flame about the height of a man. As it drew nearer, there came from it a sound that rose above the rattle of our trotting -a broken dreadful sound. A moment later, we saw in the middle of this moving irregular sheath of fire, fed on streaming garments, the black outlines of a man; and the face, framed in a circle of flaming hair and beard, was like the tortured face in an old engraving of the Inferno. "Oh, God!" muttered Dickie, aghast. As the awful thing reached us, Risaldar Ghulam Kadir jumped off his horse, and flung a cloak around the burning man, thereby extinguishing the flames that were consuming him alive. " "Tis Nathu," he cried. "My father's brother's son, that was Naik in the Police ! Ohé, Nathu, what have they done to thee?" The grizzled old Punjabi's voice was deep with an inexpressible anger. We gathered round the dying man, wishing that we might neither hear nor It was clear that he had a message which he strove to deliver, but the twisted lips could frame no intelligible words; and with his last convulsive effort he managed only to start up and extend a raw arm towards Cheluan-a mute and awful portent. "He means us to hurry on," said Dickie hoarsely. Clattering once more along the ghostly road, we saw, beyond the ridge that dominated Cheluan, a red light quivering in the sky. What that lurid glare portended needed little guessing, and beyond a sharp exclamation here and there, no one spoke-for sometimes there come in life occasions when the spoken word is futile. As we neared the crest of the rise a babel of savage shouting, above which rose a familiar cry, smote upon our ears 66 Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Victory to the Holy Gandhi! Reaching the crest, we looked down on the darkened valley below. Away in the bottom of the bowl lay the village of Cheluan. Over it hung a shroud of smoke, now light, now dark, ever changing in density and colour, and shot with flashes of shimmering luminosity as the flames beneath leaped and fell. Sometimes a tongue of fire darted through the pall, trembled skyward an instant, and flickered out. It had reached the smouldering stage. But the Police Post itself, halfway down the slope between us and the village, still blazed in a mass of roaring flame. And in the dark changing shadows thrown by its lurid light we saw, dimly, a mob of spectres— flitting, fantastic, unsubstantial shapes, like a revel in the nether world. At the sound of our approach a sudden hush fell, and the spectres vanished silently away into the shadows. There were things in the war years that we try to forget, as when a 9.2 landed in the crowded theatre hut, or an airbomb burst amid the horse lines. But these were lesser things to what we looked upon now. In front of the entrance, in the fitful pool of light cast by the flames that still swirled around the Police Post, we saw what at first looked like a few little huddled heaps of refuse. As we approached a reek of burning flesh turned us sick; and we saw that these were the oil-saturated still guttering corpses of the constables. The flesh was charred and consumed till the entrails flowed, and these, with the matter that ran from the broken skulls, seethed and bubbled in the little low licking blue flame of the persistent oil. Around about lay brass-bound lathis smeared with blood and hair, eloquent of that brute ferocity which beats and smashes the dead; and where the semblance of a face remained, the expression on it was such as may not be described. Now "-he pointed to the burning village-" they lie beneath the ashes of my house. I, who served twenty-two years and two months in Skinner's Horse." Strong arms supported him while he told us how the ne'erdo-weels of the village, calling themselves Congress Volunteers, having beaten to death such banias as had not observed Gandhi's order of hartal and become drunk on looted liquor even as the Police Dafadar had reported before the wire was cut,-proceeded first to burn the houses of all who were loyal to the Sirkar, shouting that Gandhi was now king of Hind; and then, as the drunkenness grew, and more and more rabble joined them, how they proceeded to deal in like fashion with the wealthy inhabitants, irrespective of race and creed, every man raping and plundering to his heart's desire, and each gratifying his own private hates and passions. "Then," went on the old man, "when darkness came, and they were mad with drink and slaughter, they gathered in hundreds around the Post, and kindled it by throwing firetorches from behind the rocks. And when the constabeels sallied out, they did to them as ye see, pouring Ram Narain's oiltins on their bodies. One, indeed, who feigned dead, started up when the fire touched him, and fled away burning. . . ." I looked towards the smouldering village. It seemed as if the Beast, caught red-handed in its foul act, glowered there, cravenly awaiting retribution. And Dickie, with some of the men, was missing. I found him just in time. He'd got the Hotchkiss guns placed round the village. His voice, when he answered me, was choked with sobs-harsh dry sobs, such as you hear only on the battlefield or in close-up dressing-stations. "Leave me alone, Major." He shook off my arm roughly. "I don't care about the filthy newspapers, or the bolshies at home. I don't care if they hang me, I'm going to wipe out the lot." The fingers of the Mahomedan gunners, outraged to the deepest and most sacred core of their being by what they had seen, trembled on the triggers. At certain times certain things are difficult to explain. with a gesture more eloquent than any words. An hour later, when, in so far as in our power lay, we had done what had to be done, Dickie spoke again with indescribable bitterness. "When Gandhi hears of this, I suppose he'll publicly knock off another glass of milk!" And