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WE have said that recent debate in the House of Commons has created despair among progressives, and made the reactionaries jubilant. It remains only to add that both the despair and jubilation are premature as well as shortsighted. No single debate in the House of Commons or any other body, and for that matter no number of such debates, can alter the nature of things, the fundamental conditions that govern the destinies of a nation or determine its place in the progressive self-fulfilment of humanity. If a temporary triumph of the forces of reaction could have availed the party of vested interests, then the world would still have been in its infancy, whether politically or socially. Every student of history knows that such triumphs fill more than half the pages of the history of every known country that has successfully accomplished its transition from absolutism to democracy. There is a familiar saying which tells us that Providence is always on the side of big battalions. Whether that be so or not, it is undeniable that Providence does not, as a rule, favour the party of self-government until its strength has been tested, until the time and the conditions are ripe for a successful change from the old order. Till then there are ups and downs, attempted short-cuts to liberty followed by setbacks. The point to be borne in mind both by progressives and by reactionaries is that these setbacks are never permanent, that after each setback there is a renewed attempt more vigorous than the preceding one, that with every such attempt one more nail is driven into the corpus of the existing order of things, whose final defeat and transformation are determined by the same law which determined so many of its earlier successes.

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PROGRESSIVES AND REACTIONARIES - The Tribune India