Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/191

 FAREWELL SPEECH AT JOHANNESBUBG 101 respected in the administration ; that after they had nursed these things, if they cultivated European public opinion, making it possible for the Government of the day to grant a restoration of the other rights of which they had been deprived, he did not think that there need be any fear about the future. He thought that, with mutual co·operation, with mutual good·will, with due response on the part of either party, the Indian community need ever he a source of weakness to that Government or to any Government. On the contrary he had full faith in his countrymen that, if they were well-treated, they would always rise to the occasion and help the Government of the day. If they had insisted on their rights on many an occasion, he hoped that the Euro- pean friends who were there would remember that they had also discharged the responsibilities which had faced them. And now it was time for him to close his remarks and say a few words of farewell only. He did not know how he could express those words, The best years of his life had been passed in South Africa. India, as his distinguished oountryman, Mr. Gokbale, had reminded him, had become a strange land to him. South Africa, he knew, but not India. He did not know what impelled him to go to India, but he did know that the parting from them all, the parting from the European friends who had helped him through thick and thin, was a heavy blow, and one he was least able to bear, yet he knew he had to part from them, He could only say farewell and ask them to give him their blessing, to pray for them that their heads might not be turned by the praise they had received, that they might still know how to do their duty to the best of their ability, that they might still