Page:Holmes - World Significance of Mahatma Gandhi.djvu/10

 that have fallen to the lot of man” is his testimony. And all because sacrifice has been deliberately chosen as the law of his life and the sword of his fray! It is this which the Indians see when they look upon the scarred and wasted frame of their leader. It is this which they remember when they think of him in some far distant part of the countryside. Imagine the stupidity of a government which hopes to break such a man, or sever him from the worship of his followers, by fresh arrest and imprisonment!

Greater than all that we have yet mentioned in the character of Gandhi, is the love with which his entire being is saturated. No man of our time, few men of any time, have risen to such heights of tenderness and compassion for mankind as this Mahatma of India. Anger, malice, resentment, hatred, have altogether disappeared from his heart, and nothing is now left but the pure essence of love for his fellow-men. And his fellow-men include all men who live upon the earth! Like God himself, Gandhi is “no respector of persons.” He holds white men and black side by side within the embrace of his affection. He ends the long feud between Moslem and Hindu, and makes them brethren one of another. While recognizing certain social utilities of the caste system, he wipes out the barriers of separation in his personal relations, and seats Brahmin and “untouchable” at a common board and leads them in breaking bread together. Even the English are not excluded from his goodwill, for “love your enemies” is as stern a command for Gandhi as for Jesus. “Tell the British people that I love them, and want their association” is the word that he has spoken a thousand times. Think of his conduct at the time of the attempt upon his life in South Africa! Asked in the hospital, where he was hovering on the verge of death, to take action against his assassin, he refused. Why should I seek to injure or punish him, he said. The man did what he thought was right, risked his life for what he thought was right! I believe in that man; I shall love him, and win him to myself. And he did! In a few months the assassin was conquered by the might of Gandhi’s forgiveness, and became straightway one of his most ardent followers.—Equally beautiful is Gandhi’s attitude toward General Dyer, the officer responsible for the massacre at Amritsar. I cannot co-operate with him, says Gandhi; I cannot recognize his authority, or obey his orders. But if he fell sick of a fever, I would hasten to his bedside and nurse him back to health.—There is no bitterness in this man, no last