Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/409

 I would like to follow. There was an incident I noticed yesterday. It was a trifling Incident, but I think these trifling incidents are^ like straws which show which way the wind is blowing. The incident was this : I was talking to a friend who wanted to talk to me aside, and we were engaged in a private conver- sation, A third friend dropped in, and he politely asked whether he was intruding. The friend to whom I was talking said : "Oh, no, there is nothing private here." I felt taken aback a little, because, as I was taken aside, I knew that so far as this friend was concerned, the conversation was private. But he immediately, out of politeness, I would call it overpoliteness, said, there was no private conversation and that he (the third friend) could join. I suggest to you that this is a departure from my definition of Truth. I think that the friend should have, in the gentlest manner possible, but still openly and frankly, said : " Yes, just now, as you properly say, you would be intruding/' without giving the slightest offence to the person if he was himself a gentleman and we are bound to consider every body to be a gentleman unless he proves to be otherwise. But I may be told that the incident, after all, proves the genti- lity of the nation. I think that it is over-proving the -case. If we continue to say these things out of polite- ness, we really become a nation of hypocrites. I recall a conversation I had with an English friend. He was comparatively a stranger. He is a Principal of a College and has been in India for several years. He was comparing notes with me, and he asked me whether I would admit that we, unlike most Englishmen, would not dare to say "No" when it was ^*No" that we meant. A.nd I must confess I immediately

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