two, but he was so absorbing and exciting, and our interview was so successful that he urged me to stay, and so I stayed until the next day, and we weren't through the next day. We still weren’t through the next day—so I stayed a whole week. I saw him several hours each day. I walked with him in the morning and the evening—I spent a week with him, and it was then that my interest became quite serious and permanent. I saw him again in 1946, and the closer one gets to him, the bigger he grows, and now that I’m writing this biography, which is a full length story of the facts of his life, his works, and his writing—the closer I come to him now, the bigger he grows.
Burke: Mr. Fischer, I'm glad to hear that, and I noted in your book the one idea that stayed with me was this (possibly the implications of the book, "Gandhi and Stalin"): you had to choose, it seemed to me, and properly, a Hindu, one who is not of my faith, the Christian faith, who represented the absolute in truth, as we all believe them in life, in order to contrast that life with the life of Stalin who also represents certain absolutes in thinking. and that you had to bring those two in contrast, and to me as a Christian and a believer in the teachings of Christ, I couldn’t help remembering that E. Stanley Jones remarked that he was the best actor of Christian principles that he knew anywhere. Now I'd like to ask in this respect what is the central idea as in contra-distinction possibly from "Gandhi and Stalin”?
Fischer: Well, "Gandhi and Stalin" is a discussion of current international events. It deals with the present world situation: that is it deals with the present world situation and it contrasts Gandhi, who I think is the essential democrat. It contrasts Gandhi with Stalin, who I think is the absolute totalitarian, the dictator, and there are discussions in that book "Gandhi and Stalin" on the way the world is going, on how to prevent a war with Russia, on how to so strengthen democracy morally, economically and politically that we can defeat Stalin without a war, which is my aim and, I should say yours, and the aim of all decent people. Now, the biography that I’m doing is, as I said, the detailed story of Gandhi's life way back to 1869 when he was born, taking him through to London where he went as a student to study law. Then he came back to India, was a very bad lawyer: then he went on to South Africa and spent 20 years there. In those 20 years in South Africa, he became the Mahatma, the great soul, the great leader—outside of his country. Then he came back to India, acknowledged the leader, and he had, (1914 to 1948) when he was shot), 34 years of being the leader of In-
"Fear of God is as bad as fear of the Devil."
