Part 76 (2/2)
Just as a scientist onders out of various applications of the laws of nature, a man who applies the laws of love with scientific precision can work greater wonders Nonviolence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than forces of nature like, for instance, electricity The law of love is a far greater science than anyhistory, one may reasonably state that the problems of mankind have not been solved by the use of brute force World War I produced a world-chilling sobll of war karma that swelled into World War II Only the warmth of brotherhood can melt the present colossal sobll of war karrow into World War III This unholy trinity will banish forever the possibility of World War IV by a finality of atoic instead of hu disputes will restore the earth to a jungle If brothers not in life, then brothers in violent death
War and crime never pay The billions of dollars that went up in the sness would have been sufficient to have made a neorld, one almost free from disease and completely free from poverty Not an earth of fear, chaos, famine, pestilence, the DANSE MACABRE, but one broad land of peace, of prosperity, and of widening knowledge
The nonviolent voice of Gandhi appeals to hest conscience
Let nations ally theer with death, but with life; not with destruction, but with construction; not with the Annihilator, but with the Creator
”One should forgive, under any injury,” says the MAHABHARATA ”It hath been said that the continuation of species is due to iveness the universe is held together Forgiveness is the iveness is quiet of entleness are the qualities of the self-possessed They represent eternal virtue”
Nonviolence is the natural outgrowth of the law of forgiveness and love ”If loss of life becohteous battle,”
Gandhi proclaims, ”one should be prepared, like Jesus, to shed his own, not others', blood Eventually there will be less blood spilt in the world”
Epics shall someday be written on the Indian SATYAGRAHIS ithstood hate with love, violence with nonviolence, who allowed thehtered rather than retaliate The result on certain historic occasions was that the aruns and fled, shaht of men who valued the life of another above their own
”I would wait, if need be for ages,” Gandhi says, ”rather than seek the freedoh bloody : ”All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” {FN44-16} Gandhi has written:
I call myself a nationalist, but my nationalism is as broad as the universe It includes in its sweep all the nations of the earth
{FN44-17} My nationalis of the whole world
I do not want my India to rise on the ashes of other nations I do not want India to exploit a single hu in order that she can infect the other nations also with her strength Not so with a single nation in Europe today; they do not give strength to the others
President Wilson mentioned his beautiful fourteen points, but said: ”After all, if this endeavor of ours to arrive at peace fails, we have our armaments to fall back upon” I want to reverse that position, and I say: ”Our armaments have failed already Let us now be in search of so new; let us try the force of love and God which is truth” When we have got that, we shall want nothing else
By the Mahat of thousands of true SATYAGRAHIS (those who have taken the eleven rigorous vows mentioned in the first part of this chapter), who in turn spread thethe Indian masses to understand the spiritual and eventuallyhis people with nonviolent weapons--non-cooperation with injustice, the willingness to endure indignities, prison, death itself rather than resort to arh countless exa SATYAGRAHIS, Gandhi has dramatically portrayed the practical nature of nonviolence, its solemn power to settle disputes without war
Gandhi has already won through nonviolent reater number of political concessions for his land than have ever been won by any leader of any country except through bullets Nonviolent s and evils have been strikingly applied not only in the political arena but in the delicate and complicated field of Indian social refor feuds between Hindus and Mohammedans; hundreds of thousands of Moslems look to the Mahatma as their leader
The untouchables have found in him their fearless and triumphant champion ”If there be a rebirth in store for me,” Gandhi wrote, ”I wish to be born a pariah in the midst of pariahs, because thereby I would be able to render thereat soul,” but it was illiterate entle prophet is honored in his own land The lowly peasant has been able to rise to Gandhi's high challenge The Mahatma wholeheartedly believes in the inherent nobility of man The inevitable failures have never disillusioned him ”Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times,”
he writes, ”the SATYAGRAHI is ready to trust him the twenty-first time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of the creed” {FN44-18}
”Mahatmaji, you are an exceptional man You must not expect the world to act as you do” A critic once made this observation
”It is curious hoe delude ourselves, fancying that the body can be improved, but that it is impossible to evoke the hidden powers of the soul,” Gandhi replied ”I a to show that if I have any of those powers, I a extraordinary about me nor have I now I am a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow h humility to confess my errors and to retrace my steps I own that I have an ioodness, and an unconsumable passion for truth and love But is that not what every person has latent in hiress, we must not repeat history but make new history We must add to the inheritance left by our ancestors If we may make new discoveries and inventions in the phenomenal world, must we declare our bankruptcy in the spiritual domain? Is it impossible to multiply the exceptions so as to make them the rule?
Must man always be brute first and man after, if at all?” {FN44-19}
Americans may well remember with pride the successful nonviolent experi his 17th century colony in Pennsylvania There were ”no forts, no soldiers, no e frontier wars and the butcheries that went on between the new settlers and the Red Indians, the Quakers of Pennsylvania alone remained unmolested ”Others were slain; others were massacred; but they were safe Not a Quaker woman suffered assault; not a Quaker child was slain, not a Quaker man was tortured”
When the Quakers were finally forced to give up the government of the state, ”war broke out, and some Pennsylvanians were killed But only three Quakers were killed, three who had so far fallen from their faith as to carry weapons of defence”
”Resort to force in the Great War (I) failed to bring tranquillity,”
Franklin D Roosevelt has pointed out ”Victory and defeat were alike sterile That lesson the world should have learned”