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 316 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES.

means that they do not want to toil and remain straight in the methods of earning. Immigrants are not happier and have more material wants/*

Questioned about the Theosophical Society Mr. Gandhi said : " There is a good deal of good in the Theosophical Society, irrespective of individuals. It has stimulated ideas and thoughts."

THE SATYAGRHASHRAMA

��This Address was delivered in the Y.M. C.A. Audi- torium^ Madras, on the 16th February 1916, the Hon. Rev. G. Pittendrigh y of the Madras Christian College, presiding :

To many of the students who came here last year to converse with me, I said I was about to establish an institution Ashrama somewhere in India, and it is about that place that I am going to talk to you this morning, I feel and I have felt, during the whole of my public life, that what we need, what any nation needs, but we perhaps of all the nations of the world need just now is nothing else and nothing less than character-building. And this is the view propounded by that great patriot, Mr. Gokhale (cheers), As you know in many of his speeches, he used to say that we would get nothing, we would deserve nothing unless we had character to back what we wished for. Hence his founding of that great body, the Servants of India Society. And as you know, in the prospectus that has been issued in connection with the Society, Mr. Gokhale has deliberately stated that it was necessary to spiritualise the political life of the country. You* know also that he used to say so often that our aver-

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