and

OT only in the Presidency of Madras but throughout India will the news of the passing away of Mr. G. Subrahmania Iyer, the well-known Editor of the Hindu the veteran publicist, be received with deepest feelings of regret. His sudden death on Tuesday the 18th came as a surprise to the public. Indeed, Mr. Iyer had been incapacitated from taking an active part in the public life of his country during the last half a dozen years and more, but from time to time his beneficent influence was felt through the Press, championing the cause of freedom and justice with the same fervour and zeal that characterised his earlier days. Mr. Iyer was almost the father of public life in this part of India, and as has been said more than once, to him South India owes what little of political activity it has. His death so soon after that of Mr. Gokhale, and Sir P. M. Mehta, removes from our midst one of the veteran leaders of this country.

Only a little over two years ago, Mr. Iyer celebrated his sixtieth birth day when he was the recipient of many a message of congratulations. And scarcely fifteen months have passed by since a grateful friend presented a life size oil painting of the leader to be hung up on the walls of the Madras Mahajana Sabha. The Hon. Mr. Surendranath Bannerjee who unveiled the portrait paid a glowing tribute of admiration to the meritorious services of Mr. Subrahmania Iyer and his forty years' public work on behalf of his countrymen. Mr. Subrahmania Iyer first rose to eminence as a distinguished educationist in Madras. In 1878, he drifted into journalism and became the Editor of the Hindu, which he started with the aid of two of his well-known compeers. One of the founders of the National Congress, he moved the first Resolution in the first Congress at Bombay in 1885. He gave evidence before the Public Service Commission of 1888. The founder of the Madras Mahajana Sabha, he was unanimously chosen to give evidence before the Welby Commission in 1897. During the Diamond Jubilee of Empress Victoria, he was in England with Messrs. Bannerjea, Gokhale, and Wacha, lecturing on behalf of the British Congress committee. Recognizing the need of economic study, he began the United India in 1902, and

conducted that journal wih brilliant success. He was besides one of the founders of the Madras Social Reform Association and was a fearless champion of progressive ideas in social matters. His interest in the industrial and scientific advancement of India was evident from his intimate connection with the National Fund, which he was managing with conspicuous ability. Above all, his insistence on Vernacular Education, and his interest in the masses, embodied themselves in the Suzadeshamitran since 1882. Mr. Iyer knew that national life to be complete must be many-sided, and he continued to render his services in various ways. Latterly his health began to fail. His motives were misunderstood by the Government. At the time of his arrest in 1908, the Indian Keview put in a word of warning against such ill-advised measures of the Government. We wrote: "There is great danger in not distinguishing between rebels and honest, though perhaps strong critics of the measures of Government. It has to be remembered that not all critics are unfriendly and that in politics as in private life. the sycophant is in the long run a greater enemy to the party he is seeking to befriend than the outspoken and caustic critic who criticises but to secure the best interest of the party who chafes under adverse criticisim." Mr. Iyer, it need hardly be said, belonged to the latter type of critics; and with reference to the proceedings against him, we pointed out that the "tendency to strong language in a naturally vigorous writer was more temperamental than an index of his animus towards society or Government. But his outspoken utterances were mistaken for libels, and he was compelled to choose a quieter life. Such a quiet life was made inevitable also by a peculiarly chronic and gruesome disease, of which he was a victim in the latter years of his life. whatever the mistakes of the Government regarding his character and his services, the people held him in high esteem as the hero of a hundred battles, and no name is more honoured in Madras than that of Mr. G. Subrahmania Iyer, publicist, journalist, orator and social reformer. For wellnigh a quarter of a century he was the leader of public life in this part of India, and it is no wonder that his loss is so keenly felt by his countrymen in remembrance of all his achievements and his services in the palmy days of his public career.

