The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy

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"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 to-
morrow 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 of
dulling their sensibilities, half of mankind would shoot
themselves without delay, for to live in opposition to one's
reason is the most intolerable condition. And that is the
condition of all men of the present day. All men of the modern
world exist in a state of continual and flagrant antagonism
between their conscience and their way of life. This antagonism
is apparent in economic as well as political life. But most
striking of all is the contradiction between the Christian law of
the brotherhood of men existing in the conscience and the
necessity under which all men are placed by compulsory military
service of being prepared for hatred and murder--of being at the
same time a Christian and a gladiator.

CHAPTER VI.

ATTITUDE OF MEN OF THE PRESENT DAY TO WAR.

People do not Try to Remove the Contradiction between Life and
Conscience by a Change of Life, but their Cultivated Leaders Exert
Every Effort to Obscure the Demands of Conscience, and justify
their Life; in this Way they Degrade Society below Paganism to a
State of Primeval Barbarism--Undefined Attitude of Modern Leaders
of Thought to War, to Universal Militarism, and to Compulsory
Service in Army--One Section Regards War as an Accidental
Political Phenomenon, to be Avoided by External Measures only--
Peace Congress--The Article in the REVUE DES REVUES--Proposition
of Maxime du Camp--Value of Boards of Arbitration and Suppression
of Armies--Attitude of Governments to Men of this Opinion and What
they Do--Another Section Regards War as Cruel, but Inevitable--
Maupassant--Rod--A Third Section Regard War as Necessary, and not
without its Advantages--Doucet-Claretie-Zola-Vogue.

The antagonism between life and the conscience may be removed in
two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience. And
there would seem there can be no doubt as to these alternatives.

A man may cease to do what he regards as wrong, but he cannot
cease to consider wrong what is wrong. Just in the same way all
humanity may cease to do what it regards as wrong, but far from
being able to change, it cannot even retard for a time the
continual growth of a clearer recognition of what is wrong and
therefore ought not to be. And therefore it would seem inevitable
for Christian men to abandon the pagan forms of society which they
condemn, and to reconstruct their social existence on the
Christian principles they profess.

So it would be were it not for the law of inertia, as immutable a
force in men and nations as in inanimate bodies. In men it takes
the form of the psychological principle, so truly expressed in the
words of the Gospel, "They have loved darkness better than light
because their deeds were evil." This principle shows itself in
men not trying to recognize the truth, but to persuade themselves
that the life they are leading, which is what they like and are
used to, is a life perfectly consistent with truth.

Slavery was opposed to all the moral principles advocated by Plato
and Aristotle, yet neither of them saw that, because to renounce
slavery would have meant the break up of the life they were
living. We see the same thing in our modern world.

The division of men into two castes, as well as the use of force
in government and war, are opposed to every moral principle
professed by our modern society. Yet the cultivated and advanced
men of the day seem not to see it.

The majority, if not all, of the cultivated men of our day try
unconsciously to maintain the old social conception of life, which
justifies their position, and to hide from themselves and others
its insufficiency, and above all the necessity of adopting the
Christian conception of life, which will mean the break up of the
whole existing social order. They struggle to keep up the
organization based on the social conception of life, but do not
believe in it themselves, because it is extinct and it is
impossible to believe in it.

All modern literature--philosophical, political, and artistic--is
striking in this respect. What wealth of idea, of form, of color,
what erudition, what art, but what a lack of serious matter, what
dread of any exactitude of thought or expression! Subtleties,
allegories, humorous fancies, the widest generalizations, but
nothing simple and clear, nothing going straight to the point,
that is, to the problem of life.

But that is not all; besides these graceful frivolities, our
literature is full of simple nastiness and brutality, of arguments
which would lead men back in the most refined way to primeval
barbarism, to the principles not only of the pagan, but even of
the animal life, which we have left behind us five thousand years
ago.

And it could not be otherwise. In their dread of the Christian
conception of life which will destroy the social order, which some
cling to only from habit, others also from interest, men cannot
but be thrown back upon the pagan conception of life and the
principles based on it. Nowadays we see advocated not only
patriotism and aristocratic principles just as they were advocated
two thousand years ago, but even the coarsest epicureanism and
animalism, only with this difference, that the men who then
professed those views believed in them, while nowadays even the
advocates of such views do not believe in them, for they have no
meaning for the present day. No one can stand still when the
earth is shaking under his feet. If we do not go forward we must
go back. And strange and terrible to say, the cultivated men of
our day, the leaders of thought, are in reality with their subtle
reasoning drawing society back, not to paganism even, but to a
state of primitive barbarism.

This tendency on the part of the leading thinkers of the day is
nowhere more apparent than in their attitude to the phenomenon in
which all the insufficiency of the social conception of life is
presented in the most concentrated form--in their attitude, that
is, to war, to the general arming of nations, and to universal
compulsory service.

The undefined, if not disingenuous, attitude of modern thinkers to
this phenomenon is striking. It takes three forms in cultivated
society. One section look at it as an incidental phenomenon,
arising out of the special political situation of Europe, and
consider that this state of things can be reformed without a
revolution in the whole internal social order of nations, by
external measures of international diplomacy. Another section
regard it as something cruel and hideous, but at the same time
fated and inevitable, like disease and death. A third party with
cool indifference consider war as an inevitable phenomenon,
beneficial in its effects and therefore desirable.

