Personal.

CONGRESS PRESIDENTSHIP.

The All-India Congress Committee has, by an overwhelming majority, elected the Hon'ble Babu Amvika Charan Mazumdar as the President of the ensuing Congress at Lucknow.

A PARSI LADY'S GIFT.

Bai Aimai, wife of Mr. Hormasji Ardeshir Wadia, who was President of the Bombay Provincial Conference of 1915, gave on the Parsi New Year's Day one lakh of rupees in Government Promissory Notes, the income thereof is to be spent on the following charitable objects:Marriage of poor Parsi maids, Navjot ceremony of poor Parsis, and in providing cheap dwelling houses for them. The proceeds of Mrs. Wadia's gift will also be devoted, without distinction of caste or creed, in affording relief to the sufferers from famine, flood, and such other calamities, in providing wells where there is scarcity of water and in the education of poor students. Mrs. Wadia has also given substantial help towards the building fund of the Poona Sevasadan, and, in conjunction with the Servants of India Society, has provided some sanitary dwellings for the millhands of Bombay.

SYED HUSAIN BILGRAMI.

It is announced that the "Convocation Address" at the next Annual Convocation of the Madras University, in November, will be delivered by Nawab Imad-ul-Mulk Syed Hussain Bilgrami, C.S.I., a venerable educationist, who has already passed man's three score years and ten. He received his education in the Calcutta Presidency College but migrated from Lucknow to Hyderabad in which State he reached the rank of Director of Public Instruction. He was a member of the Universities Commission, and has served on the India Council, so that his attainments are such as to foreshadow a Convocation Address of unusual interest.

PRESIDENT OF THE ALL-INDIA MOSLEM LEAGUE.

The Council of the All-India Moslem League has by a majority of votes elected the Hon'ble Mr. Jinnah as President of the next Annual Sessions of the All-India Moslem League to be held at Lucknow.

A NOTABLE APPOINTMENT.

The appointment of Mr. K. T. Paul, B.A., L.T., as the National General Secretary of the Indian National Council of the Young Men's Christian Association in the place of Mr. E. C. Carter who has been called to work in England, is a notable event in the history of the Christian Mission work in India. The general complaint among the Indian Christians hitherto has been that very few of them who fulfil the necessary conditions have been raised to positions of trust and responsibility and given the same status as the European or the American. The Cambridge Mission to Delhi crossed the rubicon of prejudice by appointing Mr. S. K. Rudra as Principal of their First Grade College with European Missionaries as his assistants. The appointment of Mr. Paul to the General Secretaryship for the whole of India is a clear evidence to the fact that whatever it may be to other societies, to the Y. M. C. A. the doctrine of the brotherhood of man is not a fiction but a fact. COUNT TERAUCHI.

The choice of the Marshal Count Terauchi as the new Japanese Premier by the Elder Statesmen is perhaps an indication that some concession must be made to the more forward section of Count Okuma's critics. The outgoing Premier's recommendation of his Foreign Minister, Baron Kato, as his successor, has been passed over, and the Resident-General of Korea, who is idolized by a certain school of Japanse as a man who gets things done," has been chosen in his stead. The main thing Count Terauchi has "got done," has been the annexation of Korea, which he effected after two months in Seoul, although Prince Ito and Viscount Sone had hesitated to do it.

66

Political.

MR. EARDLEY NORTON ON POLITICAL AGITATION.

Mr. Fardley Norton, at a recent speech he made at Trichinoply, stated that he never deviated from the political views he held during the time he took active interest in the National Congress. He advised the people to agitate for political reforms, as without such agitation there was stagnation.

Constant agitation, in its best sense, is the only way to get any reform. (Hear, hear and cheers.) If, on the other hand, you remain quiet without showing your meritorious acts and services to the Government, stagnation will be the only result or outcome. And, therefore, I strongly wish that you should never cease to agitate. (Loud and prolonged cheers.) It must be a wise agitation, a constitutional agitation, through your own popularly elected representatives. Unless there is agitation, you cannot get the redress of your grievances as well as those benefits you wish to enjoy. I believe these may be principles which may be somewhat obnoxious to authority. (Laughter.) But I have pleaded this for 37 years, and I am not likely to change the views in the 38th.

PRINCIPLES OF NATIONAEITY.

A message to the "Times from Bucharest says:-The King of Rumania in an interview, said, the entry of the Rumanians into the war was based entirely on the principles of nationality. Rumania regarded Hungary as her traditional enemy. Rumania was friendly disposed to Germany at the outbreak of the war, but the excesses of the Central Powers had affected Rumanians deeply. Yet knowing Serbia's and Belgium's fate, Rumania had entered the war, confident that England the just, France her Latin brother, and Russia her neighbour, would not allow her to be destroyed,

DUTIES OF A DISTRICT OFFICER.

