life and all it must mean to women. The nation will have no cause to be ashamed if only a few offer themselves for sacrifice in the first instance.
Men’s duty is clear. We must not lose our heads. Excitement will not protect our women or our country. We have asked the Government neither to spare women nor our children. It certainly did not in the Punjab during those martial law days. I consider it decidedly more civilized that the officials in Calcutta should, under a legal pretence, arrest our sisters in Calcutta for what they consider is a crime than that a Bosworth in the Punjab should spit upon, swear at and otherwise humiliate the women of Manianwala. We did not offer our women to be insulted thus wise. But we do offer our women for imprisonment if they will arrest them in the prosecution of public service. We must not expect the Government to look on with indifference whilst the women are spreading the gospel of Swadeshi and undermining the very basis of its existence,—its traffic in foreign cloth and the consequent ability to exploit India’s resources. If therefore we, men, allow our sisters to take part in the Swadeshi agitation we must concede the right of the Government to imprison them equally with men.
