Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/977

 ABPKECIATIONS ¤ Mr. Gandhi in which he assured the latter that all his sympathies were with him, and he would do what he could to help the cause. SENSE OF PUBLIC DUTY Mr. Gandhfs sense of public duty is profound. Just before his first arrest, he received the news that his youngest child was desperately ill, and he was asked to go to Phoenix at once it he wished to save him. He refused, saying that his greater duty lay in Johannesburg, where the community had need of him, and his child’s life or death must be left in God’s hands. Similarly, during his second imprisonment, he received telegraphic news of Mrs. Gandhi’s serious illness, and was urged even by the visiting Magistrate to pay his fine and so become free to nurse her. Again he refused, declining to be bound by private ties when such action would probably result in weakening the community of which he was the stay and the inspiration. And although after his release and his subsequent rearrest, he could have secured indefinite post- ponement of the hearing of his case, so that he might nurse Mrs. Gandhi back to health after a serious operation, as soon as he heard that the Transvaal Government were anxious to see him back again in gaol, he hastened to the 'Dransvaal from Natal, leaving Mrs. Gandhi, for aught he knew to the contrary, on her deathbed. I U I Yet he is a devoted husband and father, and is intensely attached to children. Indeed, he is never happier than when with little children. His sense of duty was never more strikingly demonstrated than when he set out, on that fateful morning in February, 1908, to fulfil his pledge to the Transvaal Government that he would undertake voluntary registration. He knew that owing to a misunderstanding, which even his lucidity and per- suaenveness could not overcome, a small section of the community had been renderel bitterly hostile to him, and that his future assailant was at that moment in his omce and waiting an oppor- tunity for a physical attack, which could only be eHected in the open street. Mr. Gandhi had no thought of seeking police protec- tion against a compatriot, but walked straight to the Registration Odice, and on the way the expected attack was delivered. Bleeding from open wounds and in the greatest pain, he was taken to the Rev J.J. Doke’s house, but before he would permit the doctor to stitch up his face, which was badly gashed, he insisted upon completing the form of application for voluntary registration in the presence of the Resistrar of Asiatics, giving full details as to identity, like the least of his followers-Mr. Gandhi has always steadfastly refused, either within or outside of prison. to avail himself of any privilege that is not accorded to the humblest of his countrymen-and then permitted his wounds to be sewn up without availing himself of an aneesthetic. That same day, though tossing_fe=·erishly upon a sick-bed, he issued the following manifesto