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were not students, had taken a prominent part in the Swadeshi movement. Their zeal had fired the whole community. They had become the self-appointed missionaries of the cause. It was thought necessary to curb and control their activities. A circular was accordingly issued by District Magistrates to heads of educational institutions, in which they were told that unless the school and college authorities and teachers prevented their pupils from taking public action in connexion with boycotting, picketing and other abuses associated with the so-called Swadeshi movement, the schools and colleges would forfeit their grants-in-aid and the privilege of competing for scholarships, and the University would be asked to disaffiliate them. The circular was addressed to schools in the mofussil.

The circular made a distinction between students in Calcutta and those in the mofussil, but the Calcutta boys were just as enthusiastic in the Swadeshi cause as their mofussil brothers. Day after day, during the height of the excitement, a number of students used to stand at the corner of the Maidan, watching those who entered Whiteaway, Laidlaw's premises, begging Indians not to purchase foreign goods, or, if the purchase had been made, appeal- ing to them not to repeat their offence. It was reported to me at the time, that some of these young men threw themselves at the feet of a fashionable Bengalee lady, as she was coming out of Whiteaway, Laidlaw's shop, and begged of her to promise not to purchase foreign goods when similar home-made articles were available.

The circular only served to add to the excitement, and it evoked universal condemnation even among organs of opinion that usually supported the policy and measures of Government. The Statesman newspaper, commenting upon the circular, used language that the Statesman has since banished from its columns, except when denouncing really bad measures. 'We should really like to know' exclaimed the Statesman, 'the name of the imbecile official at whose instance the Lieutenant-Governor sanctioned this order. The Government, there can be no doubt' added the same authority, 'has been misled by some person who is either grossly ignorant of the situation, or has allowed himself to be frightened by the fantastic scares of the last few weeks'; and the paper concluded by observing, 'Government has blundered apparently into a childish and futile policy which can only have the effect of manufacturing an army of martyrs'. That was the language of a leading English newspaper when the first circular of a restrictive character was