Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas [antikvár]

PREFACE an opportunity has at last been given me to complete one out of two volumes dealing with the life and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. The second, which will include selected passages from his autobiography, is in preparation. This book is intended to explain, with documentary evidence, the main principles and ideas for which Mahatma Gandhi has stood in the course of his eventful career. On account of the mass of material it has been necessary to make a limited selection from the speeches and writings which he himself has addressed to the public. In the choice of such passages I have carefully avoided consulting beforehand the opinions of other writers about him, because I felt it best to give the one single impression that had become clear to me from long and intimate personal experience. After writing the different chapters it was encouraging to me to find later that the outline of my own picture was not far removed in its special light and shade and contour from the character which Romain Rolland had drawn when his own study of the "Gandhi literature" had been made at an earlier date. Quite unconsciously my personal reading of Mahatma Gandhi's ideas has in a great measure coincided with his. In one sense this present book may be said to offer material supplementary to that which has already appeared in Rolland's great book. As a work of genius that study of Gandhi remains unparalleled in any language. I hope, however, that what I have written may have a special value of its own as an individual portrait, with a background of close personal 7