| editor

“ The history of Bengal during the next few months will furnish the answer to the question whether we have utilised the century and a half of British peace, British administrative example, English education, and the preaching and sacrifice of a succession of national leaders, and acquired the one indispensable basis of popular government, or whether we still retain the spirit of the Kartabhaja and Maharaja sects. Have we learnt that the nation is greater than the individual? ”

“ No; we are still Orientals, in academic matters as well as in politics even of the latest European type: we worship gurus, we love to surrender our moral judgment and human will to the one-man ruler, we look to him and him alone for guidance and order at every step; the organs of our body politic (like the body academic in College Square, Calcutta) have been taught to function only at the bidding of the sole autocrat at the head,—in fact they are not organs possessed of life and nerves, but dead machines set going by a master-machanic. ”

“ Like the Irish, we too, are solely united by the emotional worship of dead leaders, we love to dote on our “martyrs”—and do not care to train our party through action and by directing our attention and energy to living men and living issues. ”