showed signs of resting, their chiefs are ready to urge them forward; secondly, the perversion of our young men has reached a most alarming stage, not merely from the point of view of the crime and the sense of insecurity that it engenders, but also from the more general aspect of the character and prospects of the rising generation.  Many parents have most bitter reason to lament their failure to guide, control, and restrain their children.  On the 7th August boycott celebrations occurred at the headquarters of each district of the Dacca division, and at a number of places in the interior.  The boycott vow was everywhere renewed and at several meetings speeches were delivered, the tendency and object of which was to excite renewed disaffection and to stir up zeal for the cause.  The observances for the 16th October were prescribed in an order of the chiefs published in the Calcutta papers, and the local leaders did their best to carry out these instructions.  Rakhibandan bathing, abstinence from cooked food, and the solemn renewal of the boycott vow were the principal features.  In some places public meetings were held and again the tone of several speakers was most reprehensible.  District conferences and other similar meetings played their usual important part in the year’s programme.  In the Dacca division, Jhalakati, Faridpur, and Pangsa were selected as the theatres of those performances.  The resolutions were varied in character, but however guarded and mild their phraseology, the speeches advocated boycott in its most blatant form, and sentiments were expressed tending to keep alive the most pernicious and dangerous characteristics of the political and social situation.  Similar conferences, in which the boycott played a prominent part, and in which ill-feeling against the Government was excited, were held in August and September at Pabna and Dinajpur, and in the Sylhet district in October a series of meetings took place.  In a portion of the Faridpur district, the unsettled condition of which has for some time been a cause of anxiety, the inhabitants are mostly Namasudras.  The ostensible object of these meetings was to raise the social condition of the people, but it appears from the accounts published in the Press that the Anti-Partition agitation and the boycott of foreign goods were urged and the promise of social privilege was only made as a reward or return for promising to take the boycott vow.  This condition of affairs could not be permitted to continue indefinitely, and it became evident that sooner or later—­and the sooner the better—­the mischief must be stopped and the people of the province given the opportunity which they need and desire to settle down to their normal life and to co-operation with the Government for their material and moral progress.

NOTE 10

SACRIFICING “WHITE GOATS”

The term occurs, for instance, in one of the most violent fly-sheets issued only a few months ago from a clandestine press in India, under the heading Yagantar, killing no murder:—­