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hasty pioneers who began to pull down the past
to clear the ground for the future. They had no
patience and no discrimination, and proceeded on
the false assumption that the past had bred no-
thing but evil, and that religion and morality,
decency and moderation were only so many
clogs on progress. To remove them they thought
it expedient to encourage opposite tendencies,
irreverence towards the sanctities of life, dis-
respect towards superiors, disregard of truth and
honesty ; and above all, presumption, arrogance
and immodesty verging upon shamelessness.
These seemed to them the most efficacious means
of breaking with the past to advance towards
progress. It was perhaps natural for Europe,
semi-brutalised by the War, to think in this way
and to mistake perversity for progress; but was
the self-respecting East bound to adopt the same
creed ? Was it forgetful of its own purer princi-
ples and saner methods ? I have been watching
with alarm the prevalence of noxious ideas in
Hyderabad—where the soil, I should have
thought, was not congenial for their rapid
growth.
"A false age naturally draws to itself all
things false, and loves catchwords and delusive
ideas. Then falsehood broadcasts them; na-
ture's radio circulates them; the unoriginal
mind readily makes itself a receiver to welcome
them. All this seems to have become a mass
movement and commends itself on that ground.
When 'all do the same thing, it must be right!