t to rely
on their local influence and personal reputation to carry them through.

The battle, in fact, was not fought out chiefly at the polls. It was
waged very fiercely in the press and on the platform between those who
were bent on paralysing the reforms as the malevolent conception of a
"Satanic" Government and those who were determined to bring them to
fruition, not indeed in blind support of Government, but as a means of
exercising constitutional pressure on the Government. Mr. Gandhi
certainly succeeded not only in dissuading his immediate followers but
in frightening a good many respectable citizens who have no heart for
militant politics from coming forward as candidates. Could he have made
"Non-co-operation" universally effective, there would have been no
candidates and no nominations, no elections and no councils. But in this
he failed, as some of the more worldly Extremists foresaw who obeyed him
in this matter with reluctance. In the Bombay Presidency, Gokhale,
though dead, had a large share in the victory of the old principles for
which he had stood when there had been little will to co-operate on the
part either of Government or of the majority of Western-educated
Indians. For none fought the battle of the Moderates more steadfastly
and faced the rowdiness of the "Non-co-operationists" more fearlessly
than Mr. Srinivasa Sastri, who had succeeded him as the head of his
"Servants of India" Society, and Professor Paranjpe, who had long been
closely associated with him in educational work at the Ferguson College
in Poona. Enough Moderates were found to stick to their colours in
practically every constituency, and they secured their seats, in the
absence of Extremist nominations, without contest, or after submitting
their not very acute political differences to the arbitrament of the
polls.

Nowhere had the Extremists developed their plan of campaign on more
comprehensive lines than in those great United Provinces of Agra and
Oudh, which with their huge and dense population of over forty-eight
millions under one provincial government form the largest and in some
respects the most important administrative unit in British India. It was
within the area which it now covers that the Mutiny broke out and, with
the exception of Delhi itself, was mainly confined and fought out. The
bitter memories of that period have not yet wholly vanished. It contains
a larger proportion than any other province of historic cities-