378 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES
before soul-force. Poets have sung about it and Seers have described their experiences. A thirty-year old Hercules behaves like a lamb before his eighty-year old father. This is an instance of love-force. Love is Atman : it is its attribute. If we have faith enough we can wield that force over the whole world. Religion having lost its hold on us, we are without an anchor to keep us firm amidst the storm of modern civilisation, and are therefore being tossed to and fro. Enough, how- ever, of this, for the present. I shall return to it at a later stage.
In spite of my views being as I have just described them, I do not hesitate to take part in the Swaraj move- ment, for India is being governed ;n accordance with the Western system and even the Government admit that the British Parliament presents the best type of that system. Without parliamentary government, we should be nowhere. Mrs. Besant is'only too true when she says that we shall soon be facing a hunger- strike, if we do not have Home Rule. I do not want to go into statistics. The evidence of my eyes is enough for me. Poverty in India is deepening day by day. No other result is possible. A country that ex- ports its raw produce and im forts it after it has under- gone manufacturing processes, a country that in spite of growing its own cotton, has to pay crores of rupees for its imported cloth, cannot be otherwise than poor. It can only be said of a poor country that its people are spend thrifts, because they ungrudgingly spend money in marriage and such other cermonies. It must be a terri- bly poor country that cannot afford to spend enough in carrying out improvements for stamping out epidemics like the plague. The poverty of a country must contin-
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