The Kingdom of God Is Within You - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (best non fiction books of all time txt) 📗

enemies. If another boy strikes you, you

mustn’t hit him back, but try to reform him by loving him.’

Well. The boy stays in the Sunday school till he is fourteen

or fifteen, and then his friends send him into the army. What

has he to do in the army? He certainly won’t love his enemy;

quite the contrary, if he can only get at him, he will run him

through with his bayonet. That is the nature of all religious

teaching in this country. I do not think that that is a very

good way of carrying out the precepts of religion. I think if

it is a good thing for a boy to love his enemy, it is good for

a grown-up man.”

 

“There are in Europe twenty-eight millions of men under arms,”

says Wilson,

 

“to decide disputes, not by discussion, but by murdering one

another. That is the accepted method for deciding disputes

among Christian nations. This method is, at the same time,

very expensive, for, according to the statistics I have read,

the nations of Europe spent in the year 1872 a hundred and

fifty millions sterling on preparations for deciding disputes

by means of murder. It seems to me, therefore, that in such a

state of things one of two alternatives must be admitted:

either Christianity is a failure, or those who have undertaken

to expound it have failed in doing so. Until our warriors are

disarmed and our armies disbanded, the have not the right to

call ourselves a Christian nation.”

 

In a conference on the subject of the duty of Christian ministers

to preach against war, G. D. Bartlett said among other things:

 

“If I understand the Scriptures, I say that men are only

playing with Christianity so long as they ignore the question

of war. I have lived a longish life and have heard our

ministers preach on universal peace hardly half a dozen times.

Twenty years ago, in a drawing room, I dared in the presence of

forty persons to moot the proposition that war was incompatible

with Christianity; I was regarded as an arrant fanatic. The

idea that we could get on without war was regarded as

unmitigated weakness and folly.”

 

The Catholic priest Defourney has expressed himself in the same

spirit. “One of the first precepts of the eternal law inscribed

in the consciences of all men,” says the Abby Defourney,

 

“is the prohibition of taking the life or shedding the blood of

a fellow-creature without sufficient cause, without being

forced into the necessity of it. This is one of the

commandments which is most deeply stamped in the heart of man.

But so soon as it is a question of war, that is, of shedding

blood in torrents, men of the present day do not trouble

themselves about a sufficient cause. Those who take part in

wars do not even think of asking themselves whether there is

any justification for these innumerable murders, whether they

are justifiable or unjustifiable, lawful or unlawful, innocent

or criminal; whether they are breaking that fundamental

commandment that forbids killing without lawful cause.

But their conscience is mute. War has ceased to be something

dependent on moral considerations. In warfare men have in all

the toil and dangers they endure no other pleasure than that of

being conquerors, no sorrow other than that of being conquered.

Don’t tell me that they are serving their country. A great

genius answered that long ago in the words that have become a

proverb: ‘Without justice, what is an empire but a great band

of brigands?’ And is not every band of brigands a little

empire? They too have their laws; and they too make war to

gain booty, and even for honor.

 

“The aim of the proposed institution [the institution of an

international board of arbitration] is that the nations of

Europe may cease to be nations of robbers, and their armies,

bands of brigands. And one must add, not only brigands, but

slaves. For our armies are simply gangs of slaves at the

disposal of one or two commanders or ministers, who exercise a

despotic control over them without any real responsibility, as

we very well know.

 

“The peculiarity of a slave is that he is a mere tool in the

hands of his master, a thing, not a man. That is just what

soldiers, officers, and generals are, going to murder and be

murdered at the will of a ruler or rulers. Military slavery is

an actual fact, and it is the worst form of slavery, especially

now when by means of compulsory service it lays its fetters on

the necks of all the strong and capable men of a nation, to

make them instruments of murder, butchers of human flesh, for

that is all they are taken and trained to do.

 

“The rulers, two or three in number, meet together in cabinets,

secretly deliberate without registers, without publicity, and

consequently without responsibility, and send men to be

murdered.”

 

“Protests against armaments, burdensome to the people, have not

originated in our times,” says Signor E. G. Moneta.

 

“Hear what Montesquieu wrote in his day. ‘France [and one

might say, Europe] will be ruined by soldiers. A new plague is

spreading throughout Europe. It attacks sovereigns and forces

them to maintain an incredible number of armed men. This

plague is infectious and spreads, because directly one

government increases its armament, all the others do likewise.

So that nothing is gained by it but general ruin.

 

“‘Every government maintains as great an army as it possibly

could maintain if its people were threatened with

extermination, and people call peace this state of tension of

all against all. And therefore Europe is so ruined that if

private persons were in the position of the governments of our

continent, the richest of them would not have enough to live

on. We are poor though we have the wealth and trade of the

whole world.’

