he not perverted it, as he perverted everything
else, to the promotion of race-hatred. His primary motives may have been
excellent, but he subordinated all things to his ruling anti-British
passion, whilst the fervour of his philanthropic professions won for him
the sympathy and co-operation of many law-abiding citizens who would
otherwise have turned a deaf ear to his political doctrines. He must
have had a considerable command of funds for the purposes of his
propaganda, and though he doubtless had not a few willing and generous
supporters, many subscribed from fear of the lash which he knew how to
apply through the Press to the tepid and the recalcitrant, just as his
gymnastic societies sometimes resolved themselves into juvenile bands of
dacoities to swell the coffers of _Swaraj_. Not even Mr. Gokhale with
all his moral and intellectual force could stem the flowing tide of
Tilak's popularity in the Deccan; and in order not to be swept under he
was perhaps often compelled like many other Moderates to go further than
his own judgment can have approved. Tilak commanded the allegiance of
barristers and pleaders, schoolmasters and professors, clerks in
Government offices--in fact, of the large majority of the so-called
educated classes, largely recruited amongst his own and other Brahman
castes; and his propaganda had begun to filter down not only to the
coolies in the cities, but even to the rayats, or at least the head-men
in the villages.

More than that. From the Deccan, as we have already seen in his
relations with the Indian National Congress, his influence was projected
far and wide. His house was a place of pilgrimage for the disaffected
from all parts of India. His prestige as a Brahman of the Brahmans and a
pillar of orthodoxy, in spite of the latitude of the views which he
sometimes expressed in regard to the depressed castes, his reputation
for profound learning in the philosophies both of the West and of the
East, his trenchant style, his indefatigable activity, the glamour of
his philanthropy, his accessibility to high and low, his many acts of
genuine kindliness, the personal magnetism which, without any great
physical advantages, he exerted upon most of those who came in contact
with him, and especially upon the young, combined to equip him more
fully than any other Indian politician for the leadership of a
revolutionary movement.

The appeal which Tilak made to the Hindus was twofold. He taught them,