Page:Report on the Memorial Meeting for Mahatma Gandhi.djvu/17

 in support of the principle that the spiritual stands higher and is more important than the merely physical.

“The world will remember him most perhaps for the fight that he fought for India’s freedom, hut even there, that which was most to he admired was his principle and his method whereby not only did he make so large and overwhelming a contribution toward the beginning of India’s freedom, but he also won the esteem and the respect and the affection of Great Britain itself, to which attention has been drawn this afternoon by the representative of Great Britain.

“He had latterly devoted himself to securing communal harmony throughout the sub-continent of India. Only a short while before the tragedy that we all mourn this afternoon overtook him, he had given expression to the thought that life was not worth while if oommunal peace and harmony could not be restored throughout India, and there is no doubt that he laid down his life in the pursuit of that ideal. Prom that point of view, his death is an even more poignant tragedy to the Moslem than it is to the non-Moslem, and it is a challenge to India and Indian leadership that we all hope and trust that they will accept and completely vindicate him.”

FRANK KINGDON. Author and Columnist:

“My mind has been running along much the same lines as Dr. Lin Yutang’s. We are celebrating today the fact that the greatest thing in the world is a great man, but what is a great man? I speak for those who are humble, very humble, in the presence of Gandhi. A great man is a man who dares to be himself against the world, one man against the world; and the greatness of many prophets is the fact that eventually the world goes to them and acknowledges them.

“But in what secret, in what mystery, did this greatness of Gandhi lie? Where did it come from? What was the essence of this man who in