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will happen if we accept this ideal and seek to enforce it in our everyday political activities? We shall get the whole of the British Empire, with its immense power, against us and the fulfilment of our ideal. Whereas, if we limit our aspiration to the dominion status, we get the whole of this influence on our side. We are not only not handicapped, but we enlist on our behalf the sympathies, and it may be the active help, of the British democracy, and even in some cases of the self-governing dominions. Severance they will object to, and perhaps strenuously oppose. Union and incorporation they will welcome, and even help.

After we have attained dominion status we may leave to our successors to decide what should be done towards the accomplish- ment of further progress, if deemed necessary and desirable. They will be the best judges; they will decide according to the conditions then prevalent. And in the meantime we go on with our work of securing dominion status with the full support of the British Empire, and perhaps of civilized mankind. Is it possible to withstand the force of these considerations?

But is dominion status to be obtained by a process of orderly evolution, or by methods that are frankly revolutionary. or are at least ancillary to them, and must be regarded as a part of them? My long public life and my chequered public carcer enable me to speak with some authority. I was in England in 1909 when Dhingra committed the anarchical crime to which I have already referred, namely, the murder of Sir William Curzon-Wyllie and Dr. Lalkaka. What happened? I was fearfully handicapped; my public work came to a standstill. The Indian students in the English universities were in a serious plight. I did my best to undo the mischief; but a rem- nant of the atmosphere, then created, still lingers. I would appeal to my countrymen and I would say to them: 'Talk not of revolu- tions, or of tactics, such as obstruction, which are allied to revolu- tionary methods. You would then stand upon a dangerous preci- pice and might be hurried, despite yourselves, into the abysmal depths of a real revolutionary movement, with all the terrible consequences, the bloodshed and the reaction that follow in its train. Pray do not play with fire. When a movement has been set on foot, forces gather round it of which perhaps you had not the faintest conception, and impart to it a volume and a momentum beyond the ideas of its originators, who are now powerless to control it.'

We Hindus abhor revolution and even the semblance of it.