THE BOMB THROWERS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 305, 18 September 1908, Page 6

THE BOMB THROWERS.

Taking its beginning in Russia, and spreading latterly southward through Persia and India, a remarkable wavo of feeling has aroused a spirit of unrest that would seem to have caused the Oriental to permanently abandon his life of contemplative philosophy, of acquiescence, of Kismet if. you will, to adopt the aggressive ways of the West and emphasise his change of mental poise by tho hurling of the death-dealing bomb. But lately a domiciliary search carried out by night in Calcutta disclosed such a magazine of destruction as would havo rejoiced the heart of a. Russian chief- of police in the palmiest days of the Terrorists. In each case the ' class of people arrested belong to the same social type— the ex-studont without a regular profession. In India, as in Russia, the crimes themselves arc as often as not the work of mere boys, the tools of abler and older organisers. In both countries the hurling of the bomb ■ epitomises the problem of the " intellectuals "—the moujik's son educated at Moscow or St. Petersburg, or the young East Indian who has been for some years'.a nimble'examinationpasser at soinc' European seat of learning, and who has returned to his own country with his smattering of many things to sec old traditions through new and hostile spectacles. Similar causes have been at work in Persia and India. The Babu debating clubs of Calcutta,-the " Anjumens" or political clubs of Teheran, arc all hotbeds' of red anarchy. In these societies the newly-graduated and almost wholly penurious " intellectuals " regard parliamentary institutions as desirable only as weapons of violence, and they anathematise that spirit of compromise which is for us tho essence of all legislation because it is not rhetorical. The exasperation of the Babu is the moro fanned to fever heat when he observes tho Imperial Government taking into its counsels just those members of the native community who have been left uninfluenced by the agitation of Tilak and a thousand other lesser journalistic lights. A writer in the London Daily Mail some months ago drew attention to the power of the gutter press of India. Therein he emphasised the power of the written word, showing the almost superstitious reverence with which the average Hindu newspaper reader-regards the obiter dicta of his favourite editor. This fact, coupled with the hitherto almost criminally lax censorship of tho native press, has had the not unnatural effect of disseminating sedition and incitation to violence throughout the great subcontinent. " The desperation of tho Terrorist sections in Russia and India is the greater from the consciousncss that the shibboleths of Western social revolution have no serious application in these two empires. Who is to tell the goatherd ryot in tho Punjab, or the moujik following a wooden plough on the banks of the Volga, that his happiness lies in the direction of an eight-hour day or in collective ownership of the works of Nature 1 All he knows about politics is. the .pressure of population on hia supply of food; but that is not a favourite topic in the agenda of national congresses." Tho physical-force wing of the revolutionary sympathisers has had to confess that so far, despite its bomb-throwing, the removal of its enemies has not been followed by the installation' of its friends. The truth is, that outside the " intellectuals " themselves the moujik and the ryot aro too intent upon tho struggle for mere food to jeopardise their lives and personal liberty for what is at present an ideal far beyond the purview of' their stultified imaginations. In India the peasants have so far not responded to the call of the " intellectuals," and the latter, in despair of inaugurating a revolution via a corrupt and contemptible press, have, through disgust at scattering seed upon ground which will not assimilate it, initiated a campaign of organised bombthrowing and terrorism. The "intellectuals " of India and Persia arc, in fact, but following tho lead of their fanatical brethren in Russia. They arc becoming Nihilists, every sense in them focusscd on reducing system to nothingness. With this regard it is surely not too much to say that the Imperial Government, in transporting Tilak to Rangoon, is, if anything, treating him with exceptional leniency. It remains to be seen whether the Oriental mind will construo this leniency into a confession of weaknessj, and,, acting upon that una-

taken conviction, force the Imperial authorities into infinitely more drastic repressive measures, or whether the " intellectuals " will perceive the hopelessness of kicking against the pricks, and, making a complete volte face, help the English sahib in the tremendous task of evolving a, happier and more progressive India.