"Now do I know that love is blind."

ALFRED AUSTIN.


[Sidenote: Cleavage of opinion--European _v._ Native.]

An unpleasant aspect of the new idea is much in evidence at the present
time. On almost every public question, the cleavage of the public
opinion is Europeans _versus_ Natives. Far be it from me to assert that
the natives only are carried away by the community feeling. A case in
point is the violence of the European agitation over the "Ilbert Bill"
of 1883, to permit trial of Europeans by native judges in rural criminal
courts. Our question merely is: How has the new regime affected native
ideas? Given then, say, a charge of assault upon a native by a European
or Eurasian, or the reverse--a case by no means unknown--the native
press and the class they represent are ranged at once, as a matter of
course, upon the native's side. Given a great public matter, like Lord
Curzon's Bill of 1903 for the necessary reform of the Indian
Universities, immediately educated Indians and the native press perceive
in it a veiled attempt to limit the higher education in order to
diminish the political weight of the educated class. The 1904 expedition
into Thibet was unanimously approved by the Anglo-Indian, and as
unanimously disapproved by the native press. Educated India no doubt
joined with the rest of the Empire in wishing success to Japan in the
1904-5 war with Russia, but the war presented itself primarily to the
Indian mind as a great struggle between Asia and Europe. Other lines of
cleavage may temporarily show themselves,--among natives the division
into Hindus and Mahomedans, or into officials and non-officials; but on
the first occasion when a European and a Native are opposed, or when the