 

“That was written almost 150 years ago. The picture seems drawn

from the world of to-day. One thing only has changed-the form

of government. In Montesquieu’s time it was said that the

cause of the maintenance of great armaments was the despotic

power of kings, who made war in the hope of augmenting by

conquest their personal revenues and gaining glory. People

used to say then: ‘Ah, if only people could elect those who

would have the right to refuse governments the soldiers and the

money—then there would be an end to military politics.’ Now

there are representative governments in almost the whole of

Europe, and in spite of that, war expenditures and the

preparations for war have increased to alarming proportions.

 

“It is evident that the insanity of sovereigns has gained

possession of the ruling classes. War is not made now because

one king has been wanting in civility to the mistress of

another king, as it was in Louis XIV.‘s time. But the natural

and honorable sentiments of national honor and patriotism are

so exaggerated, and the public opinion of one nation so excited

against another, that it is enough for a statement to be made

(even though it may be a false report) that the ambassador of

one state was not received by the principal personage of

another state to cause the outbreak of the most awful and

destructive war there has ever been seen. Europe keeps more

soldiers under arms to-day than in the time of the great

Napoleonic wars. All citizens with few exceptions are forced

to spend some years in barracks. Fortresses, arsenals, and

ships are built, new weapons are constantly being invented, to

be replaced in a short time by fresh ones, for, sad to say,

science, which ought always to be aiming at the good of

humanity, assists in the work of destruction, and is constantly

inventing new means for killing the greatest number of men in

the shortest time. And to maintain so great a multitude of

soldiers and to make such vast preparations for murder,

hundreds of millions are spent annually, sums which would be

sufficient for the education of the people and for immense

works of public utility, and which would make it possible to

find a peaceful solution of the social question.

 

“Europe, then, is, in this respect, in spite of all the

conquests of science, in the same position as in the darkest

and most barbarous days of the Middle Ages. All deplore this

state of things—neither peace nor war—and all would be glad

to escape from it. The heads of governments all declare that

they all wish for peace, and vie with one another in the most

solemn protestations of peaceful intentions. But the same day

or the next they will lay a scheme for the increase of the

armament before their legislative assembly, saying that these

are the preventive measures they take for the very purpose of

securing peace.

 

“But this is not the kind of peace we want. And the nations

are not deceived by it. True peace is based on mutual

confidence, while these huge armaments show open and utter lack

of confidence, if not concealed hostility, between states.

What should we say of a man who, wanting to show his friendly

feelings for his neighbor, should invite him to discuss their

differences with a loaded revolver in his hand?

 

“It is just this flagrant contradiction between the peaceful

professions and the warlike policy of governments which all

good citizens desire to put an end to, at any cost.”

 

People are astonished that every year there are sixty thousand

cases of suicide in Europe, and those only the recognized and

recorded cases—and excluding Russia and Turkey; but one ought

rather to be surprised that there are so few. Every man of the

present day, if we go deep enough into the contradiction between

his conscience and his life, is in a state of despair.

 

Not to speak of all the other contradictions between modern life

and the conscience, the permanently armed condition of Europe

together with its profession of Christianity is alone enough to

drive any man to despair, to doubt of the sanity of mankind, and

to terminate an existence in this senseless and brutal world.

This contradiction, which is a quintessence of all the other

contradictions, is so terrible that to live and to take part in it

is only possible if one does not think of it—if one is able to

forget it.

 

What! all of us, Christians, not only profess to love one another,

but do actually live one common life; we whose social existence

beats with one common pulse—we aid one another, learn from one

another, draw ever closer to one another to our mutual happiness,

and find in this closeness the whole meaning of life!—and tomorrow some crazy ruler will say some stupidity, and another will

answer in the same spirit, and then I must go expose myself to

being murdered, and murder men—who have done me no harm—and more

than that, whom I love. And this is not a remote contingency, but

the very thing we are all preparing for, which is not only

probable, but an inevitable certainty.

 

To recognize this clearly is enough to drive a man out of his

senses or to make him shoot himself. And this is just what does

happen, and especially often among military men. A man need only

come to himself for an instant to be impelled inevitably to such

an end.

 

And this is the only explanation of the dreadful intensity with

which men of modern times strive to stupefy themselves, with

spirits, tobacco, opium, cards, reading newspapers, traveling, and

all kinds of spectacles and amusements. These pursuits are

followed up as an important, serious business. And indeed they

are a serious business. If there were no external means