Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/9

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INTRODUCTION.

T HIS astonishing piece of genius, "Christianity and Patriotism," written by Tolstoy in 1894, is scarcely known at all in England. A translation appeared in 1896, which has long gone out of print, and the only other version that is procurable, I believe, is that contained in the expensive twenty-four volume American edition by Wiener of "The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy." Nor have the critics laid stress on it. In his voluminous "Life of Tolstoy: Later Years," 600 pages, Mr. Aylmer Maude only devoted six lines to it, though in a later volume, "Leo Tolstoy," 1918, he has analyzed Tolstoy's theory of "Non-Resistance and his Antagonism to Governments" expressed in "The Kingdom of God is within You." Romain Rolland, in his brilliant study "Tolstoy," 1911, does not refer to "Christianity and Patriotism at all, and I must confess that my little monograph "Tolstoy," 1914, also contains no allusion to it. Yet "Christianity and Patriotism " is one of the most searching pieces of moral polemics Tolstoy ever penned. Its main arguments against War, Governments and Patriotism had been developed by him a year

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