The editor kept me waiting for an hour. He had evidently many interviewers, but he would not so much as look at me, even when he had disposed of the rest. On my venturing to broach my subject after the long wait, he said: “Don’t you see our hands are full? There is no end to the number of visitors like you. You had better go. I am not disposed to listen to you.” For a moment I felt offended, but I quickly understood the editor’s position. I had heard of the fame of The Bangabasi . I could see that there was a regular stream of visitors there. And they were all people acquainted with him. His papers had no lack of topics to discuss, and South Africa was hardly known at that time.
However serious a grievance may be in the eyes of the man who suffers from it, he will be but one of the numerous people invading the editor’s office, each with a grievance of his own. How is the editor to meet them all? Moreover, the aggrieved party imagines that the editor is a power in the land. Only he knows that his power can hardly travel beyond the threshold of his office. But I was not discouraged. I kept on seeing editors of other papers. As usual I met the Anglo-Indian editors also. The Statesman and The Englishman realized the importance of the question. I gave them long interviews, and they published them in full.
Mr. Saunders, editor of The Englishman , claimed me as his own. He placed his office and paper at my disposal. He even allowed me the liberty of making whatever changes I liked in the leading article he had written on the situation, the proof of which he sent me in advance. It is no exaggeration to say that a friendship grew up between us. He promised to render me all the help he could, carried out the promise to the letter, and kept on his correspondence with me until the time when he was seriously ill.
Throughout my life I have had the privilege of many such friendships, which have sprung up quite unexpectedly. What Mr. Saunders liked in me was my freedom from exaggeration and my devotion to truth. He