Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/352

 262 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES

being adversely affected. Indeed some of them came to me the following morning and told me that they per- fectly understood my remarks, which had gone home. One of them, a keen debater, even subjected me to cross- examination and seemed to feel convinced by a further development of the argument such as I had advanced in the course of my speech. Indeed I have spoken now to thousands of students and others of my country- men throghout South Africa, England and India and by precisely the arguments that I used that evening I claim to have weaned many from their approval of anarchical methods.

Finally, I observe that Mr. S. S. Setiur, of Bombay, whc has written on the incident to Hindu in no friendly mood towards me and who, I think, in some respects totally and unfairly has endeavoured to tear me to piece* and who was an eye-witness to the proceedings gives a version different from Mrs. Besant's. He thinks that the general impression was not that I wasj encouraging the anarchists but I was playing the role of an apologist for the civilian bureaucrat. The whole of Mr. Setlur'a attack upon me shows that if he is right, I was certainly not guilty of any incitement to violence and that offence consisted in my reference to jewellery, etc.

In order that the fullest justice might be done both to Mrs. Besant and myself, I would make the following suggestion. She says that she does not propose to defend herself by quoting the sentence which drew the Princes away and that would be playing into the- enemies' hand. According to her previous statement my speech is already in the hands of detectives, so that so far as my safety is concerned, her forbearance is not going to be of the slightest use. Would it not there-

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