16 Making of the Complete Citizen
are more to blame than they are, because they have learned
from us not a little doctrinaire theory as to the effectiveness
of abstract ideas, which indeed we know by experience are
explosive unless they are combined in a proper mixture. In
our democracies government is restrained by experience
which keeps the rein on too spirited adventure.
India is today perhaps the best example of an effort by
a non-indigenous government to supply the experience
necessary for the satisfactory working of modern ideas in
a vast country, where there is no controlling unity of tradi-
tion among aggregations of people of diverse cultures and
history. Years ago, in one of his essays, Lord Rosebery
quoted with approval the striking figure, first used by Lord
Randolph Churchill, of British rule in India as being like
a thin sheet of oil spread over a vast and turbulent ocean,
which would otherwise break into destructive billows, as
conflicting religions and social traditions meet one another
in violent cross-currents. Since then the commotions have
increased, and at times they have rent the oil sheet with
angry and threatening crests; but Britain is still patiently
attempting to pour oil on the stormy waters, in the hope
that before long passions will subside and the life of India
will become calmer. But if that hope is realized it will be
because by hard experience the conflict of cultures—real cul-
tures, not external forms of civilization—will have been
lessened. How soon this will come to pass it is useless to
speculate. Last year in an address at the University of
Toronto, Lord Irwin, one of the greatest of India’s Vice-
roys, said: “If the question were asked whether there is
at present in India such solidarity of sentiment, such funda-
mental unity of aim, as breeds willingness in the last resort
to sink individual, class, or communal advantage for the