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The Kingdom of God is within you

L >> Leo Tolstoy >> The Kingdom of God is within you




"16. The congress resolves that a committee be appointed to
address communications to the principal political, religious,
commercial, and labor and peace organizations, requesting them
to send petitions to the governmental authorities praying that
measures be taken for the formation of suitable tribunals for
the adjudicature of international questions so as to avoid the
resort to war.

"17. Seeing (1) that the object pursued by all peace societies
is the establishment of judicial order between nations, and (2)
that neutralization by international treaties constitutes a
step toward this judicial state and lessens the number of
districts in which war can be carried on, the congress
recommends a larger extension of the rule of neutralization,
and expresses the wish, (1) that all treaties which at present
assure to certain states the benefit of neutrality remain in
force, or if necessary be amended in a manner to render the
neutrality more effective, either by extending neutralization
to the whole of the state or by ordering the demolition of
fortresses, which constitute rather a peril than a guarantee
for neutrality; (2) that new treaties in harmony with the
wishes of the populations concerned be concluded for
establishing the neutralization of other states.

"18. The sub-committee proposes, (1) that the annual Peace
Congress should be held either immediately before the meeting
of the annual Sub-parliamentary Conference, or immediately
after it in the same town; (2) that the question of an
international peace emblem be postponed SINE DIE; (3) that the
following resolutions be adopted:

"a. To express satisfaction at the official overtures of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States addressed to the
highest representatives of each church organization in
Christendom to unite in a general conference to promote the
substitution of international arbitration for war.

"b. To express in the name of the congress its profound
reverence for the memory of Aurelio Saffi, the great Italian
jurist, a member of the committee of the International
League of Peace and Liberty.

"(4) That the memorial adopted by this congress and
signed by the president to the heads of the civilized states
should, as far as practicable, be presented to each power by
influential deputations.

"(5) That the following resolutions be adopted:

"a. A resolution of thanks to the presidents of the various
sittings of the congress.

"b. A resolution of thanks to the chairman, the secretaries,
and the members of the bureau of the congress.

"c. A resolution of thanks to the conveners and members of
the sectional committees.

"d. A resolution of thanks to Rev. Canon Scott Holland, Rev.
Dr. Reuen Thomas, and Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon for their pulpit
addresses before the congress, and also to the authorities
of St. Paul's Cathedral, the City Temple, and Stamford Hill
Congregational Church for the use of those buildings for
public services.

"e. A letter of thanks to her Majesty for permission to
visit Windror Castle.

"f. And also a resolution of thanks to the Lord Mayor and
Lady Mayoress, to Mr. Passmore Edwards, and other friends
who have extended their hospitality to the members of the
congress.

"19. The congress places on record a heartfelt expression of
gratitude to Almighty God for the remarkable harmony and
concord which have characterized the meetings of the assembly,
in which so many men and women of varied nations, creeds,
tongues, and races have gathered in closest co-operation, and
for the conclusion of the labors of the congress; and expresses
its firm and unshaken belief in the ultimate triumph of the
cause of peace and of the principles advocated at these
meetings."

The fundamental idea of the congress is the necessity (1) of
diffusing among all people by all means the conviction of the
disadvantages of war and the great blessing of peace, and (2) of
rousing governments to the sense of the superiority of
international arbitration over war and of the consequent
advisability and necessity of disarmament. To attain the first
aim the congress has recourse to teachers of history, to women,
and to the clergy, with the advice to the latter to preach on the
evil of war and the blessing of peace every third Sunday in
December. To attain the second object the congress appeals to
governments with the suggestion that they should disband their
armies and replace war by arbitration.

To preach to men of the evil of war and the blessing of peace!
But the blessing of peace is so well known to men that, ever since
there have been men at all, their best wish has been expressed in
the greeting, "Peace be with you." So why preach about it?

