HOLIDAYS AND PILGRIMAGES 1.17 



in his own way, been doing, and yet more fully preparing 

 for. 



Instead then of always looking at India as a country 

 with everything to learn from the West, and nothing to 

 teach it, as the superior Western fashion has too long been, 

 we are finding that we also have something to learn 

 though as yet we may think only from Indians in the first 

 rank, like Bose, Tagore, and perhaps a few others. But 

 we have to learn something from the Indian culture itself ; 

 and perhaps especially now in the present situation of 

 Europe, torn into embittered halves, and these again 

 subdividing without end along every old division of 

 languages and nationalities, intensified by the recent 

 Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and other mythologies of race. 

 And with even all those divisions more or less splintering 

 across and estranged anew by the spreading rift of labour 

 towards revolution. 



Suppose now we students, men of science, of letters, 

 or of art, though hitherto so non-political, begin to consider 

 how we may help forward something of that true peace and 

 good will to which our best statesmanship indeed aspires, but 

 can never by mere treaties realise, nor by political leagues 

 obtain. Must we not again look to all that is best in each 

 country's history and civilisation ? which should be found 

 in its rural villages, its cities' past ? How else, for instance, 

 has that old and bitter feud and mutual hate, so long second 

 to none in duration and intensity in Europe that between 

 Scots and English come to an end ? By growth of mutual 

 knowledge and understanding, even more than by common 

 advantage. How else abate the old bitterness, and the 

 renewed alienation of Ireland ? how inspire a saner feeling 

 in England where for so long it has been so far from 

 that desirable ? Without some respect and good will 

 for France as for Belgium, would the English people have 

 risen to support them as they have done, even despite 

 their admitted and manifest material interest ? And 

 without that increasing sympathy with European culture 



