indignantly protests against the enforcement of the Press Act in the case of "New India" and a few other less influential periodicals, especially at a time when the authorities at Home and in India are paying glowing tributes to the magni. ficent help rendered to the Empire by the Princes and peoples of India? That Mrs. Annie Besant belongs to the small band of noble Englishmen and women who live and labour for the welfare of India and its people, that she has openly avowed Hinduism and done not a little to stem the tide of materialism among Hindu boys, that she has with an eloquence, energy, enthusiasm and vigour-all her own-been advocating Home Rule or Self-Government for India within the Empire, and that India is bound to be grateful to individuals like her: all these certainly count a great deal in the strength of the agitation which the action of the Madras Government has roused. But the real fact is, that there is a unanimity of feeling amongst men of all classes and creeds, and politicians and journalists of even opposing schools of thought, that the authorities in this country are not acting fairly towards the people and to the memory of the great and distinguished Indian who gave his support to the Press Act, as he and his colleagues were undoubtedly made to believe that the legislation was only intended as an emergency measure to meet an unfortunate and unforseen development in political agitation.

The country and the Council gave a carte blanche as a sign and symbol of their disapproval of anarchic doings. It has turned it into a means of maintaining a section of the Press in India in a state of constant doubt and anxiety as to when it may be called upon to deposit a more or less heavy sum of money as security under the Act. Whatever may be said for a law of this kind as an emergency measure, as a piece of legislation for normal circumstances, it is everything which a law ought not to be. It is as if the Indian Press were placed perpetually under martial law. It possesses none of the attributes which a law should possess. It is not definite, it is not precise in its statement of what constitutes a cause of action under it, it depends to a dangerous degree on the idiosyncrasies of individuals in power; and experience has shown that it is impotent against the most unbridled license on the part of a privileged section of the Press. We have seldom seen criticism of Government in India more virulent and more contemptuous than some

criticisms of the change of capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The Press Act was then as now the law of the land. The Secretary of State for India even brandished it about a little-a very little-in the House of Lords in referring to the criticism. But the sword remained screwed to its sheath, Responsible opinion in the country holds that a law, which cannot for whatsoever reason be even-handedly administered, is detrimental to the growth of that reverence for law which is the cornerstone of the State.

We doubt if there is any fair-minded individual in this country or any one connected with the administration of its affairs who will question the soundness of these observations of the Editor of the Indian Social Reformer, who has certainly never been attracted by Mrs. Besant and her mission and who has often publicly protested against many of her 66 impetuous" writings and utterances. We are told that Ireland is not India and that Irish journalism and Irish methods of political agitation are quite ill-suited to the conditions of our country. While quite willing to admit that there is some force in this view-point, we must certainly point out that the Government of India are not acting wisely and in a statesman-like manner when they try to invoke the aid of an extraordinarily drastic enactment modelled on Austrian legislation and inspired by the policy of Bismarck.

Under the auspices of the Indian Press Association, a meeting of the citizens of Bombay was held on the 24th instant at the Empire Theatre, with the object of upholding the liberty of the Press and to protest against the Press Act of 1910 Mr. B. G. Horniman, Editor of the Bombay Chronicle, as President of the Association, occupied the chair. The following Resolution moved by Mr. M. K. Gandhi was passed unanimously:—

That this meeting of loyal and law-abiding Indian subjects of His Majesty the King Emperor, believing the existence of a free public Press to be one of the first essentials of a healthy and progressive State, and necessary to the proper development, political and moral, of a civilised people, and further that the extension and maintenance of freedom in all departments of public life is the surest guarantee of popular progress and coutentment, and of mutual trust between Government and the people, asks that the Press in this country should enjoy the utmost liberty of expression, subject to the legal restraints of ordinary law, and of penalties inflicted only after proper trial and conviction.

Another Resolution, asking for the immediate repeal of the Press Act, was then moved and passed,

THREE INDIAN VICE-CHANCELLORS.

EFORE the Russo-Japanese War we were inclined to regard Japan as a real fairyland in the Far Fast, as enchanting and picturesque as anything seen by Urashima in the Palace of the Sea God or told by Shahrazad to King Shahriyar in the Arabian Nights. Old travellers' tales, memorable for their imagination rather than for their veracity, were not less wonderful than the accounts of Japan we read less than twenty years ago. We were told of Japanese women in rich-coloured kimono, who smiled behind a fan and walked with very minute steps. We read of tea-houses, rich with purple clouds of wistaria, of laughing childern flying kites or chasing a burnished dragon-fly, and even the great images of Buddha seemed to smile in that happy and romantic land. We could almost see peerless Fuji-san, gardens gay with flowers, little red bridges, Korean stone lanterns, and frail houses, open in the summer-time to every passing breeze. We read about this eastern fairyland with considerable interest, and the word "charming would best express our uncritical appreciation. No dissentient note was struck. Pierre Loti, in Madame Chrysanthème, made the soul of Japan distinctly feminine; and Sir Edwin Arnold, first of all in the Daily Telegraph, and finally in Seas and Lands and other volumes, compressed Japan into very quaint, very polite, very small, geisha. Lafcadio Hearn in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, and Mr. Alfred Noyes in The Flower of Old Japan, considerably added to our belief in a Japanese fairyland.