Not only Christians, but pagans, thousands of years ago, all
recognized the evil of war and the blessing of peace. So that the
recommendation to ministers of the Gospel to preach on the evil of
war and the blessing of peace every third Sunday in December is
quite superfluous.

The Christian cannot but preach on that subject every day of his
life. If Christians and preachers of Christianity do not do so,
there must be reasons for it. And until these have been removed
no recommendations will be effective. Still less effective will
be the recommendations to governments to disband their armies and
replace them by international boards of arbitration. Governments,
too, know very well the difficulty and the burdensomeness of
raising and maintaining forces, and if in spite of that knowledge
they do, at the cost of terrible strain and effort, raise and
maintain forces, it is evident that they cannot do otherwise, and
the recommendation of the congress can never change it. But the
learned gentlemen are unwilling to see that, and keep hoping to
find a political combination, through which governments shall be
induced to limit their powers themselves.

"Can we get rid of war"? asks a learned writer in the REVUE DES
REVUES.

"All are agreed that if it were to break out in Europe, its
consequences would be like those of the great inroads of
barbarians. The existence of whole nationalities would be at
stake, and therefore the war would be desperate, bloody,
atrocious.

"This consideration, together with the terrible engines of
destruction invented by modern science, retards the moment of
declaring war, and maintains the present temporary situation,
which might continue for an indefinite period, except for the
fearful cost of maintaining armaments which are exhausting the
European states and threatening to reduce nations to a state of
misery hardly less than that of war itself.

"Struck by this reflection, men of various countries have tried
to find means for preventing, or at least for softening, the
results of the terrible slaughter with which we are threatened.

"Such are the questions brought forward by the Peace Congress
shortly to be held in Rome, and the publication of a pamphlet,
Sur le Désarmement.'

"It is unhappily beyond doubt that with the present
organization of the majority of European states, isolated from
one another and guided by distinct interests, the absolute
suppression of war is an illusion with which it would be
dangerous to cheat ourselves. Wiser rules and regulations
imposed on these duels between nations might, however, at least
limit its horrors.

"It is equally chimerical to reckon on projects of disarmament,
the execution of which is rendered almost impossible by
considerations of a popular character present to the mind of
all our readers. [This probably means that France cannot
disband its army before taking its revenge.] Public opinion is
not prepared to accept them, and moreover, the international
relations between different peoples are not such as to make
their acceptance possible. Disarmament imposed on one nation
by another in circumstances threatening its security would be
equivalent to a declaration of war.

"However, one may admit that an exchange of ideas between the
nations interested could aid, to a certain degree, in bringing
about the good understanding indispensable to any negotiations,
and would render possible a considerable reduction of the
military expenditure which is crushing the nations of Europe
and greatly hindering the solution of the social question,
which each individually must solve on pain of having internal
war as the price for escaping it externally.

"We might at least demand the reduction of the enormous
expenses of war organized as it is at present with a view to
the power of invasion within twenty-four hours and a decisive
battle within a week of the declaration of war.

"We ought to manage so that states could not make the attack
suddenly and invade each other's territories within twenty-four
hours."

This practical notion has been put forth by Maxime du Camp, and
his article concludes with it.

The propositions of M. du Camp are as follows:

1. A diplomatic congress to be held every year.

2. No war to be declared till two months after the incident
which provoked it. (The difficulty here would be to decide
precisely what incident did provoke the war, since whenever war
is declared there are very many such incidents, and one would
have to decide from which to reckon the two months' interval.)

3. No war to be declared before it has been submitted to a
plebiscitum of the nations preparing to take part in it.

4. No hostilities to be commenced till a month after the
official declaration of war.

"No war to be declared. No hostilities to be commenced," etc.
But who is to arrange that no war is to be declared? Who is to
compel people to do this and that? Who is to force states to
delay their operations for a certain fixed time? All the other
states. But all these others are also states which want holding
in check and keeping within limits, and forcing, too. Who is to
force them, and how? Public opinion. But if there is a public
opinion which can force governments to delay their operations for
a fixed period, the same public opinion can force governments not
to declare war at all.

