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

4-8-1918 Port Blair My dear brother, I was very glad to read your letter. This year owing to the regularity with which your parcels and letters had been despatched, we could get them all at the expected time and were, thus, able to get rid of a lot of anxiety and trouble and petitioning. The answer to my letter, then the parcel to brother and then his letter—all these enabled us to get your news almost every three months. Please do follow up this plan as regularly as possible. The news that the Maharashtra provincial conference had passed a strong resolution and that with greater unanimity in favour of the release of all political prisoners was very welcome! In fact, the Bombay provincial conference has been doing its duty with greater vigour, consistency and persistence than any other P.C. in India. Last year, so far as I could know, the provincial conference of U.P. and especially the Andhra Conference had also passed resolutions in favour of this release. The resolution of the Andhra Conference was very definitely and comprehensively worded and showed that the heart of the Andhras beat in thorough and honest sympathy with those who, with the means they thought best to effect the Great Deliverance had, maybe rightly, maybe wrongly but in utter sincerity and indisputable selflessness, offered themselves to pine away in prisons. You write that many of the papers write constantly for the release and magazines too press on do the point that the release of all political prisoners is one of the conditions, under which the removal of Indian discontent is possible. If all this be true, then I really fail to understand why the Congress, so far as I know, should still be fighting shy, should still be trembling to utter a syllable that might smell of sympathy, nay even of ordinary humanity for the political prisoners, of the people in whose name it poses to speak! Last year, they passed a resolution for the release of the interned, forgetting totally and very conveniently that the sufferings which brought tears to the eyes of the patriots sitting comfortably in the well-aired and well-decorated pandal had been indefinitly multiplied and incessantly faced by other men —not one not two, but thousands of other men whose services or sacrifices cannot, at least, be less than our interned brothers and who, because their misery cannot automatically end with the war as in the case of the interned and therefore demand a greater and more persistent agitation on the part of those who are pasing as responsible leaders of the people! ‘Responsible’