Page:Report on the Memorial Meeting for Mahatma Gandhi.djvu/3

 simplicity of his sincerity. He looked into every heart and he had a most extraordinary sense of discovery, deepmost feelings, deepmost urges, deepmost aspirations, and every time he spoke, he spoke the thoughts of everyone.

“To him, the humblest, the suffering, the sick, were the highest priorities in life, and if I may say so, having had the great privilege of associating with him for more than 30 years, I can assure you that I never found one occasion where he asked of others what he himself was not prepared to do himself.

“My friend, Mr. Ayyangar, has said it before, but I can assure you that every word that fell from his lips was the nectar of his life. He represented, in my humble judgment, the revivified spirit of the East, and as has been correctly said, he was the incarnation of the deepest and noblest urges of mankind. He brought to a world which was full of the pride of material power, the challenge of spiritual humility; and to top a world which was degenerating into cynicism and skepticism, he brought the presence of a living faith,, and to a world which hungered, or seemed to be hungering, after material greatness by any means, he brought the message of renunciation and service to mankind.

“His great magic lay in three words; Truth, Love, and Peace. When he said ‘truth’, he identified it with divinity. He once said, ‘One step, if taken with the strictest observance of truth, will lead you to salvation’, because he believed that no good end could ever be achieved by opposite means.

“For him, purity of means was essential. In a most practical way, he felt that only one step at a time was enough for him, because all other steps would follow exactly in the same direction.

“It was during the first great war that he returned to seek out wrongs against which he might experiment with truth, against which he might use his panacea and his remedy, namely, resistance to wrong, non-violence, peaceful resistance to wrong. And he found such wrongs in India. It was a time when