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took up a stand from which he can hardly now be asked to recede. I am a practical man; I ask for modification, not for repeal.'

'But I suppose you want to modify it lock, stock, and barrel?'

'What I should like is to see Bengal placed under one Lieutenant- Governor with an Executive Council of six, of whom two should be Indians. You will have to come to this, for the new province is at present placed in a position of inequality with the old, having no Executive Council. The next proposal, and one which commanded from of old time the balance even of official opinion, was to divide Behar from Bengal. The people of Behar are distinct in race and language from the Bengalees. All adminis- trative advantages claimed for the original Partition would be secured by this arrangement without offending national sentiment. So long as the Bengalee nation is unnaturally cleft in twain by the sword of Lord Curzon so long will agitation and unrest continue.'

'Now as to the deportees?'

'They ought never to have been deported without charge and without trial. They ought to be allowed at once to return home. I hope that will not be long delayed. They are good men, upright citizens who did not deserve deportation.'

'Now as to the last article in your programme ?'

'A constitution like that of Canada is our ultimate goal. But as a prac- tical first step I claim for our people the right of financial control over the expenditure of the money raised from Indian taxpayers.'

'Humph! What about the army and railway expenditure?'

'I will exempt these two heads of expenditure for the sake of compro- mise. But surely we ought to control expenditure for education, for sani- tation, for civil public works. The refusal or neglect to carry out sanitary works, the need for which has been admitted since 1861, has led to terrible loss of life, which might have been prevented.'

'Do you want a Duma for India?'

'If you mean an assembly representing all India, with control over the expenditure of India, I say "yes". But I would say, first give us autono- mous provincial governments, with financial control over certain depart- ments of provincial expenditure. Then build up on these provincial auto- nomies a central federal council or assembly. That is what we ask, and that is what sooner or later we mean to have.'

So far Mr. Banerjea. That is his programme. And 'Surrender Not' is the nearest English equivalent to the pronunciation of his name, Surendranath I do not think that he is likely to abandon any of the planks in his pro- gramme. John Morley, of the Pall Mall Gazette and of the life of Burke, would probably subscribe to them all. But as for Lord Morley, that is another matter.

Such is the gist of the conversation we had, as described by Mr. Stead himself. I said all this in 1909, three years before the