But

*

HE works of Mr. Madhaviah are well known, and have been read with mixed feelings by his countrymen. Some of his smaller skits on certain aspects of Indian social life have commanded ready appreciation on all hands. In the work before us, the author has made an ambitious attempt to break new ground by weaving a story round the life of a Brahmin lady, who is said to have flourished in the latter half of the 18th century in the Tanjore district. We are familiar with the manner in which the author delights to depict some of the venial excrescences of modern life, without making any allowance in the least for the bright spots in the systems dissected by him. We may be pardoned for suggesting that a similar search-light directed against communities of people elsewhere, and knots of individuals other than the much-maligned Brahmin community of Southern India-to which the author himself, strange defiler of his own nest, belongs-will bring to light an equal, if not greater, number of ills and weaknesses to which human flesh is heir in all times and climes. The picture of a Brahmin girl, forced into into matrimony matrimony with an elderly widower against her will, and then escaping narrowly from being burnt alive as a Sati, from which fate she is rescued by a sturdy Englishman, who subsequently lures her to become his mistress, going through a fraudulent form of marriage, having already a wife in England at the time; the final scene of this strange eventful history culminating in a second widowhood, in which she embraces Christianity "with much. emotion," does not seem calculated to arouse any genuine sympathy for the author's "heroine." One is unfortunately left with the impression that the heroine' belongs more or less to that class of individuals who are neither a loss to one fold nor a gain to the other. We do not know that we are particularly narrow-minded or subject to hide-bound prejudices, but our feeling is one

* CLARINDA: A historical novel. By Mr. A, Madhaviah. Sold by G. A. Vaidyaraman & Co., Kondi Chetty Street, Madras.

of distinct repulsion against most of the incidents, comments, characterisations, portraitures, and opinions, presented in the book before us. It is difficult to discuss or even to refer to these at any length, but we may perhaps instance a few of them, such as the undesirable descriptions of the criminal passion entertained by a step-son to his stepmother, the gross and inhuman cruelties to which the heroine is made the victim, and last, though not least, the wholly inexcusable dissertation on the philosophy of the revealed religion and the suggested supposed defects of Hinduism. We do not intend to suggest that the above are not proper subjects for ventilation, but our objection is against the wholly unjustifiable manner in which these matters have been treated, and the absolute want of necessity for introducing the same into the story from any point of view. We are the more pained to make these observations, as we are fully aware that the author is capable of doing good work, if he essays to do it, without riding some of his inartistic and distasteful hobbies--the chief of which is an obsession to present his countrymen in the worst and most ignoble light, quite without justificatlon. Reviling the present generation is bad enough, but in this book, the author lets his imagination run riot on the supposed sins and weaknesses of the people of two centuries ago in a manner which sets one's teeth on edge. Know ing the author and his talents as we do, we can only express our genuine surprise and sorrow that he should have been at such pains to product: a book, whose merit, as a work of art, is an un'successful attempt to produce a very inferior and commonplace imitation of Colonel Meadows Taylor's "Seetha, " without the redeeming features of that author's brilliant style and plot, and without even his occasional sympathy with Indian thought and character. Altogether, in our opinion, the book is as mischievous in its conception as it is distinctly amateurish in its execution. It is hoped that the author will avoid further productions of this kind, and turn his attention, as he well can, to the sympathetic portraiture of the larger issues of life

we

for which there is great need at the present day. The Kusika stories, of which the second series* is before us, can hardly be said to maintain the high level reached by the first series, which were mostly unexceptionable in thought and language. The later developments of the author's cynicism, and his passion for the lurid painting of obsolete beliefs and practices, have landed him in many a painful dissertation, which can only produce a wholly distorted conception of our domestic life in the minds of Western readers. The generation, to which the author belongs, was one peculiarly subject to intellectual vicissitudes. Signs are not wanting at the present day to show that most of the vascillations and difficulties of even ten years ago are fast vanishing, and no useful purpose seems to be gained by the needless pillorying of the amiable defects and weaknesses of the weakest and worst members of one's society. We can imagine the quarters, where the mischievous pen-pictures before us will be seized with avidity as faithful representations "from within " of Indian life, but though have long been inured to the malicious caricatures of Indian life, which missionaries and globe-trotters, with their own axes to grind, have inflicted on their unsuspecting brethren, it is rather a nerve-shattering experience to find these Herods out-heroded by one of our own geniuses. We do not hold a brief for the Brahmin commu. nity, which is well able to take care of itself, having survived the vicissitudes and onslaughts of ages, nor do we wish to see the perpetuation of acknowledged evils in our social usages, but surely no conceivable good purpose is served by dilating in disproportionate and inflamed language on the dark side of the picture alone without a ray of illumination on the brighter aspects of our thoughts and activities. One is tempted to refer in this connection to the works of Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, Mrs. Ghosal, Sister Nivedita and Rabindranath Tagore, which furnish such a brilliant contrast to the petty and pitiful sketches of Mr. Madhaviah, who can find nothing noble or elevating in Indian life or aspirations. We are inclined to think that wife-beating Santamurthis, men who religiously take a cup of 'bovril' specially on 'Shradda-days,' people who resort to "atrocious tactics to secure votes at elections,

