whole manner
is persuasive, he explained, more in pity than in anger, that India had
at last recovered her own soul through the fiery ordeal which Hindus and
Mahomedans had undergone in the Punjab, and the perfect act of faith
which the _Khilafat_ meant for all Mahomedans, and that, purged of the
degrading influences of