64 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE

keep you here as prisoner of our love for at least six
months." And everybody laughed heartily at the joke,
Gandhiji with the rest. Over a score of little children too
had tumbled out of the village to be introduced to
Gandhiji and shake hands with him. They walked up to
Gandhiji one by one, their Mohmand caps drawn close
over their ruddy, cherub faces, took both his hands in
theirs and shook them with a grave air of importance in
the right Pathan style, not forgetting their familiar
*" stirra mashe " t and conceitedly strutted off like turKey
cocks, with an additional air of importance which they,
had gained in their own eyes !

From Peshawar to Nowshera is an hour's journey by
car. The sun shone clear in the sapphire blue sky and
the air was agreeably crisp and cool when we started.
The rich natural beauty of the lanscape seen through a
thin purple haze, the garish panorama of tumbled up
masses of hills, said at one time to have been heavily wood-
ed but now bare, torn and wind-swept, that girdled the
distant horizon, entranced one. Before the mind's eye
rose the vision of the storied past as one contemplated
the numerous relics of the Buddhists and Graeco-Baetrian
culture with which the whole of the Swat and the Kabul
river valleys are thickly strewn. But Gandhiji's mind was
wholly occupied with thoughts, of the Khudai Khidmat-
gars. He had undertaken a tremendous responsibility.
Here was a body of men, famed throughout the world as^
the doughtiest of fighters. And now, at the bidding of
one man, they had renounced the use of arms and adopt-
ed non-violence as their creed. What must he do to con-
vert them into full-fledged soldiers of non-violence for
winning India's freedom ? Would he succeed ?

We reached Nowshera after crossing the Kabul river.
"There was a big military establishment at Nowshera
which, together with the cantonment and air base at Risal-
pur, served to reinforce the military set-up at Peshawar.
Peshawar, being near the border, was not considered

f The Pathan form of greeting meaning 'May you never be tired'.