for lacerated Bengal. He had nothing but contempt for those wise-acres, who were ready with their statistics and free-trade theories to throw cold water on popular enthusiasm, who harped on the eternal theme of our weakness and our want of organization and who were afraid of the plentiful resources of the Government. Mr. Tilak, while admitting the force of all reasonable objections, declared that even an ineffectual struggle in the face of tremendous odds was itself no mean achievement. He could never subscribe to the theory of "learning to swim on land."
With the commencement of the anti-Partition agitation, Mr. Tilak emerges from his life of Provincial Leadership and becomes the leader of the "Newborn" Nationalist Party in India. Till IQ05, our public life could hardly be said to have been National. The Press did indeed keep us from relapsing into our provincial ruts, but even the Press or the Congress had not visibly created that fellow-feeling with delights in mutual help, support and encouragement. Most of the leaders in the country were known only in their provinces. A brilliant member of the Imperial Legislative Council, a dominating leader in the National Congress or an unbending fighter with the despotic bureaucracy did indeed get a recognition which was something more than provincial. But that free, swift interchange of thought and that inter-dependence of policies and actions which an organised National Life presupposes was totally absent. The cruel wrong done to Bengal, the solid agitation which the Bengalis started, together with the widespread discontent caused by the reactionary policy of Lord Curzon, afforded Mr. Tilak the long-
