Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/35

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Christianity and Patriotism

crushed to death, is as great as the difference between a hot ember falling out of the stove and glowing on the floor which will obviously not be set alight by it, and a fire which has set the doors and the walls of the house in flames. At the very worst the consequences of the Kiev epidemic will be that the peasants of a millionth part of Russia will spend what they have earned by their toil, and will not be in a position to pay their taxes. The consequences of the epidemic of Toulon and Paris which has seized upon people in the possession of terrible power—enormous sums of money and means for exercising force and for the propaganda of their madness—may, and must, be terrible.

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