ed for
the preservation of peace; you see Him going as ambassador and avoiding
all the pavilions raised by the order of Duryodhana, that He may not
take from one who is a foe a courtesy that might bind him as a friend.
So when he pays the call on Duryodhana that courtesy demands, never
failing in the perfect duty of the ambassador, fulfilling every demand
of politeness, He will not touch the food that would make a bond between
Himself and the one against whom He had come to struggle. See how the
only food that He will take is the food of the King's brother, for that
alone, He says, "is clean and worthy to be eaten by me." See how in the
assembly of hostile kings He tries to pacify and tries to please. See
how He apologises with the gentlest humility; how to the great king, the
blind king, He speaks in the name of the Pandavas as suppliant,
not as outraged and indignant foe. See how with soft words He tries to
turn away words of wrath, and uses every device of oratory to win their
hearts and convince their judgments. See how later again, when the
battle of Kurukshetra is over, when all the sons of the blind king are
slain, see how He goes once more as ambassador to meet the childless
father and, still bitterer, the childless mother, that the first anger
may break itself on Him, and His words may charm away the wrath and
soothe the grief of the bereft. See how later on He still guides and
advises till all the work is done, till His task is accomplished and His
end is drawing near. A statesman of marvellous ability; a politician of
keenest tact and insight; as though to say to men of the world that when
they are acting as men of the world they should be careful of
righteousness, but also careful of discretion and of skill, that there
is nothing alien to the truth of religion in the skill of the tongue and
in the use of the keen intelligence of the brain.

Then pass on again from Him as Statesman to His character as Friend.
Would that I had time to dwell on it, and paint you some of the fair
pictures of His relations with the family He loved so well, from the day
when, standing in the midst of the self-choice of Krishna, the
fair future wife of the Pandavas, He saw for the first time in
that human incarnation Arjuna, His beloved of old. Think what it must
have been, when the eyes of the two young men met, with memories in the
one pair of the close friendship of the past, and the drawing of the
other by the tie of those many