Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/810

 720 NON-CO-OPERATION

If both the parties reject me, I should keep my peace just as ever and most decidedly carry on my propaganda of non-violence. I should then not be restricted as I am now, Then I should be enforcing my creed as to-day I seem to be enforcing only the policy.

A DIVINE WARNING *

If a person commits a mistake for the first time he is excused ; only the generous public forgives in him the repetition of the error. But if he is responsible even on a third occasion for the same mistake, the public leaves him severely alone. If a man is deceived once or twice, he is thought a simpleton but if is ever being deceived, he is rightly condemned a fool. Mass Civil Disobedience at Bardoli has passed off as a dream. God thought it fit in His supreme wisdom to dispose of my plans just at the moment when I thought that Mass Civil Disobedience could be commenced. There is nothing strange in this. In the Ramayana we see that Rama was banished to the wild forests when all was ready for his coronation. That has a lesson for us. We understand the true meaning of Swaraj only when we readily recognise the unreality of things which we had all along thought to be too true, It seems to me that the attempt made to win Swaraj is Swaraj itself. The faster we run towards it, the longer seems to be the distance to be traversed. The same is the case with all ideals. When one goes in pursuit of truth, he finds that it is always eluding, his grasp because he sees now and then that what he once thought too true is no more than a fond illusion.- The righteous man is always humble. He recognises From the Navjivan, January

�� �