The Theological Works of Leo Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ which arose in connection with the question of the obligatoriness of Christian pastors to preach against war, Mr. G. D. Bartlett said, among other things: "If I understand the Scriptures, I say that men are only playing with Christianity when they ignore this question," that is, say nothing about war. "I have lived a longish life, I have heard many sermons, and I can say without any exaggeration that I never heard universal peace recommended from the pulpit half a dozen times in my life.... Some twenty years ago I happened to stand in a drawing-room where there were forty or fifty people, and I dared to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity. They looked upon me as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated weakness and folly."

      In the same sense spoke the Catholic Abbé Defourny: "One of the first precepts of this eternal law which burns in the consciences of men is the one which forbids taking the life of one's like, shedding human blood without just cause, and without being constrained by necessity. It is one of those laws which are most indelibly engraved in the human heart.... But if it is a question of war, that is, of the shedding of human blood in torrents, the men of the present do not trouble themselves about a just cause. Those who take part in it do not think of asking themselves whether these innumerable murders are justifed or not, that is, if the wars, or what goes by that name, are just or iniquitous, legal or illegal, permissible or criminal ... whether they violate, or not, the primordial law which prohibits homicide and murder ... without just cause. But their conscience is mute in this matter.

      "War has ceased for them to be an act which has anything to do with morality. They have no other joy, in the fatigue and perils of the camp, than that of being victorious, and no other sadness than that of being vanquished.... Do not tell me that they serve their country. A long time ago a great genius told you these words, which have become proverbial, 'Reject justice, and what are the empires but great societies of brigands?' And are not a band of brigands themselves small empires? Brigands themselves have certain laws or conventions by which they are ruled. There, too, they fight for the conquest of booty and for the honour of the band.... The principle of the institution" (he is talking of the establishment of an international tribunal) "is this, that the European nations should stop being a nation of thieves, and the armies gangs of brigands and of pirates, and, I must add, of slaves. Yes, the armies are gangs of slaves, slaves of one or two rulers, or one or two ministers, who dispose of them tyrannically, without any other guarantee, we know, than a nominal one.

      "What characterizes the slave is this, that he is in the hands of his master like a chattel, a tool, and no longer a man. Just so it is with a soldier, an officer, a general, who march to murder and to death without any care as to justice, by the arbitrary will of ministers.... Thus military slavery exists, and it is the worst of slaveries, particularly now, when by means of enforced military service it puts the chain about the necks of all free and strong men of the nations, in order to make of them tools of murder, killers by profession, butchers of human flesh, for this is the only opus servile for which they are chained up and trained....

      "Rulers, to the number of two or three ... united into a secret cabinet, deliberate without control and without minutes which are intended for publicity ... consequently without any guarantee for the conscience of those whom they send out to be killed."

      "The protests against the heavy arming do not date from our day," says Signor E. T. Moneta. "Listen to what Montesquieu wrote in his time.

      "'France' (you may substitute the word 'Europe') 'will be ruined by the military. A new malady has spread through Europe; it has infected our princes and has made them keep a disproportionate number of troops. It has its exacerbations, and it necessarily becomes contagious, because, as soon as one state increases what it calls its troops, the others suddenly increase theirs, so that nothing is gained by it but the common ruin.

      "'Every monarch keeps on a war footing all the troops which he might need in case his people were in danger of being exterminated, and this state of tension, of all against all, is called peace. As a result, Europe is so ruined that if private individuals were in the condition in which the powers are in this part of the world, the richest of them would not have anything to live on. We are poor with the riches and the commerce of the whole universe.'

      "This was written almost 150 years ago; the picture seems to be made for to-day. One single thing has changed,—the system of government. In the time of Montesquieu, and also afterward, they used to say that the cause for the maintenance of great armies lay in the absolute kings, who waged war in the hope of finding in the conquests the means for enriching their private budgets and passing down to history in the aureole of glory.

      "Then they said, 'Oh, if the peoples could choose themselves those who have the right to refuse the governments soldiers and money, for then the politics of war would come to an end.'

      "We have to-day representative governments in nearly all of Europe, and none the less the expenditures for war and for its preparation are increased in a frightful proportion.

      "Evidently the folly of the princes has passed down to the governing classes. At the present time they no longer make war because a prince was disrespectful to a courtesan, as such things happened in the time of Louis XIV., but by exaggerating the respectable sentiments, like that of the national dignity and of patriotism, by exciting public opinion against a neighbouring nation, there will come a day when it will be sufficient to say, though the information may not be true, that the ambassador of your government was not received by the chief of a state, in order to make break forth the most terrible and disastrous of wars ever seen.

      "At the present time Europe keeps under arms more soldiers than there were in the time of Napoleon's great wars. All citizens, with few exceptions, are obliged on our continent to pass several years in the barracks. They build fortresses, construct arsenals and ships, constantly manufacture arms, which after awhile have to be replaced by others, because science, which ought always to be directed toward the well-being of men, unfortunately lends its aid to works of destruction, invents at every instant new engines for killing great masses of men as rapidly as possible.

      "And in order to maintain so many soldiers and to make such vast preparations for murder, they spend yearly hundreds of millions, that is, what would be sufficient for the education of the people, for the execution of the greatest works of public utility, and would furnish the means for solving pacifically the social question.

      "Europe, therefore, finds itself, in spite of the scientific conquests, in a condition as though it were still living in the worst times of the ferocious Middle Ages. All men complain of this situation, which is not yet war, but which is not peace either, and everybody would like to get out of it. The chiefs of governments protest that they want peace, and it is a matter of emulation between them as to who will make the most solemn pacific declarations. But on the same day, or the day following, they present to the legislative chambers propositions for increasing the standing army, and they say that it is for the purpose of maintaining and assuring peace that they take so many precautions.

      "But it is not the kind of peace we like; nor are the nations deceived. True peace has reciprocal confidence for its basis, while these enormous preparations betray a profound distrust, if not a concealed hostility, between the states. What would we say of a man who, wishing to prove his sentiments of friendship for his neighbour, should invite him to discuss some question with him, while he himself is holding a revolver in his hand? It is this flagrant contradiction between the pacific declarations and the warlike policy of the governments that all good citizens want to see stopped at any price and as quickly as possible."

      They marvel why annually sixty thousand suicides are committed in Europe, and those only the ones that are recorded, which excludes Russia and Turkey; but what we ought to marvel at is not that there are so many suicides, but so few. Every man of our time, if he grasps the contradiction between his consciousness and his life, is in a very desperate condition. To say nothing of all the other contradictions between life and consciousness, which СКАЧАТЬ