Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/842

 752 ON THE EVE OI ARREST

charge of promoting disaffection towards the Govern- ment established by law in India.

My public life began in 1893 in South Africa in troubled weather. My first contact with British autho- rity in that country was not of a happy character. I discovered that as a man and an Indian I had no rights. On the contrary I discovered that I had no rights as a man because I was an Indian.

But I was not baffled. I thought that this treat- ment of Indians was an excrescence upon a system that was intrinsically and mainly good. I gave the Govern ment my voluntary and hearty co-operation, criticising it fully where I felt it was faulty but never wishing *its destruction.

Consequently when the existence of the Empire was threatened in 1899 by the Boer challenge, I offered my services to it, raised a volunteer ambulance corps and served at several actions that took place for the relief of Ladysmith. Similarly in 1906 at the time of the Zulu revolt I raised a stretcher-bearer party and served till the end of the < rebellion'. On both these occasions I received medals and was even mentioned in despatches. For my work in South Africa I was given by Lord Hardinge a Kaiser-i-Hind Gold Medal. When the war broke out in 1914 between England and Germany I raised a volunteer ambulance corps in London consist- ing of the then resident Indians in London, chiefly students. Its wfcrkwas acknowledged by the authorities to be valuable. Lastly in India when a special appeal was made at the War Conference in Delhi in 1917 by Lord Chelmsford for recruits, I struggled at the cost of my health to raise a corps in Kheda and the response was being made when the hostilities ceased and

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