A Study in Ideals: Great Britain and India

In India a complication has arisen in an apparent antagonism between the Government and the people the Government having become suspicious of the loyalty of the people and afraid lest their aims be not to improve but to subvert authority while the people charge the officials of the Government with a want of the sense of duty and of the faculty of observation with subservience to interested fore [...] As heir to the Throne the King sent to India a message of sympathy ; as holder of the Imperial Crown he gave to India the watchword of hope—hope of sharing with his European subjects the duties rights and responsibilities of British citizenship by fusion of the culture of the East and the West. [...] But the conduit-ENTHUSIASM OF LEADERS 25 ance and ultima success of the struggle between light and darkness between pi ogress and decay between the interests of a few and the welfare of mankind depend not upon the resistance of the advocates of stagnation but upon the zeal and enthusiasm of the leaders of idealism. [...] Christian Scriptures and Occidental Sages have described the entry of death into the world and other woes " to the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge but the fruit which produces the seed of decay and destruction and is the cause of all human miseries comes of the tree of Ignorance and its branches misunderstanding and distrust. [...] Unhappily the noble instincts of nationality and patriotism are often prostituted to fill the gap of hatred caused by the weakening of bigotry and by the spread of religious toleration; and difference in class race language physical features or dress is made the basis of the display of ill-breeding and of the fostering of the evil spirit.