The preceding chapters of this book state living facts of India today. They can easily be denied, but they cannot be disproved or shaken. That there are other facts, other columns of statistics, other angles left untouched by this research I do not contest.
Neither do I wish to imply that some of the most unflattering things here affirmed of India are without counterpart in character and tendency, if not in degree, in certain sections of our western life. But India has carried the principles of egocentricity and of a materialism called spirituality to a further and wider conclusion than has the West. The results, in the individual, the family and the race, are only the more noteworthy. For they cast a spotlight toward the end of that road.
Some few Indians will take plain speech as it is meant--as the faithful wounds of a friend; far more will be hurt at heart. Would that this task of truth-telling might prove so radically performed that all shock of resentment were finally absorbed in it, and that there need be no further waste of life and time for lack of a challenge and a declaration!