But, it will be replied, there may be such a balance of power,
such a PONDÉRATION DE FORCES, as would lead states to hold back of
their own accord. Well, that has been tried and is being tried
even now. The Holy Alliance was nothing but that, the League of
Peace was another attempt at the same thing, and so on.

But, it will be answered, suppose all were agreed. If all were
agreed there would be no more war certainly, and no need for
arbitration either.

"A court of arbitration! Arbitration shall replace war. Questions
shall be decided by a court of arbitration. The Alabama question
was decided by a court of arbitration, and the question of the
Caroline Islands was submitted to the decision of the Pope.
Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, and Holland have all declared that
they prefer arbitration to war."

I dare say Monaco has expressed the same preference. The only
unfortunate thing is that Germany, Russia, Austria, and France
have not so far shown the same inclination. It is amazing how men
can deceive themselves when they find it necessary! Governments
consent to decide their disagreements by arbitration and to
disband their armies! The differences between Russia and Poland,
between England and Ireland, between Austria and Bohemia, between
Turkey and the Slavonic states, between France and Germany, to be
soothed away by amiable conciliation!

One might as well suggest to merchants and bankers that they
should sell nothing for a greater price than they gave for it,
should undertake the distribution of wealth for no profit, and
should abolish money, as it would thus be rendered unnecessary.

But since commercial and banking operations consist in nothing but
selling for more than the cost price, this would be equivalent to
an invitation to suppress themselves. It is the same in regard to
governments. To suggest to governments that they should not have
recourse to violence, but should decide their misunderstandings in
accordance with equity, is inviting them to abolish themselves as
rulers, and that no government can ever consent to do.

The learned men form societies (there are more than a hundred such
societies), assemble in congresses (such as those recently held in
London and Paris, and shortly to be held in Rome), deliver
addresses, eat public dinners and make speeches, publish journals,
and prove by every means possible that the nations forced to
support millions of troops are strained to the furthest limits of
their endurance, that the maintenance of these huge armed forces
is in opposition to all the aims, the interests, and the wishes of
the people, and that it is possible, moreover, by writing numerous
papers, and uttering a great many words, to bring all men into
agreement and to arrange so that they shall have no antagonistic
interests, and then there will be no more war.

When I was a little boy they told me if I wanted to catch a bird I
must put salt on its tail. I ran after the birds with the salt in
my hand, but I soon convinced myself that if I could put salt on a
bird's tail, I could catch it, and realized that I had been
hoaxed.

People ought to realize the same fact when they read books and
articles on arbitration and disarmament.

If one could put salt on a bird's tail, it would be because it
could not fly and there would be no difficulty in catching it. If
the bird had wings and did not want to be caught, it would not let
one put salt on its tail, because the specialty of a bird is to
fly. In precisely the same way the specialty of government is not
to obey, but to enforce obedience. And a government is only a
government so long as it can make itself obeyed, and therefore it
always strives for that and will never willingly abandon its
power. But since it is on the army that the power of government
rests, it will never give up the army, and the use of the army in
war.

The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and
others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one
set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as
shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their
collective capacity. They have so long been persuading other
people of this that at last they have persuaded themselves of it;
and thus they often seriously suppose that government can be bound
by considerations of justice. But history shows that from Caesar
to Napoleon, and from Napoleon to Bismarck, government is in its
essence always a force acting in violation of justice, and that it
cannot be otherwise. Justice can have no binding force on a ruler
or rulers who keep men, deluded and drilled in readiness for acts
of violence--soldiers, and by means of them control others. And
so governments can never be brought to consent to diminish the
number of these drilled slaves, who constitute their whole power
and importance.