I, thinking of that engaging little doctrinaire of infantile mentality who was playing ducks and drakes with an Empire, could find no adequate reply. . . . in saintliness of character, in loftiness of idealism, in love, in perfect love of Humanity, Gandhi has only once been surpassed in . . ." The sonorous periods of the preacher recalled me from my mist of memories. Reaching for my hat, I glanced up at Chatham. I fancied that the "No, Dickie; the law must marble features had set in still take its course.' "The law! " He gave a ghastly laugh, and pointed to the awful havoc around us sterner lines. THE MUSINGS WITHOUT METHOD. LIBERAL PARTY-DEAD OR DYING MATTHEW ARNOLD'S CRITICISM-THE LIBERALS AND SOCIALISM-MR LLOYD GEORGE'S HUMILIATION MR CHURCHILL RATS A SECOND TIME -THE FRENCH ELECTIONS-THE VICTORY OF THE LEFT-THE FAILURE OF THE ROYALISTS-A. H. BULLEN AND THE ELIZABETHANSCRITIC AND DISCOVERER. THE Liberal Party is dead or dying. We do not pretend to regret its demise. It was a Party always of low ideals and mean ambitions. Throughout the nineteenth century it fought with unceasing bitterness for itself and its friends. It had neither the courage nor the energy to support the Empire. To get rid of the Colonies, if only that could have been achieved, seemed to many of its leaders the first duty of a Ministry. For the Liberals, above all, government was not an art or a science: it was a kind of religion. They formulated their creeds, they formed their catchwords, and thought it no part of their business to accommodate their creeds or their catchwords with reality. According to Matthew Arnold -and there was never a saner critic of politics - the great middle-class Liberalism had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the social sphere, free trade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large industrial fortunes; in the religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 66 religion." And let it be remembered that for the great middle-class Liberalism, Free Trade meant not only free imports, but Free Trade in the lives of women and young children. If our competition with Germany made it necessary that young children should work in the mines and factories for fourteen hours a day, the young children must not be interfered with. interfered with. It seemed a gross infringement upon personal liberty that the Government should protect the children against the greed or the zeal of their parents and of their parents' employers. Moreover, liberty was over, liberty was one of the fetishes most devoutly worshipped by the Liberals. So highly did they esteem "liberty" that they would, if they could, have conferred upon all their followers the "liberty to be a nuisance to their neighbours. It was a great day for Liberalism when the railings in Hyde Park were torn down by a mob of reformers. The extreme supporter of Mr Bright, mustered upon the right to do as one likes, followed Mr Beales down the path of anarchy with complete satisfaction. "He sees the rich, the aristo as cratic class, in occupation of out is murmured by a Liberal, the Executive Government," Mr Henderson is so utterly lost wrote Matthew Arnold, "and to a sense of shame as to reso if he is stopped from making tort, "Get on with it." The Hyde Park a bear-garden or the surprise of the Liberals, who streets impassable, he says he have long believed themselves is being butchered by the aris- the only begetters of tocracy." Socialist Government, whose principles they attacked violently at the polls, cannot be concealed. They seem though they had been cuffed in the face by an inferior, to whom they had condescended. They can neither find a reply nor suggest a reason. Mr Lloyd George has been foolish enough to browbeat and cajole. Incidentally he explains how the Liberals came to put the Socialists in power. It is a strange story, which bears upon it not the smallest impress of the truth. The last Government, he said, "had lowered the prestige of this country in the world in a way that it had been reduced to a depth it had never reached since the eighteenth century." This pro What mattered it, asked the Liberals, if England were despised abroad and divided bitterly at home, so long as a man may say what he likes, and marry his deceased wife's sister? So they would have destroyed the harmony of the State, and cut themselves off altogether from the tradition of the past, merely to achieve a false freedom, a dangerous individualism. And to-day, as a Party, they no longer exist. Here and there Here and there will still be found a handful of them, until at last they are absorbed by one or other of the Parties which still survive. It cannot be said that they die easily. They cling feverishly to life, as dying men cling to it who are afraid to face the unknown future. Their pact with Labour was but a device to prolong their rather stuffy existence. They thought that if they put the Socialists in power, they would be in the position of patrons, who could turn their clients into the street whenever they chose. Messrs Asquith and Lloyd George fondly believed that Mr Ramsay MacDonald would come to heel whenever he heard the crack of the Liberal whip, and he behaves as though neither Mr Asquith nor Mr Lloyd George lingered in the upper air. When a threat to turn the Socialists found historian does not tell us to which part of the eighteenth century he refers, and it is impossible to check his comparison. Probably his view of the eighteenth century is as vague as his criticism of Mr Baldwin's policy. But when he went on to say that he would "vote against every Government and every Party that lets Great Britain down," the comedy which he plays degenerates to farce. This solemn pronouncement was greeted with "cheers," the cheers of Welsh Liberals, who never in their life have cared a jot |