with the sword.” We have lived to know the treacheries of the Armistice and of the Treaties of Versailles and Sevres which followed. We have lived through the horrors which were inflicted on Russia and the Central Powers by the economic blockade,—the deliberate and calculated starvation of mothers and their little children. We have witnessed, nearer our own Indian shores, the insensate greed for plunder in Mesopotamia and the Middle East. We have known also the incessant fomenting of internecine strife in Russia by the Allied Powers, with its deadly effect of hardening into a new militarism the Russian revolutionary Soviet movement. Those who have lived through all this,—the War itself and its after effects,—have now no illusions left. War, to them, is Hell. The one prayer that rises from their lips is this,—“Give Peace, in our time, O Lord.”
Such a prayer to-day is almost universal. Thus far we are nearly all agreed. But the whole problem is not settled by a merely negative conclusion. We have to find out, as I have said, the ultimate moral equivalent for war. Wrong-doing cannot remain unchecked and unredressed. Bullying and lying, treachery and hypocrisy, deceit and violence, cannot go on unresisted. What is needed is, that the resistance shall take a spiritual form, which shall be all the more effective and potent because it is spiritual. St Paul said of a struggle which he himself was called upon to wage against evil,—“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of Satan.” We must find out what those weapons are,—those weapons which are spiritual and not carnal.
While painfully engaged in puzzling over this problem, it was with intense interest that I came across a new writing of Tolstoy, for it dealt with the theory of violent revolution in the clearest possible manner. It is from the account of an eye witness, who wrote down Tolstoy’s own words at a memorable interview, which he had in 1908 with the Russian Revolutionary Party. A translation is given in the ‘Living Age’ of January 15, 1921, and my material is entirely taken from that source.
Tolstoy had read beforehand the programme of the Revolutionary Party, which contained the following words, “Inspire hatred in the hearts of men. This is a holy duty.” These words had shocked him inexpressibly, and he called four of the leading revolutionaries into his presence.
“Isn’t that outrageous?”, he cried. “The Love of one’s fellow man has, ever since the creation of the world, been regarded as the primary distinctive human instinct,—by the Hindus, by the Chinese, by Christians and now people are to be taught, that the very antithesis of love,—hatred,—is to be cultivated as a holy duty! This proves to me that the men who write such things are in the very lowest depths of moral error. Do you ask me to retract what I have said? No, I will not take back my words!”
After a short silence, one of the revolutionaries spoke,—“Either we must die of hunger, before we have done anything or we must at once strike our blow and shake off this hated yoke.”
Tolstoy argued and reasoned with them, and showed them, that there was, in truth, an alternative course. “There is,” he said, “only one sensible thing to do. Refuse to take part in the existing unjust social system The only way to attain your end is to refuse to participate in the injustice and violence of the government, which has ruined your life,—to keep out of it entirely.”
One of the revolutionists replied to Tolstoy, that, if he were to do this, then he and his children would starve. He was not in a position to so without employment, because he was married and had a family. This at once brought Tolstoy to the very centre of his own teaching, and he grew excited.
“Then the question of your family,” he said, “is more important to you than the question of morality! Yet Christ said, that those who would follow him must
