Wybergh to Gandhi

Johannesburg May 3,1910

My dear Mr. Gandhi,

Many thanks for your letter and the pamphlet on Indian Home Rule. I have been prevented by business from giving adequate study to it until the last few days. I find it very difficult to criticise it adequately within reasonable length because I do not think that on the whole your argument is coherent or that the various statements and opinions you express have any real dependence upon one another. I am also inevitably rather ignorant of the actual conditions in India and am afraid, therefore, of being presumptuous in expressing any opinion upon the correctness or otherwise of many facts which you appear to take for granted and make the basis of argument. Meanwhile I must say that on many questions of fact you are at variance with ordinary opinion. To begin with, as to the question of ‘loyalty’. I must say that while, as a rule, you avoid giving any occasion for specific charges of disloyalty, yet there are so many subtle hints and ambiguous expressions, so many things left unsaid, and so many half-truths put forward, that I am not at all surprised at anyone considering the book highly dangerous.