The radiant happiness with which Mr. Gandhi watched the enthusiasm
of the Congress was a strange change from his dejection only a few days before, when he heard of the Hindu-Moslem outbreak at Cawnpore with its horrible story of massacre, burning, and destruction. The special correspondent of the Times said that he then found Mr. Gandhi more depressed than he had ever seen him. The correspondent asked him whether he would accept British arbitration on the persistent racial feud, and he replied : " I should feel the deepest humiliation if that were necessary. I should have no heart left to press national claims. The logical corollary of accepting Government arbitration would be national degradation." Referring to the approaching vote by Congress on the Delhi Pact, he said that he did not care to prophesy what would happen, but he admitted that he expected serious opposition. Such acute changes in the political temperature suggest the desirability of judging progress in India by the mean temperature of a period and not by the peaks and troughs.
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