Since I visited France as a student to see the Exhibition at Paris in 1890, some greater and more permanent links between you and me have been formed. The forger of those links is your own distinguished countryman Roman Rolland who constituted himself an interpreter of the humble message that I have been trying to deliver to my countrymen for the last 30 years or more. I have learnt something of the traditions of your country and of the teachings of Rousseau and Victor Hugo and on my entering upon my missionΓÇövery difficult mission in LondonΓÇöit heartens me to find a welcome from you fellow-students.
And as he expounded the message of non-violence to the youths belonging to a martial race, as he explained that non-violence is no Weapon of the weak but of the strongest and that strength does not mean mere strength of muscle, "and that to a non-violent man possession of the muscle is not a necessity but possession of a strong heart is an absolute necessity", they cheered him most enthusiastically He explained by taking the example of the muscular Zulu quaking before a European child holding a revolver in his hand and contrasting him with the women of India who stood lathi blows and lathi charges without quaking. To kill and to be killed in fighting an enemy is, comparatively speaking, an act of bravery but to stand the blows of your adversaries and not to retaliate is a greater form of bravery, and that is precisely what India has been training herself for. He concluded by touching on another aspect of the same question.
This struggle through non-violence has been otherwise described as a process of purification, the underlying idea being that a nation loses its liberty owing to some of its own weaknesses and we find that immediately we shed our weaknesses, we regain our liberty. No people on earth can be finally subjected without their co-operation voluntary or involuntary. It is involuntary co-operation when for fear of some physical hurt you submit yourself to a tyrant or a depot. . . . In my wanderings among the students I made the discovery at an early stage of the movement that in order to conduct a movement of this kind character must be the foundation. We also found that real education consists not in packing the brain with so many facts and figures, not in passing examinations by reading numerous books but in developing character. I do not know to what extent you students of France lay stress upon character rather than upon intellectual studies, but I can say this that if you explore the possibilities of non-violence you will find that without character it will prove a profitless study. I hope that the meeting will not be the beginning and end of our acquaintance. I hope that this acquaintance will be the beginning of a living contact between you and my countrymen. In a movement, such as we are conducting in India, we need the intellectual sympathy of the whole world, and if after a careful study of the movement and means employed by us to attain our freedom you feel that we deserve your sympathy and support- I hope you will not fail to extend that sympathy.
