Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/201

Benares Incident trust for the nation before we could realise our ideals, and I cited the action of the Japanese noblemen who considered it a glorious privilege even though there was no necessity for them, to dispossess themselves of the treasures and lands which were handed to them from generation to generation. I then asked the audience to consider the humiliating spectacle of the Viceroy's person having to be protected from ourselves when he was our honoured guest. And I was endeavouring to show that the blame for these precautions was also on ourselves in that they were rendered necessary because of the introduction of organised assassination in India. Thus I was endeavouring to show on the one hand how the students could usefully occupy themselves in assisting to rid the society of its proved defects, on the other, to wean themselves even in thought from methods of violence.

I claim that with twenty years' experience of public life in the course of which I had to address on scores of occasions turbulant audiences. I have some experience of feeling the pulse of my audience. I was following closely how the speech was being taken and I certainly did not notice that the student world was 83