Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/78

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PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT
25

the Circassians[1] did when resisting attacks. But the danger is quite past, and yet people go on tying themselves together.

They carefully tie themselves so that one man can have them at his mercy; then they throw away the end of the rope that ties them and leave it trailing, for some rascal or fool to seize and to do them whatever harm he likes.

Eeally, what are people doing but just that, when they set up, submit to, and maintain an organised and military government?


Chapter VII

One To deliver men from the terrible evils of armaments and wars, which are always increasing and increasing, what is wanted are neither congresses nor conferences, nor treaties, nor courts of arbitration, but the destruction of those instruments of violence which arfe called governments, and from which humanity's greatest evils result.

To destroy governmental violence only one thing is needed: it is that people should understand that the feeling of

  1. The Circassians, when surrounded, used to tie themselves together leg to leg, that none might escape, but all die fighting. Instances of this kind occurred when their country was being annexed by Russia.—Trans.