THE ARMY AND THE CIVIL POWER

The army in India is recruited from a few classes, and from races in one corner of India, and a part of it from even outside of India. Its officers are largely British. The army in India is not of the same people as would constitute the civil government under an autonomous regime. Such a regime would therefore be precarious with an army constituted as it is at present. It ought therefore to be the policy of the Congress, as of all other popular political organizations, to secure the proper composition of the army i.e., its recruitment from all the classes from which the legislative and executive authorities of the future will be constituted. The interest and the policy of the Government also ought to lie in that direction. If the political ideal for India is self-government within the British Commonwealth of Nations, it also must see to it that the army is composed of men and officers that belong to those classes that will constitute the governing authorities under such a system of self- government. No system of self-government will be stable where the civil authority is constituted of men belonging to all classes and parts of India, and the military authority is constituted of men belonging to certain select classes and areas of the country. An army constituted on the racial, class and mercenary basis, however militantly efficient, can never go with a civil government constituted on the national, democratic basis.

–‘Publius’ in The New Review. (February)

 BACK TO JERUSALEM

Never, perhaps, in recent history has there been any movement of such proportions inspired by an essentially spiritual motive. Refugees have indeed poured into the country, driven from their original homes by persecution: but the vast majority are impelled by the force of the ideal. And they are not interested simply in building up a nation like other nations. They may in some cases bluster, sneer, and parade their utter indifference to spiritual values. But in point of fact they are all at one in a desiring that this new nation which they are building up shall not be as other nations: that there shall be in it a reign of social justice; that the defects of the Old World shall be purged away, and a new order of things built up. They may in some instances neglect the ceremonial regulations of the law; but they cherish, one and all, the idealism of the Prophets, which they alone in the world are endeavouring to put into practice. The Kibbutzim and co-operative settlements of the Plain of Sharon and Valley of Jezreel have been built up with an almost Messianic fervour which has no parallel in the world today. It is not too much to hope that, in God’s good time, something of more than local significance may blossom on this soil, so lovingly and so painstakingly prepared, so that a message for all mankind may come forth, once more from Jerusalem.

–Cecil Roth in The Aryan Path. (February)

 THE ARTIST’S SELF-DONATION

The lover of beauty knows that the beautiful life is the only flower the universe desires to offer to its Lord and Maker. He strives after self-transcending creativity to articulate his mystical passion for beauty. He is no spendthrift with his opportunities. The thoughts of his solitary moments, the speech of his crowded hours, the acts of his brief span of life are garlands of devotion for transcendent and absolute beauty. He knows that complete self-expression is self-donation. One cannot express and yet hoard oneself. That is why any worth-while self-expression is a costly business. Reservations impoverish expressions, leaving them incomplete. The lover of beauty pours forth his soul in a song of sacramental morality and symbolical art. Criticism, in its feverish attempt to advocate a theory against some rival, has often lost sight of its own mission and has launched forth upon a chartless sea. Literary and aesthetic criticism and ethical theory can at best be innocently diverting and never eloquently prophetic, if critics fail to treat the artist as the conscious agent for Beauty’s sovereign will and his achievements as oblations to his deity.

–Cyril Modak in The Modern Review. (February)

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