It is not easy to keep up a belief in a fairytale, however good it may be. In course of time we discovered with considerable surprise that Japan was not a glorified willow-pattern plate

after all. We learned that the samurai, with their long and short swords, were not puppets in a military show, but men of sterling quality who for hundreds of years reflected the spirit of Japan. It was the result of the Russo-Japanese war that turned the fairy-tale into a half-remembered dream. For the first time we saw Japan as a great and progressive country. We developed the critical faculty in regard to her people. We saw her faults as well as her virtues, and in so doing our judgment was tempered by true, and not blinded by false, values. We were aware that Japan could no longer be called a hermit nation, that she had come out of her long seclusion, conquered China and Russia, become our valued Ally, and a power in the Eist to be reckoned with throughout the world. To-day Japan has achieved another and a greater victory. She was largely responsible for the fall of Kiaochau and the crushing of Prussian militarism in the Far East. For that victory, the significance of which we shall deal with later on, all those who are fighting for right against might, for liberty against despotism, give thanks. It may well be said that the Land of the Rising Sun has now become the Land of the Risen Sun, a country so far enlightened as to be imbued with the spirit of war against war, a country looking forward to the time when there shall be no more war but peace among the nations.

Many of us in the West, when we realised Japan's sudden rise from an obscure nation to that of a World-Power, regarded the event as almost miraculous. The fall of Port Arthur seemed after all a startling continuation of the old fairy-tale. But when we study the matter, examine Japanese history and religion, and above all we realise the

This is true enough, and whereas in English history our sovereigns are among the most prominent figures, the reverse is the case in Japan. There were emperors and empresses whose personality left a lasting impression upon the pages of Japanese history, but they were exceptions. The Emperor, according to ancient tradition, was divine, the direct descendant of Ama-terasu, the Sun Goddess. His divinity was of a kind that did not fit him for affairs of State, at least that was the utilitarian conception of many of the great Japanese families. He became in course of time a glorified puppet on the Shogun's chess-board, a king to a king to be moved more easily than a castle. He was a divinity to be played with in anything but a divine way. He was shorn of power, and if, as sometimes happened, he displayed a will of his own, he was promptly made to abdicate. During one period, when this game of moving royal puppets was at its height, there were no less than five emperors living at the same time, and not only living but smiling divinely upon such a sad state of affairs. It is not to be wondered at, under the circumstances, that Japanese history is not remarkable for its accounts of the deeds of emperors but rather memorable for its absence of such detail except in regard to some of the earlier sovereigns. The *The Japanese Nation in Evolution.

prominent figures in Japanese history are not emperors but men who usurped their power. Yoritomo, Nohunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu are among the most notable names in Japan's history. These were the Cromwells of their day, holding power at the point of the sword. Though they were never guilty of executing an emperor, they made it their business to feed that shadowy figure with the husks of an empty divinity, and the more husks they gave him and his successors, the more they were assured of their power in ruling the country.

It was this system of dual government, of allpowerful Shogun and puppet emperor, that tended to hinder the progress of the country. There was patriotism in abundance, but it was local and not national. There were endless civil wars, family feuds that served no good purpose and certainly delayed the unity of the nation. Japan needed badly a common danger to make a nation of her people and so effectively check once for all the quarrels of clan against clan. When Kublai Khan sent out his great armada in the hope of conquering Japan, the whole country for the first time in its history forgot its petty disputes. The Japanese fought and triumphed over the enemy at their gates, and so long as the danger lasted they tasted the strength of nationality or patriotism worthy of the name. But as soon as the danger was over, effeminate and extravagant shoguns allowed the country to sink back into futile quarrels. Even the far-seeing Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, lover of peace though he was, sealed the fate of Japan as a hermit nation for over two hundred and fifty years. The trading foreigner and the zealous missionary were alike tabooed. He shut the gates of Japan against the world, and just so long as his successors could keep those gates closed was the quickening life of the West witheld. Those fanatically barred portals were thrown open with the Restoration of the Emperor in 1868 and