ALBERT H. WEST

Many books have been written about Gandhi who has proclaimed "The Greatest Man in the World." Writers have traveled from the ends of the earth to see and hear him. They knew him as a great man and they wanted to record his words and hear his views on matters of world importance. . . . I have ventured to call this great man my friend and I am glad that I was regarded as such by him. Gandhi gave expression to this feeling when, in his autobiography, he referred to me as "a partner of my joys and sorrows." I first met Gandhi in a vegetarian restaurant in Johannesburg in 1903 . . . . I was especially attracted by this man from India, and Gandhi and I soon became close friends. I was then twenty-four and Gandhi just ten years older. We would talk as we walked together every evening to the top of Hospital Hill and back to Court Chambers, where he lived and worked, his wife and family being at that time still in India. Very often we would continue talking later. . . . On the wall of his office was a framed engraving of the head of Jesus Christ, and it occupied a place over his desk. Perhaps this started off our conversations on spiritual matters, which showed me how Gandhi, a Hindu, could be, at the same time, one of the most thorough followers of Christs's teachings that I ever met even among professing Christians.

-Albert H. West, "In the Early Days with Gandhi" (Commissioned by the Government of India, 1963).