Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/708

 618 NON-CO-OPERATION

with the exertions of men of all parties, restored peace in the city. The following is the text of Mr. Gandhi's first statement :]

The reputation of Bombay, the hope of my dreams, was being stained yesterday even whilst in my simpli- city I was congratulating her citizens upon their non- violence in the face of grave provocation. For the volunteers with their Captain were arrested during the previous night for pasting posters under authority on private property. The posters advised the people to boycott the welcome to the Prince. They were destroyed. The Swaraj Sabha's office was mysteriously entered into and the unused posters, so far as I am aware not declared unlawful, were also removed. The Prince's visit itself and the circumstances attending the ceremonials arranged and the public money wasted for the manufacture of a welcome to His Eoyal Highness constituted an unbearable provocation. And yet Bom- bay has remained self-restrained. This, I thought, was a matter for congratulation. The burning of the pile of foreign cloth was an eloquent counter demonstration to the interested official demonstration. Little did I know that, at the very time that the Prince was passing through the decorated route and the pile of foreign cloth was burning in another part of the city, the mill- hands were in criminal disobedience of the wishes of their masters emptying them, first one and then the others, by force, that a swelling mob was molesting the peaceful passengers in the tramcars and holding up the tram traffic, that it was forcibly depriving those that were wearing foreign caps of their head-dresses and pelting inoffensive Europeans. As the day went up, the fury of the mob, now intoxicated with its^ initial

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