To-night we start for Holland. We have spent a very happy time in this house and have made friends with very remarkable persons. The whole big house with its beautiful garden and river bank have been absolutely ours. Some corners of its rooms, some window seats, some padded chairs have yielded their heart to me, and they already look sad and disconsolate at the idea of my departure.
I find our countrymen are furiously excited about Non-co-operation. It will grow into something like our Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Such an emotional outbreak should have been taken advantage of in starting independent organisations all over India for serving our country. Let Mahatma Gandhi be a true leader in this; let him send his call for positive service, ask for homage in sacrifice, which has its end in love and creation. I shall be willing to sit at his feet and do his bidding, if he commands me to co-operate with my countrymen in service of love. I refuse to waste my manhood in lighting the fire of anger and spreading it from house to house.
It is not that I do not feel anger in my heart for injustice and insult heaped upon my motherland. But this anger of mine should be turned into the fire of love for lighting the lamp of worship to be dedicated through my country to my God. It would be an insult to humanity, if I use the sacred energy of my moral indignation for the purpose of spreading a blind passion all over my country. It would be like using the fire from the altar of Jajna for the purpose of incendiarism.
Please ask Suren to translate into English the series of my papers which I wrote during the great political excitement over the partition of Bengal. They will be useful in the present situation.
Dinner is announced—the time is approaching for our departure—so I may say ‘God be with you, and take my leave.’