INTRODUCTION
earlier, 1893, in "The Kingdom of God is within You," also a work of extraordinary force. And these and other arguments were reiterated by him to the year of his death in various essays and letters to the Press in astonishing variety. But for cogency and force he never surpassed "Christianity and Patriotism." Of course, his voice was powerless to stay the progress of the great European catastrophe, and to the young generation, the flower of European youth, sacrificed on the altar of the Balance of Power, 1914-18, Tolstoy was merely a great, misty name. Tolstoy's fame, indeed, was worldwide, but he had attacked the whole system of the State, Church, Christianity, Militarism, Capitalism, Industrialism, and Imperialism; and European society, while superficially applauding him from time to time, turned a deaf ear to his warnings.
This was made manifest during the Great War by the significant fact that Tolstoy's name was never mentioned.[1] He, the greatest of all nineteenth-century writers and spiritual forces, had died on November 22nd, 1910, and from the first week of August, 1914, the curtain of war, of war aims and feelings, rolled down, shutting off even the echoes of the great Russian's
- ↑ The only exception we remember was a controversy in the last year or so of the war between Mr. Aylmer Maude and the ex-Russian Correspondent of The Times in "The Times" Literary Supplement."
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