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PREFACE

visit, when we were able to talk uninterruptedly about the state of India and our own affairs, and he spoke with alarm of the temper of the great nations and the life of the great cities like Paris and London, whose love of luxury, need of sensation, and craving for excitement were up against every finer instinct he cherished. When he spoke of the forces in the Western world which he thought must become disruptive and lead to trouble, and stretched out his hands, it might have been the moral map of Europe, with its teeming continent and restless atoms, that lay spread out before him. The major energies, as he viewed them, were not constructive; they did not make for the world's commonwealth, and by their nature they must come into conflict sooner or later.

Now, as I recall that afternoon—not much more than a twelvemonth ago—it is impossible not to see in the present war the grim realisation of those misgivings; and that they were not the passing fancy of a sick man is shown by the frequent allusions in his own pages to the