Page:Indian Home Rule by Mohandas K. Gandhi.djvu/82

74 : You are overassuming facts. All need not be armed. At first, we will assassinate a few Englishmen and strike terror; then a few men who will have been armed will fight openly. We may have to lose a quarter of a million men, more or less, but we will regain our land. We will undertake guerilla warfare, and defeat the English.


 * That is to say, you want to make the holy land of India unholy. Do you not tremble to think of freeing India by assassination? What we need to do is to kill ourselves. It is a cowardly thought, that of killing others. Whom do you suppose to free by assassination? The millions of India do not desire it. Those who are intoxicated by the wretched modern civilization think of these things. Those who will rise to power by murder will certainly not make the nation happy. Those who believe that India has gained by Dhingra’s act and such other acts in India make a serious mistake. Dhingra was a patriot, but his love was blind. He gave his body in a wrong way; its ultimate result can only be mischievous.


 * But you will admit that the English have been frightened by these murders, and that Lord Morley’s reforms are due to fear.


 * The English are both a timid and a brave nation. She is, I believe, easily influenced by the use of gunpowder. It is possible that Lord Morley has granted the reforms through fear but