"Short Stories." By Kusika. Second Series. Bold by G. A. Vaidyaranan & Co., Kondi Chetty Street, Madras. Price As. 8.

et hoc genus omne, have their counterparts in every community under the sun. Humanity after all is the same everywhere, and character does not depend on the colour of the skin. It is tarred everywhere with the san.e brush for good and evil alike. We do not know that in these days when the whole civilized world is drawn together against a common danger to the peaceful evolution and progress of mankind, anyone can seriously assert that East is East and is ever accursed, and the essence of divinity is to be sought for only in the West. The painful spectacle of the utter break-down of Western ideals of life and standards of "Kultur" ought to be an eyeopener to those who would fain pin their faith whole-heartedly to Western ideals of individual or communal life. And after all, is it not still a vexed question whether these same standards of life and social practices have turned out devout consummations for good? The highest thought even in the West is hardly unanimous on the point.

All that we plead for is only for a little charity even in judging our own kith and kin, and for a broader vision of the deeper realities and responsiblities, and the subtler issues of life, sincerely believing as we do that national development along right and sane lines ultimately rests on the conscious efforts of individuals to hold fast wholeheartedly to the verities of existence, undeterred by the weaknesses and peccadillos of undeveloped entities. One of the greatest of the world's living philosophers, Mr. H. G. Wells, has well summed up in characteristic style the work of a “pure rebel" in the following words :

A rebel is a nuisance. He is always a bit of a lout. Any fool can do rebel's work, and smash and spoil. When one has to rebel, when there is no more decent or human method, then rebel and have done with it. But to flourish about it, as though it was something gaudy and glorious, is to show an imbecile's outlook on lite. Life is to be, and do, and make and cherish: not to spoil, insult, defy and embitter. If you must rebel, be clean and direct about it. Decide upon the things you won't stand, and don't stand them. If things there are that hamper your life, get rid of them. But as quietly and decently as you can. Don't spoil life for other people. Don't regard your insurmountable objection to this or that oppression as the heroic justification for any malicious mischief that the ancestral monkey still lingering in our composition puts into your head. Everybody has an occasional craving for spiteful destruction. It is Atavism. It is not the last divine birth of the human spirit.

N the Western theatre of war nothing specially noteworthy has occurred save the new familiar artillery duels and bombardments along the whole front in which, despite desperate struggles for piercing a line or occupying a strategic base of little or no importance, the enemy has only swelled the death roll and other casualties. There has been as usual a culpable sacrifice of thousands of lives which might have been well spared. So far the events of the month on this side may be pronounced to be unimportant. The real issue, which was fought out, was the series of sanguinary engagements from day to day near Verdun. But the issue has hitherto been in favour of the gallant French Army which has more than maintained its strategical position, its military prowess, and its great elan born of conscious hope of victory in the end. That strong frontier fortress has not yet fallen and it is most unlikely that it will fall, however desperate the renewed attempts which the enemy might make to bring about their cherished consummation. The French Generalissimo declared

DEATH-"Let's call it off, old man. overworked."

You're overmatched, and I'm -Kemble in Collier's Weekly.

some time ago urbi et orbi with a confidence prompted by the stern and unbending feats of the mortal combat that has been waged for weeks together in that historic locality, that if even Verdun fell, it would have no military value about it as the German fondly believes. The disposition of the French forces is such that the fall of Verdun will not bring the invaders any way nearer Paris than when they started on their great military enterprise twenty months ago with a firm conviction of invincibility. That invincibility has been demonstrated to be wholly delusive, and as month succeeds month it is being proved to be a pure Teutonic boast. Summer is approaching when, no doubt, there will be witnessed more than one gigantic effort to retrieve the defeat after defeat that the enemy has sustained without ever breaking the stone-wall of human beings that has opposed them from Ypres to Verdun. The time is nearing when the Allies must take the long-resolved-upon offensive. On the one side will be found