48 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE
Congress could put the whole of its creed of non-violence
into practice on this occasion/' he remarked to a friend,
" India's name would become immortal. She would make
history. But I know, today, it is only a dream of mine."
" Should India take to the sword, she would cease to be
the India of my dreams and I should like to betake me to
the Himalayas to seek rest for my anguished soul," he
had written on a memorable occasion. " You may rest
assured/' he told some friends who interviewed him at
Delhi, " that whatever happens there will be no surrender.
For me, even if I stand alone, there is no participation in
the war even if the Government should surrender the
whole control to the Congress." To another friend who
doubted whether enough people would respond to his call
of unqualified ahimsa in the face of danger, he replied,
" Who would have thought aeroplanes to be a practical
reality fifty years ago ? Who would have imagined in
this country, thirty years ago, that thousands of innocent
men, women and children would be ready smilingly to
march to the prison ? The weapon of ahimsa does not
need supermen or superwomen to wield it; even beings
of common clay can use it and have used it before with
success. At any rate, fifteen members of the Working
Committee did express their readiness to put their ahimsa
to the test. That was more than I was prepared for."
Though the crisis for the time being was averted, it
set him thinking furiously. He began to address his
thoughts to Europe. " It needed great courage," he wrote
to a friend, " but God gave it."
In an article entitled " If I were a Czech", dated
Peshawar, 6th October, 1938, in which he characterized
the Anglo-French arrangement with Herr Hitler as " peace
without honour ", he wrote : " I want to say to the Czechs
and through them to all those nationalities which are call-
ed ' small' or ' weak?......that the small nations must
either come or be ready to come under the protection of
the dictators or be a constant menace to the peace of
Europe. In spite of all the goodwill in the world England