n impracticable proposition to expect parents to
withdraw their children from schools and colleges and establish their
own institutions or to ask lawyers to suspend their practice and devote
their whole time attention to national service against payment where
necessary, of their maintenance, or to ask candidates for councils not
to enter councils and lend their passive or active assistance to the
legislative machinery through which all control is exercised. The
movement of non-co-operation is nothing but an attempt to isolate the
brute force of the British from all the trappings under which it is
hidden and to show that brute force by itself cannot for one single
moment hold India.

But I frankly confess that, until the three conditions mentioned by me
are fulfilled, there is no Swaraj. We may not go on taking our college
degrees, taking thousands of rupees monthly from clients for cases which
can be finished in five minutes and taking the keenest delight in
wasting national time on the council floor and still expect to gain
national self-respect.

The last though not the least important part of the Maya still remains
to be considered. That is Swadeshi. Had we not abandoned Swadeshi, we
need not have been in the present fallen state. If we would get rid of
the economic slavery, we must manufacture our own cloth and at the
present moment only by hand-spinning and hand weaving.

All this means discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, organising
ability, confidence and courage. If we show this in one year among the
classes that to-day count, and make public opinion, we certainly gain
Swaraj within one year. If I am told that even we who lead have not
these qualities in us, there certainly will never be Swaraj for India,
but then we shall have no right to blame the English for what they are
doing. Our salvation and its time are solely dependent upon us.

BRITISH RULE--AN EVIL

The _Interpreter_ is however more to the point in asking, "Does Mr.
Gandhi hold without hesitation or reserve that British rule in India is
altogether an evil and that the people of India are to be taught so to
regard it? He must hold it to be so evil that the wrongs it does
outweigh the benefit it confers, for only so is non-co-operation to be
justified at the bar of conscience or of Christ." My answer is
emphatically in the affirmative. So long as I believed that the sum
total of the energy of the British Empire was good, I clung to it
despi