The presidential address

THERE is a Greek saying that a man may once say a thing as he would have it said — he can hardly say it twice. One is instinctively reminded of this old saying as one goes through the presidential address of Mahatma Gandhi at the Belgaum Congress session. It was all the more difficult for the Mahatma to say anything new or even to say old things in a new form in this case because the theme of the address was one on which he had written not once, not twice, but on at least a dozen occasions during the last six months. It is, therefore, with no sense of either surprise or regret that one finds that there is little or nothing in the address which one has not read again and again in the pages of Young India. The Mahatma himself tells his hearers before he has gone far that he has no other message for the nation except that which he has been delivering all this time. That does not mean, of course, that the address is without features which are as interesting as they are attractive. Not the least important of these is its brevity, not due, in this case, as it is in so many other cases, to the lack of matter on which the speaker has to and does actually dwell, but to that habit of condensation to which the Mahatma’s writings and speeches owe no small part of their charm. What a contrast does this address, covering no more than 13 columns of The Tribune, present to the addresses of some past presidents of the Congress, who could scarcely finish what they had to say in as many pages.