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LETTERS FROM ABROAD

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our social life, which for centuries have been hampering us in our self-realisation. We need co-operation in the sacrifice of love, more than anything else, to prove to our country that she is ours; and then we shall have the moral right to say to others, “We have nothing to do with you in our own affairs.” And for this, all the moral fervour which the life of Mahatma Gandhi represents, and which he, of all other men in the world, can call up, is needed.

That such a precious treasure of power should be put into the mean and frail vessel of our politics, allowing it to sail across endless waves of angry recrimination, is terribly unfortunate for our country, where our mission is to revive the dead with the fire of the soul. The external waste of our resources of life is great owing to external circumstances ; but that the waste of our spiritual resources should also be allowed to happen on adventures that are wrong from the point of view of moral truth is heart-breaking. It is criminal to turn moral force into a blind force.

Our time to go to Holland is drawing near. I have numerous invitations from over there to lecture.- I am not yet fully ready. Just now I am busy writing. My subject is the Meeting of the East and West. I hope it will be finished before I leave Paris.

September 12, 1920. I had invitations from Germany and I decided to go, But travelling from one country to another has

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