Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/957

 ABTBEQIATIONB 19 years he was engaged in constant passive resistance to the Government and constant efforts to raise and ennoble the in- ward life of the Indian community. But he was unlike other strikers or resisters in this : that mistly the resistor takes advantage of any dnmoulty of the Government in order to press his claim the harder. Gandhi, when the Government was an any dtmculty that he thought serious, always relaxed his resistance and offered his help. In 1899 came the Boer War. Gandhi im- mediately organised an lndian Red Cross Unit There was a popular movement for refusing it and treating it as sedmous. But it was needed. The soldiers wanted it. It served through the War, and was mentioned in despatches, and thanked publicly for its skilful work and courage under fire. In 1904 there was an outbreak of plague in Johannesburg and Gandhi had private hospital opened before the public authorities had begun to act. In 1906 there was i Nttive rebellion in Natal; Gandhi raised and personally led a corps of stretcher bearers, whose work seems to have proved particularly dangerous and painful Gandhi was thanked by the Givernor in Natal and shortly afterwards thrown into jail in Johannesburg. Lastly in 1913 when he was being repeatedly imprisoned among criminals of the lowest class, and his followers were in jail to the member of 2.500; in the very midst of the general strike of Indians in the Transvaal and Natal, there occurred the sudden and dangerous railway strike which endangered for the time the very existence of organised society in South Africa. From the ordinary agitatorhs point of view the game was in Gandhi’s hands. He had only to strike his hardest. Instead he gave or. der for his people to resume work till the Government should be safe againa I cannot say how often he was imprisoned, how often mobbed and assaulted, or what pains were taken to mortify and humiliate him in public. But by 1913 the Indian case had been taken up byL>rd Hardinge and the Government of India. An Imperial Commission reported in his favour on most of the points at issue and an Act was passed according to the Comm1ssion’s recommendations, entitled the Indian Relief Act. My sketch is very imperfect ; the story forms an extraordin- ary illustration of a contest which was won, or practically won, by a policy of doing no wrong, committing no violence, but simp- ly enduring all the punishments the other side could inflict until they become weary and ashamed of punishing. A battle of the unaided human soul against overwhelming material force, and it ends Dy the units of material force gradually deserting their own banners and coming round to the side of the soul ! Persons in power should be very careful how they deal with a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise or promotion, but is simply deter· mined to do what he believes to be right. He is a,danger0us,and.