The following passages are culled from Mr. Gupta's life of Romesh Chander Dutt. Time has not diminished their importance.

"My main idea, which I have had since I was District Officer myself, is to make the people feel that this Government is their own Government, that is conducted with their advice and co-operation, that they are to some extent responsible for its success or failure. So far as the Province as a whole is concerned, the expansion of the Legislative Council, and the creation of an Executive Council with one representative Indian on it, will effectually spare this idea, and we want nothing more at present. But this idea should be created in Districts also. In District administration we get no active help from the people; even when we are trying to repress crime and punish criminals, the sympathies of the people are sometimes against us. This is lamentable but very natural-it is not natural for the people to sympathise with an administration in which they have no share with an alien one-man rule the rule of the District Officer without popular advice. This should be remedied. Failing the creation of Advisory Councils, the District Boards should be used as such and should be convened and consulted on all general matters affecting the districts-drainage, irrigation, watersupply, relief, repression of crime, settlements, liquor shops, industries, technical education, pasture lands, forest rules, timber, fuel, new crops, water rate, feeder lines and a hundred other subjects. My idea is thus to link the people by a chain of civil officers and advisory councils to the Government to make the people feel that they are a part of the Empire, part of the British Raj, responsible for the administration of the province like the Lieutenant-Governor himself. And the creation of those institutions will be the best means to reform the Police, which will no longer be the only link between the Government and the people.

General.

THE EARLY JAPANESE MYTHS.

These form the subject of a lovely description by Mr. F. H. Davis in the October number of the Theosophist culled from the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan). They provide us with a number of beautiful and quaint stories, and with something more than mere mythology. They explain the origin of the worship of the Ama-terasu, the ancient sungoddess, and how the Mikados are the direct descendants of this deity; and how this great sun-myth has been a connecting link throughout the ages of Japan's growth. Thousands of years ago it was a Shinto cult; and to-day it has evolved into a kind of patriotism that centres round the Emperor and that is self-sacrificing. "In Japan's cosmogony . . . Heaven and Earth were not yet separated in the beginning, and the in and yo (male and female principles) were not yet divided." There was a gigantic egg which contained germs, and there were clean and murky elements in that egg. The one rose and became Heaven, while the other, gradually sinking, became Earth. Two deities Izanagi (male who desires) and Izanami (female who desires) made, consolidated and gave birth to the floating land and created islands, rivers, valleys, trees, mountains, etc. And from Izanagi's left eye was born the Sun Goddess, from his right eye the Moon God, and from his nose the Impetuous Male; and then his divine task having been accomplished, he disappeared. The Moon figures frequently in Japanese poetry and is always described with intense delight, but it is surprising to find that the Moon God is only referred to in one Japanese myth and then in a manner in no way compatible with a poet's reference. The Sun Goddess, Ama-terasu, planted the millet, wheat and beans in the dry fields and sowed the rice in fields covered with water,

RECRUITING IN FRENCH INDIA.

M. Alfred Martineau, Governor-General of French India, who is now in Calcutta, said that on the outbreak of war, all French settlements were denuded of European born French subjects of military age, all of whom were called up for service with the colours and sailed for France over two years ago. The Indian born subjects of France are divided into two classes, the Renoncees who were mainly Eurasians, and natives of India. The former were called up for service when war had been in progress a few months and between six hundred and seven hundred were sent away, some to France and others to IndoChina. No pressure was brought to bear to induce the natives of India to enlist, but quite a number volunteered in Pondicherry and were now in France. In Chandranagore between twenty and thirty Bengalis enlisted, and they were also now in France.

THE FIFTH NAGAR CONFERENCE.

Presiding over the deliberations of the Fifth Nagar Conference held at Vishnagar, on October 11th, the Hon'ble Dr. Sunderlal, c.I.E., delivered an interesting address. He said that it had been very often asked in these days of congresses, conferences and committees as to the relations that caste conferences should bear to general gatherings made up of all communities and sections of Indian society. There was an old English saying: "If every man swept before his house the whole village would be clean." In India, if every caste or sect applied itself earnestly to ameliorate its conditions and to rectify any evils and to remove any impediments that might exist in the way of its progress, the entire nation made up of the different units comprising each caste or sect would achieve a degree of progress, which under other conditions would be practically difficult of attainment.