ut--

"The East bowed low before the blast,
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again."

Yet this same India is now throbbing with discontent, and is
breathing, in all departments of her life, a deep spirit of unrest.
This spirit has recently become acute and seemed, for a while, in
danger of bursting into open rebellion, not unlike the Mutiny of half
a century ago.

I

This movement is but a part of the new awakening of the East. The
world has seen its marvellously rapid development and fruitage in
Japan. It is witnessing the same process in China and Korea. The
people of India, likewise, have been touched by its power and are no
longer willing to rest contentedly as a subject people or a stagnant
race.

This movement is not only political, it permeates every department of
life; and it partakes of the general unrest which has taken possession
of all the civilized nations of the earth. It is really the dawning of
India's consciousness of strength and of a purpose to take her place,
and to play a worthy part, in the great world drama.

This spirit found its incarnation and warmest expression in the
opposition to the government scheme, two years ago, under Lord Curzon,
for the partition of Bengal. The Bengalees keenly resented the
division of their Province; for it robbed the clever Babu of many of
the plums of office. He petitioned, and fomented agitation and
opposition to the scheme. Then, in his spite against the government,
he organized a boycott against all forms of foreign industry and
commerce. This has been conducted with mad disregard to the people's
own economic interest, and has, moreover, developed into bitter racial
animosity.

The Bengalee has striven hard to carry into other Provinces also his
spirit of antagonism to the State. Though he has not succeeded in
convincing many others of the wisdom of his method, he has spread the
spirit of discontent and of dissatisfaction far beyond his own
boundary. Even sections of the land which denounce the boycott as
folly, if not suicide, have taken up the political slogan of the Babu
(_Bande Mataram_--Hail, Mother!) and are demanding, mostly in
inarticulate speech, such rights and privileges as they imagine
themselves to be deprived of.

The movement is, in some respects, a reactionary one; and race hatred
is one of its most manifest results. It is not merely a rising of the
East against