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 speak in Marathi. I too am desirous of hearing your Marathi speech in common with the Konkani friends.’ ‘You will always have your own way,’ said Gokhale. ‘And there is no help for me as I am here at your mercy.’ So saying Gokhale fell in with my suggestion, and from this point onwards right up to Zanzibar he always spoke in Marathi at similar meetings and I served as translator by special appointment to him. I do not know if I was able to bring Gokhale round to the view, that rather than speak in perfect idiomatic English it was more desirable to speak as far as may be in the mother tongue and even in broken ungrammatical Hindi. But I do know that if only to please me he spoke in Marathi in South Africa. After he had made some speeches, I could see that he too was gratified by the results of the experiment. Gokhale by his conduct on many occasions in South Africa showed that there was merit in pleasing one’s followers in cases not involving a question of principle.