years passed and Gandhi grew in greatness, power and beauty, I came to feel that even mankind through the centuries gone by had only a few great names that could be matched with his.
How clearly do I remember the first time I saw Gandhi, in 1931, at Folkestone, on a cold, foggy and rainy day, when I waited with a few others on the pier to greet him, when, crossing the English Channel, he landed upon English shores to take his seat at the famous Round Table Conference of that day. I found myself talking with an English policeman, who suddenly pointed up the coast to the chalky cliffs of the channel, and said: “Do you know, just ’round those cliffs, is the place where Julius Caesar came when he invaded Britain.” Then, after a moment’s silence, he turned in the other direction, and said: “Only a few miles down the coast there, beyond that fog-bank, is the place where William the Conqueror landed just before the battle of Hastings.” Just at that moment, or so it seemed, the prow of the Mahatma’s ship came poking through the fog. And for once in my life I had an inspiration. I said within myself, “Here comes the third and greatest conqueror of Britain.” Little did I realize at that time that it would take only sixteen years for Britain to retire from India, and for Mahatma Gandhi thus to stand the conqueror of the greatest empire the world had seen since the decline and fall of Rome. He was a curious looking conqueror! I can see him now as he came from the ship and went pattering up the wet and foggy pier to the train that was waiting to take him to London. Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror had been clad in mail, but Gandhi wore only his loin cloth, and a small kaddar shawl drawn closely around his shoulders. Caesar and William had carried unsheathed swords to slay their enemies, but Gandhi only carried a grotesque umbrella to protect him from the rain. Caesar and William had been followed by armed legions of trained soldiery to wreak havoc on the land, to lay waste the fair island of Britain, but Gandhi was surrounded only by a little company of men and women, his disciples who were accompanying him to London.
What a strange, and I say again, grotesque panorama it was! But I saw Gandhi on that happy and ever memorable day, as I did not really know at that time, the conqueror not only of the British Empire, but also of the world. Think of what happened yesterday in Delhi! I can see it, for I have looked upon that city, and seen the place of this immortal and indescribable spectacle. A procession miles long, made up of men and women of every religion, race, nationality and creed. More than a million of them gathered upon the banks of the Jumna River, to see Gandhi’s body burned in blazing light and lifted up to heaven. And these people, even though they were more than a million in number, merely a token of those who spiritually were gathered in that procession of mourning and sorrow. For all India, from north to south and east to west, was marching yesterday in that great procession. And not only all India but all the world, for the world was standing still and silent, in reverence of this one man, as his frail body was burned, and his mighty soul liberated into eternity. I say to you, and I say it advisedly, measuring my words, that the greatest statesman who ever lived, and the mightiest soldier, never received such a tribute as this, and I venture to prophesy never will. Gandhi had captured the heart of mankind. There wasn’t any man anywhere who did not love—him such is the power of the spirit. And Gandhi had conquered as well not only the
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