Some time in 1919 I asked Edwin Montagu, who was
then Secre- tary for India, whether there was any outstanding Indian capable of leading his country in its march towards independence. " Yes," he said at once, " Srinivasa Sastri." I had heard little or nothing of Sastri at that time, but I met him two years later, and then and afterwards got to know him well enough to realise that with his death last week India lost a great and farsighted patriot. Sastri was a man of a beautiful spirit. As the successor of G. K. Gokhale in the presidency of the Servants of India, he accepted relative poverty where his brilliant gifts of oratory could have won him affluence as an advocate, and he accepted thankless missions like representation of India, first in South Africa and then in Malaya, as a conscientious fulfilment of duty—as, in short, a servant of India. But India had, and has, little place for Liberals, and it was Sastri's destiny to see many of his highest hopes for his country frustrated.
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