१८५७ का स्वातन्त्र्य समर (वीर विनायक दामोदर सावरकर - अंग्रेजों द्वारा छपने से पूर्व प्रतिबन्धित महाग्रन्थ)

THE ERUPTION
ards won back their independence from the Moors, to
what state did they reduce them? The Spanish are nei-
ther Indians nor Asiatics. Then, why did they fall on the
Moors who had stayed in Spain for nearly five centuries,
and why did they massacre indiscriminately whole help-
less families—men, women, and children—simply for the
fault of belonging to another race? Why did Greece, in
1821, massacre twenty-one thousand Turkish peasants—
men, women, and children? The secret society, Hetairia,
which is looked upon as patriotic and heroic in Europe—
what explanation does it give of the massacre? It is only
this, that the Turkish population in Greece was too small
to be kept in the country and too big to be removed out-
side and that, therefore, to kill them all was "a necessary
measure of wise policy." Was this not their answer?
The idea that no one kills a snake and leaves his offspring
alive, also, came into the minds of the Greeks and burnt
away the natural feelings of mercy in their heart! And
the whole of the responsibility rests on the black poison
of the snake.
Indeed, if there was no propensity in human nature to-
wards a terrible revenge for an horrible injustice suffered,
the brute in man would have been still the dominating
factor in human dealings. Is not one of the most import-
ant functions of law—the punishment of crime ? ⁸
8. Sir W. Russell, the famous correspondent of the London
Times, remarks : "We who suffered from it think that there never
was such wickedness in the world; and the incessant efforts of a
gang of forgers and utterly base scoundrels have surrounded it with
horrors that have been vainly invented in the hope of adding to the
indignation and burning desire for vengeance which hatred failed
to arouse. Helpless garrisons surrendering without condition have
been massacred ere now. Risings, such as that of Pontus under
Mithridates, of the Irish Roman Catholics under Protestant settlers
in 1641, of the actors in the Sicilian Vespers, of the assassins who
smote and spared none on the eve of St. Bartholomew, have been
over and over again attended by inhuman cruelties, violations, and
tortures. The history of Mediæval Europe affords many instances
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