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But a new pressure was fast rising that might well force the British Government to do its bidding. This was the pressure of British public opinion. The British people in general were not experts on India. They could not judge the Indian issues either from first-hand experience or deep scholarship. They did not judge the issues from the standpoint of vested interests in India. But the British Government could ill afford to ignore their massed judgment, inexpert and instinctive as it might be. And, whatever the experts and officials and vested interests were saying last week, the British people were calling for Indian self-government, calling for it in such words as these: "We treat them like dirt and then expect them to fight."
Only time could fairly judge the complex Indian cases. But neither Japan nor the British people had time to waste. Unless every possible iota of Indian strength and spirit were called on, a day might soon come when Britain's Captains and Kings would depart from India, and the fire of Britain's power and glory would sink, perhaps forever, from India's dunes and headlands.