tanic civilisation shall have disappeared, and
Indians shall all be content to lead in their own primitive villages the
simplest of simple lives clad only in the produce of their handlooms,
fed only on the fruits of their own fields, and governed only by their
own _panchayats_ in accordance with Vedic precepts and under the
protection of their favourite gods. But how many Extremists who shelter
behind his name are not already speculating on the failure of the
_Swadeshi_ movement to which their dupes are committed, in order that
when disillusionment comes it shall add to the area of popular
discontent in which racial hatred is most easily sown? Non-payment of
taxes is another of the weapons which "Non-co-operation" has threatened
to use, and it includes non-payment of the land-tax which would directly
incite the whole agricultural population to lawlessness, and an attack
upon excise revenue which in the shape of a temperance movement, in
itself perfectly commendable, has already led to many cases of
indefensible violence, chiefly in the urban industrial centres. He has
not yet committed himself openly to "civil disobedience" on the scale
for which many Extremists are already clamouring, but he has started on
an inclined plane along which he may not have the power, or even the
will, to arrest his descent. Much will depend on this year's monsoon. If
the rains are good and the harvests abundant, the peasants, relieved for
the time from the pressure of the economic struggle, will be less
inclined to take--even at his behest--the risk of refusing payment of
taxes. Should there unfortunately be another bad season following on
last year's partial failure,[5] the temptation may prove irresistible if
reinforced by the religious exaltation which Mr. Gandhi knows so well
how to call forth. Deep down, too, there is always the latent antagonism
of all the irreconcilable elements in an ancient civilisation of which
British rule no more than Mahomedan domination, and in still earlier
times the spiritual revolt of Buddhism, has shaken the hold upon the
Hindu masses.

By a strange fatality the confidence of the inarticulate millions upon
which we have hitherto prided ourselves has been turned into bitterness
and hatred hitherto unknown amongst large sections of them at the very
moment when we have for the first time regained in a large measure the
confidence of the _intelligentsia_, and we have to reckon with the
possibility of popular d