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THE INDIAN PROBLEM
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be obliged to aim at if the worst comes to the worst, the last stages of a departing foreign power that is unwilling to vacate the usurper's seat can never be free from blood-shed. It is true that it takes two to make a quarrel, but frankly I do not see how you can avoid it when bullets begin to fly and brute force is applied to compel unwilling non-cooperators to do the bidding of military dictators. Does any one imagine that the English will walk out of the country quietly, without moving heaven and earth to retain what they have lorded over for so many years ? We inust also bear in mind that with all their faults the English have a doggedness of purpose that will not be easily cowed down by those who merely intend to stand by with folded hands. The English are generally endowed with great capacity for initiative, and every one of them is not unlikely to acquit himself as a hero in an emergency. On the whole it seems to me that in a contest between physical brute force and non-violerit non-cooperation the latter is only liable to come out second best, unless the heroism of non-co. operators is able to surpass in quality, that is in point of endurance and the capacity to suffer, the fiendish ingenuity of martial law genius bent on devising newer methods of grinding down resistance and opposition. It seems to me as to this that the whole fabric of our non-resisting resistancethis is really what non-violent non-cooperation comes tois constructed upon enthusiasm so far as the ignorant masses are concerned. That these masses in their present condition are capable of rising up to the occasion or performing heroic deeds in the moment of need, or even of enduring for any length of time the hardships that are to be encountered on the path of political freedom, no one can maintain. They are, poor creatures ! not even capable of acting on their own initiative in an emergency. I grant that their enthusiasm is not a negligible quantity altogether ; but uncontrolled force is a synonym for fury which is destructive of the good and
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