LETTERS FROM ABROAD
advantage. But let us bring freedom of soul into Santiniketan
September 7, 1920.
Your letters always bring the atmosphere of Santiniketan round my mind with all its colour and souads and movements, and my love for my boys, like a migratory bird, crosses back over the sea, seeking its own dear fest in the Ashram. Your letters are great gifts to me—I have not the power to repay them in kind. For now my mind faces the West, and all that it has to give naturally flows towards it. Therefore, for the time being, my direct communication with you has become thin like the stream of the Kopain the summer. But I know Santiniketan will not bring forth its fulness of flower and fruit, if, through me, it does not send its roots to the Western soil. Stung by insult of injustice we try to repudiate Europe, but by doing so we insult ourselves. Let us have the dignity not to quarrel or retaliate, not to pay back smallness by being small ourselves. This is the time when we should dedicate all our resources of emotion, thought and character to the service of our country in a positive direction of duty.
We are suffering because of our offences against Shivam, against Advaitam; we spend all our energy in quarrelling with the punishment, and nothing of it is left for the reparation of wrongs we have done and are doing. When we have performed our part
