Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/967

 APPBEOIATIONS 29 mad-—all who know him agree that he is good. In this topsy-turvy world it may well be that goodness and honesty lie strangely near to madness. In an age ol lalse values what chance has Right?‘ And with Truth on the scanold and Wrong on the throne, it is too much to expect lair estimates ot men and movements. Still to those who have met and talked with Gandhi, who have seen him in a small business meeting or holding vast multitudes under same subtler spell than mere oratory produces ; we have sat alone with him in the quiet, or seen the eager throng pressing around to touch the hem oi his garment or to kneel and touch his leet—to those he seems to possess a power granted to (ew. Call it madness if you like, there is a strength in that trail body which defies all the combinations of political expediency however highly-organised they may be. Gandhi has probably a larger following than any living man. And it is not the " masses " only who accept his leadership. He is " Mahatmaji " to intellectuals, even highly- placed oiiicers ot the Government exist who recognise in him the compelling authority of real character. The West has produced a Lenin, strong, masterlul, relentless alike in logic and method. The East had given birth to a Gandhi, equallv ntror g, masterful and relentless. But whilst the tormer pins his iaith on force, the latter relies on non-resistance One trusts the sword, the other trusts the spirit. In an extraordimrv manner these men appear to incarnate those fundamentally opposing forces that--behind all the surface struggles ol our day —-are fighting _£or supremacy. {Farewell letter to the Press, Jan., 1921). "n. P ’· ‘ G.’s,' genius lies in making lost causes live. To his disarm- ing sweetness of a saint he adds all the arts of the advocate. In South Africa he matched even General Smuts. They sparred for years over Indian claims without quarrelling ......... The key to Gandhi and Gandhism is wrapped in his self. revealing sentence: ‘ Most religious men I have met are politicians in disguise: I, however, who wear the guise cl politician, am al heart a religious man.' (The Daily_MaiZi. Tum Newton sun mum urnnumnm Mr. Gandhi is a figure of such significance that even the remcteness, mental and physical, ci India cannot obscure him One realizes that he is in India what Tolstoy was in Russia, s personality which incarnates the characteristic spiritual vision o his race.