daily trumpet-call to revolt against British rule, and he himself
narrowly escaped conviction on a charge of bomb-making. Yet as far back
as 1910, from his place of retirement in Pondicherry, he issued after
the Morley-Minto reforms had been promulgated a significant message to
his fellow-countrymen advising them to accept partial _Swaraj_ as a
means to ensure complete _Swaraj_, and amongst the literature that
helped to defeat "Non-co-operation" in Bengal, one of the most striking
pamphlets was one entitled "Gandhi or Arabindo?" in which a very fervent
disciple and collaborator of the latter in the most fiery days of the
_Yugantar_ argued with great force the case for co-operation with
Government against "Non-co-operation" as now preached by Mr. Gandhi.
Only less remarkable has been the conversion of many other old Bengalee
leaders, including the veteran Sir Surendranath Banerjee, who never,
however, went quite to the same lengths of extremism.

During the electoral campaign Mr. Gandhi could still find large
audiences, not all consisting of excitable students, to acclaim him or
to listen open-mouthed to his ceaseless flow of eloquence. But the
electors went to the polls and voted for the candidates against whom he
and his followers had fulminated, and, in the rural districts
especially, election meetings often refused to listen to any elaborate
political dissertations, and wanted only to hear what the candidates
were prepared to do for elementary education, sanitation, schools,
roads, etc. So the Bengal elections too resulted in the return, often by
relatively large bodies of voters, of members pledged and competent to
co-operate with Government. The _Khilafat_ agitation, accompanied in
Bengal as everywhere else by aggressive religious intimidation, affected
the polling in some of the Mahomedan constituencies. But during the
Anti-Partition campaign Mahomedans and Hindus had been in opposite
camps, whereas Mr. Gandhi was now making a strong and to some extent
successful bid for Mahomedan support by endorsing the Mahomedan
grievance. So the Mahomedan change of front merely emphasised
"Non-co-operation's" defeat in Bengal.

Equally hopeful were the signs of a better understanding and of the
revival of a spirit of friendly co-operation between Indians and
Englishmen in Calcutta, hitherto regarded, not quite without reason, as
a stronghold of reactionary European conservatism, especially amongst
the non-official community.