Page:Report on the Memorial Meeting for Mahatma Gandhi.djvu/31

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

-31-

application to every human situation. Gandhi was right. That for which he lived and for which he died stands today more inexorably true than ever. Oh India, dare to follow Gandhi, that there may be left one voice in the world to speak against the violence of foolish men and foolish nations!

ALBERT EINSTEIN:

“Everyone concerned in a better future of mankind must be deeply moved by the tragic death of Gandhi. He died as a victim of his own principle, the principle of non-violence. He died because in a time of disorder and general irritation in his country, he refused armed protection for himself. It was his unshakable belief that the use of force is an evil in itself and that therefore it must be avoided by those who are striving for supreme justice.

“To this belief he had devoted his whole life and with this belief in his heart and mind he had led a great nation on to its liberation. He has demonstrated that a powerful human following can be assembled not only through the cunning game of the usual political manoeuvers and trickeries but through the cogent example of a morally superior conduct of life.

“The admiration for Gandhi in all countries of the world rests on the recognition — mostly a subconscious recognition, of the fact that in our time of utter moral decadence, he was the only statesman to stand for a higher level of human relationship in the political sphere. This level, we must with all our forces attempt to reach. We must learn the difficult lesson that an endurable future of humanity will be possible only if also in international relations, decisions are based on law and justice and not on self-righteous power as they have been up to now.”

LOUIS FISCHER, Author; Lecturer; Vice President, India League of America:

“To many persons in the western world Gandhi was a queer figure in a loin cloth who drank goats’ milk. The West resisted Gandhi; if one sug-