Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/794

 70 i NON-CO-OPERATION

notice be given up when it proves unsucceseful or in- effective. But simple morality demands that whilst a particular policy is pursued, it must be pursued with all one's heart. It is simple policy to march along a cer- tain route, but the soldier who marches with an unsteady step along that route is liable to be summarily dismissed. I become therefore incredulous when people with fright at the very mention of the word non-vio- lence, If they do not believe in the expedient of non- violence, they must denounce it but not claim to believe in the expedient when their heart resists it. How disastrous it would be if, not believing in violence even as an expsdient, I joined, say, a violence party and approached a gun with a perturbed heart ! The reader will believe me when I say that I have the capacity for killing a fly. But I do not believe in killing even flies. Now suppose I joined an expedition for fly-killing as an expedient. Will I not be expected before being per- mitted to join the expedition to use all the available engines of destruction whilst I remained in the army of fly killers? If those who are in the Congress and the Khilafat Committees will perceive this simple truth, we shall certainly either finish the struggle this year to a successful end or be so sick of non- violence as to give up the pretention and set about devising some other programme.

I hold that Swami Shraddhanandji has been needlessly criticised for the proposition he intended to move. His argument is absolutely honest. He thinks that we as a body do not really believe in non-violence even as a policy. Therefore we shall never fulfil the programme of non-violence. Therefore, he says, let us^

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