भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

bury it, with tears if you like. I am glad to hear that the Government is going to allow you to see me this year. Please do thank the authorities for it. But I am firmly of opinion that dear Vahini should not be put to troubles of the voyage this year. You should come alone and when you see all the facilities or otherwise here and know the best way to bring her, then the next time you come to see me, you may bring her, and dear Mai too. I feel it a duty to forego the inestimable pleasure of seeing those dearest ones this year for the sake of their convenience. So, please come alone this year. It sent a thrill of delight in my heart to hear that the Indian troops were allowed to go to Europe, in their thousands to fight against the best military power in the world and that they had acquainted themselves with such splendour and were covered with military glory. Thank God! Manliness, after all, is not dead yet in the land! And what a funny thing! We have been trying our best to encourage foreign travel and used to congratulate ourselves if a dozen could be sent a year! And now Providence has done what we could not—thousands of Hindus, orthodox like the Gurkhas and Rajputs and reformed like the Shikhs have crossed the sea and under the Government patronage! Now let our Pandits sit hatching over the eggs of शास्त्रार्थ to see if foreign travel is permissible to the Hindus or not. Permissible or not, the Hindus have crossed the sea, and in crossing it, they have crossed an epoch! What the crusades have done for Europe by bringing it in contact with the superior civilization of Asia, this conflict with the Europeans of our Hindu troops across the seas will do for India—for Asia. As for the petition, that is made for the release of Political prisoners in the Punjab we can hardly thank them sufficiently for this, their charitable deed. You may be knowing by this time that some of us have already volunteered, to go to the front of the War and I am glad to inform you that Government have made a special note of it, though no answer could come as yet. By the by, please do write of the rumour that some M.P. had asked a question in the Parliament about me, or some of us before the war broke out, be true and if so the particulars of it. Did you get the poems on Guru and Ravi? It pained me very much to hear, that Hon. Gokhale was dead. He was, after all, a great patriot. True, at times, especially in panics, he used to say and do things, which he himself must have been ashamed of a few months after, to own. But then, his life was dedicated to the service of Motherland