Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/819

 exemplary seventy. If they have glorified armed rebellions and resorted to them on due occasions, why are many of them up in arms against the very idea of ci vil resistance ? I can understand their saying that the attainment of a non-violent atmosphere is a virtual impossibility in India. I do not believe it, but I can appreciate such an objection. What however is beyond my comprehension is the dead set made against the very theory of civil disobedience as if it was something immoral. To expect me to give up the preaching of civil disobedience is to ask me to give up preaching peace which would be tantamount to asking me to commit suicide.

I have now been told that the Government are compassing the destruction of the three weeklies which I am conducting, viz., Yointg India, Gujarati Nava Jtvan and Hindi Nava Jivan. I hope that the rumour has no foundation. I claim that these three journals are insistently preaching nothing but peace and goodwill. Extraordinary care is taken to give nothing but truth as I find it, to the reader?. Every inadvertent inacuracy is admitted and corrected. The circulation of all the weeklies is daily growing. The conductors are voluntary workers, in some cases taking no salary whatsoever and in the others receiving mere mamte- nence money. Profits are ail returned to the subscribers in some shape or other, or are utilised for some construc- tive public activity or other. I cannot say that I shall not feel a pang if these journals cease to exist. But it is the easiest thing for the Government to put them out. The publishers and pi inters are all friends and co-workers. My compact with them is that the moment Government asks for security, that moment the newspapers must stop.

�� �