his speech declaring that Britain would stand by France in her claim for
the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, he spoke of "the intolerable
degradation of a foreign yoke." Is such a yoke less intolerable, less
wounding to self-respect here, than in Alsace-Lorraine, where the rulers
and the ruled are both of European blood, similar in religion and
habits? As the War went on, India slowly and unwillingly came to realise
that the hatred of autocracy was confined to autocracy in the West, and
that the degradation was only regarded as intolerable for men of white
races; that freedom was lavishly promised to all except to India; that
new powers were to be given to the Dominions, but not to India. India
was markedly left out of the speeches of statesmen dealing with the
future of the Empire, and at last there was plain talk of the White
Empire, the Empire of the Five Nations, and the "coloured races" were
lumped together as the wards of the White Empire, doomed to an
indefinite minority.

The peril was pressing; the menace unmistakable. The Reconstruction of
the Empire was on the anvil; what was to be India's place therein? The
Dominions were proclaimed as partners; was India to remain a Dependency?
Mr. Bonar Law bade the Dominions strike while the iron was hot; was
India to wait till it was cold? India saw her soldiers fighting for
freedom in Flanders, in France, in Gallipoli, in Asia Minor, in China,
in Africa; was she to have no share of the freedom for which she fought?
At last she sprang to her feet and cried, in the words of one of her
noblest sons: "Freedom is my birthright; and I want it." The words "Home
Rule" became her Mantram. She claimed her place in the Empire.

Thus, while she continued to support, and even to increase, her army
abroad, fighting for the Empire, and poured out her treasures as water
for Hospital Ships, War Funds, Red Cross organisations, and the gigantic