M. K. Gandhi
being adversely affected. Indeed some of them came to me the following morning and told me that they perfectly understood my remarks which had gone home. One of them a keen debater even subjected to cross-examination and seemed to feel convinced by a further development of the argument such as I had advanced in the course of my speech. Indeed I have spoken now to thousands of students and others of my countrymen throughout South Africa, England and India; and by precisely the arguments that I used that evening I claimed to have weaned many from their approval of anarchical methods.
Finally, I observe that Mr. S. S. Setlur of Bombay, who has written on the incident to the Hindu in no friendly mood towards me, and who I think in some respects totally unfairly has endeavoured to tear me to pieces, and who was an eye witness to the proceedings, gives a version different from Mrs. Besant's. He thinks that the general impression was not that I was encouraging the anarchists but that I was playing the role of an apologist for the Civilian bureaucrat. The whole of Mr. Setlur's attack upon me shows that if he is right I was certainly not guilty
84