Men look at the subject from different points of view, but all
alike talk of war as though it were something absolutely
independent of the will of those who take part in it. And
consequently they do not even admit the natural question which
presents itself to every simple man: "How about me--ought I to
take any part in it?" In their view no question of this kind even
exists, and every man, however he may regard war from a personal
standpoint, must slavishly submit to the requirements of the
authorities on the subject.

The attitude of the first section of thinkers, those who see a way
out of war in international diplomatic measures, is well expressed
in the report of the last Peace Congress in London, and the
articles and letters upon war that appeared in No. 8 of the REVUE
DES REVUES, 1891. The congress after gathering together from
various quarters the verbal and written opinion of learned men
opened the proceedings by a religious service, and after listening
to addresses for five whole days, concluded them by a public
dinner and speeches. They adopted the following resolutions:

"1. The congress affirms its belief that the brotherhood of man
involves as a necessary consequence a brotherhood of nations.

"2. The congress recognizes the important influence that
Christianity exercises on the moral and political progress of
mankind, and earnestly urges upon ministers of the Gospel and
other religious teachers the duty of setting forth the
principles of peace and good will toward men. AND IT RECOMMENDS
THAT THE THIRD SUNDAY IN DECEMBER BE SET APART FOR THA
PURPOSE.

"3. The congress expresses the opinion that all teachers of
history should call the attention of the young to the grave
evils inflicted on mankind in all ages by war, and to the fact
that such war has been waged for most inadequate causes.

"4. The congress protests against the use of military drill in
schools by way of physical exercise, and suggests the formation
of brigades for saving life rather than of a quasi-military
character; and urges the desirability of impressing on the
Board of Examiners who formulate the questions for examination
the propriety of guiding the minds of children in the
principles of peace.

"5. The congress holds that the doctrine of the Rights of Man
requires that the aboriginal and weaker races, their
territories and liberties, shall be guarded from injustice and
fraud, and that these races shall be shielded against the vices
so prevalent among the so-called advanced races of men. It
further expresses its conviction that there should be concert
of action among the nations for the accomplishment of these
ends. The congress expresses its hearty appreciation of the
resolutions of the Anti-slavery Conference held recently at
Brussels for the amelioration of the condition of the peoples
of Africa.

"6. The congress believes that the warlike prejudices and
traditions which are still fostered in the various
nationalities, and the misrepresentations by leaders of public
opinion in legislative assemblies or through the press, are
often indirect causes of war, and that these evils should be
counteracted by the publication of accurate information tending
to the removal of misunderstanding between nations, and
recommends the importance of considering the question of
commencing an international newspaper with such a purpose.

"7. The congress proposes to the Inter-parliamentary Conference
that the utmost support should be given to every project for
unification of weights and measures, coinage, tariff, postage,
and telegraphic arrangements, etc., which would assist in
constituting a commercial, industrial, and scientific union of
the peoples.

"8. The congress, in view of the vast social and moral
influence of woman, urges upon every woman to sustain the
things that make for peace, as otherwise she incurs grave
responsibility for the continuance of the systems of
militarism.

"9. The congress expresses the hope that the Financial Reform
Association and other similar societies in Europe and America
should unite in considering means for establishing equitable
commercial relations between states, by the reduction of import
duties. The congress feels that it can affirm that the whole
of Europe desires peace, and awaits with impatience the
suppression of armaments, which, under the plea of defense,
become in their turn a danger by keeping alive mutual distrust,
and are, at the same time, the cause of that general economic
disturbance which stands in the way of settling in a
satisfactory manner the problems of labor and poverty, which
ought to take precedence of all others.

"10. The congress, recognizing that a general disarmament would
be the best guarantee of peace and would lead to the solution
of the questions which now most divide states, expresses the
wish that a congress of representatives of all the states of
Europe may be assembled as soon as possible to consider the
means of effecting a gradual general disarmament.

"11. The congress, in consideration of the fact that the
timidity of a single power might delay the convocation of the
above-mentioned congress, is of opinion that the government
which should first dismiss any considerable number of soldiers
would confer a signal benefit on Europe and mankind, because it
would, by public opinion, oblige other governments to follow
its example, and by the moral force of this accomplished fact
would have increased rather than diminished the conditions of
its national defense.

"12. The congress, considering the question of disarmament, as
of peace in general, depends on public opinion, recommends the
peace societies, as well as all friends of peace, to be active
in its propaganda, especially at the time of parliamentary
elections, in order that the electors should give their votes
to candidates who are pledged to support Peace, Disarmament,
and Arbitration.

"13. The congress congratulates the friends of peace on the
resolution adopted by the International American Conference,
held at Washington in April last, by which it was recommended
that arbitration should be obligatory in all controversies,
whatever their origin, except only those which may imperil the
independence of one of the nations involved.

"14. The congress recommends this resolution to the attention
of European statesmen, and expresses the ardent desire that
similar treaties may speedily be entered into between the other
nations of the world.

"15. The congress expresses its satisfaction at the adoption by
the Spanish Senate on June 16 last of a project of law
authorizing the government to negotiate general or special
treaties of arbitration for the settlement of all disputes
except those relating to the independence or internal
government of the states affected; also at the adoption of
resolutions to a like effect by the Norwegian Storthing and by
the Italian Chamber.

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