Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/105

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8
LETTERS ON WAR

I can myself contribute either to the diminution or augmentation of the evil. To contribute to the fraternal equalisation of property, to take advantage to the least possible extent of the privileges which have fallen to my lot; to refrain from in any way participating in military activity, to destroy the spell which makes men, whilst becoming hired murderers, imagine that they are acting well by serving in the army; and, above all, to profess the rational Christian teaching, and to endeavour with all one's might to destroy that cruel fraud of false Christianity in which young generations are forcibly educated,—in this three-fold work, as it seems to me, consists the duty of every man who wishes to serve that which is right, and who is justly revolted by the present dreadful war.

(A portion of the above appeared first in Reynolds'.)


Two Wars

Christendom has recently been the scene of two wars. One is now concluded, whereas the other still continues; but they were for a time being carried on simultaneously, and the contrast they present is very striking. The first—the Spanish and American War—was an old, vain, foolish, and cruel war, inopportune, out-of-date, heathen, which sought by killing one set of people to solve the question as to how and by whom another set of people ought to be governed. The other, which is still going on, and will