0 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM,

still know how to build, and under the shadow of buildings
as noble as any that the world has seen. The student of
Fine Art is shown inferior imitations of the latest European
4 styles/ where he should find some new and living revela-
tion ; the decorative artist sees the traditional craftsmen
of India thrown out of employment by the mechanical
vulgarities of Birmingham and Manchester, without the-
least effort made to preserve for future generations the
accumulated skill and cunning of centuries of the manufac-
ture of materials and wares which have commanded the-
admiration of the world. The musician of other lands
hears little but the gramophone or the harmonium in India ;•
the man of religion finds the crudest materialism replacing
a reasoned metaphysic ; the lover of freedom beholds a
people who can be imprisoned or deported for indefinite
periods without tidal, and too divided amongst themselves,
to offer adequate resistance to this laivlessness ; in a word,,
every man seeking to widen his own outlook, sees but his-
own face distorted in an Indian mirror.

It is from this inhospitableness, this cowardice, that
the call of the Motherland must waken us. We are cons-
cious that the best in us is sleeping still; but when the-
sleeper wakes, who knoweth what shall come of it ? One
thing at least we a,re certain of, that the awakening must
T>e 110 waking in a prison cell, but that of a free man, "full
of good hopes, of steady purpose, perfect strength."* It is
for this that we are stirred, for this that we shall suffer ;
and this is the deeper meaning of the great Indian struggle-
for freedom.

* Taittiriya Uparnshad.