Did Gandhi misread you, or did you misread him?

Neither and both. The Mahatma understood perfectly well what I believed. I told him to his face in 1939 that his way would take too long, that Britain would never yield to moral pressure alone while holding the whip hand. He knew I meant to seek arms and allies wherever they could be found. There was no mystery between us on that score. And I understood him. I understood the purity of his method, the long discipline it required, the way it had already moved millions. I simply did not believe it would finish the work in time. Where we misread each other was in what each thought possible. He believed India could be made ready for his way if the leadership held firm. I believed the moment would pass, that Japan's war and Britain's weakness opened a door that satyagraha alone could not walk through. He thought me impatient and dangerously willing to compromise with fascism. I thought him unwilling to see that the empire respects only force, and that history does not wait for saints. We were both reading history as it came toward us in the dark. I took one path, he another. India will judge which brought her closer to freedom, or whether she needed both.