Such is the attitude of certain learned men to the contradiction
under which our society is being crushed, and such are their
methods of solving it. Tell these people that the whole matter
rests on the personal attitude of each man to the moral and
religious question put nowadays to everyone, the question, that
is, whether it is lawful or unlawful for him to take his share of
military service, and these learned gentlemen will shrug their
shoulders and not condescend to listen or to answer you. The
solution of the question in their idea is to be found in reading
addresses, writing books, electing presidents, vice-presidents,
and secretaries, and meeting and speaking first in one town and
then in another. From all this speechifying and writing it will
come to pass, according to their notions, that governments will
cease to levy the soldiers, on whom their whole strength depends,
will listen to their discourses, and will disband their forces,
leaving themselves without any defense, not only against their
neighbors, but also against their own subjects. As though a band
of brigands, who have some unarmed travelers bound and ready to be
plundered, should be so touched by their complaints of the pain
caused by the cords they are fastened with as to let them go
again.

Still there are people who believe in this, busy themselves over
peace congresses, read addresses, and write books. And
governments, we may be quite sure, express their sympathy and make
a show of encouraging them. In the same way they pretend to
support temperance societies, while they are living principally on
the drunkenness of the people; and pretend to encourage education,
when their whole strength is based on ignorance; and to support
constitutional freedom, when their strength rests on the absence
of freedom; and to be anxious for the improvement of the condition
of the working classes, when their very existence depends on their
oppression; and to support Christianity, when Christianity
destroys all government.

To be able to do this they have long ago elaborated methods
encouraging temperance, which cannot suppress drunkenness; methods
of supporting education, which not only fail to prevent ignorance,
but even increase it; methods of aiming at freedom and
constitutionalism, which are no hindrance to despotism; methods of
protecting the working classes, which will not free them from
slavery; and a Christianity, too, they have elaborated, which does
not destroy, but supports governments.

Now there is something more for the government to encourage--
peace. The sovereigns, who nowadays take counsel with their
ministers, decide by their will alone whether the butchery of
millions is to be begun this year or next. They know very well
that all these discourses upon peace will not hinder them from
sending millions of men to butchery when it seems good to them.
They listen even with satisfaction to these discourses, encourage
them, and take part in them.

All this, far from being detrimental, is even of service to
governments, by turning people's attention from the most important
and pressing question: Ought or ought not each man called upon for
military service to submit to serve in the army?

"Peace will soon be arranged, thanks to alliances and congresses,
to books and pamphlets; meantime go and put on your uniform, and
prepare to cause suffering and to endure it for our benefit," is
the government's line of argument. And the learned gentlemen who
get up congresses and write articles are in perfect agreement with
it.

This is the attitude of one set of thinkers. And since it is that
most beneficial to governments, it is also the most encouraged by
all intelligent governments.

Another attitude to war has something tragical in it. There are
men who maintain that the love for peace and the inevitability of
war form a hideous contradiction, and that such is the fate of
man. These are mostly gifted and sensitive men, who see and
realize all the horror and imbecility and cruelty of war, but
through some strange perversion of mind neither see nor seek to
find any way out of this position, and seem to take pleasure in
teasing the wound by dwelling on the desperate position of
humanity. A notable example of such an attitude to war is to be
found in the celebrated French writer Guy de Maupassant. Looking
from his yacht at the drill and firing practice of the French
soldiers the following reflections occur to him:

"When I think only of this word war, a kind of terror seizes
upon me, as though I were listening to some tale of sorcery, of
the Inquisition, some long past, remote abomination, monstrous,
unnatural.

"When cannibalism is spoken of, we smile with pride,
proclaiming our superiority to these savages. Which are the
savages, the real savages? Those who fight to eat the
conquered, or those who fight to kill, for nothing but to kill?

"The young recruits, moving about in lines yonder, are destined
to death like the flocks of sheep driven by the butcher along
the road. They will fall in some plain with a saber cut in the
head, or a bullet through the breast. And these are young men
who might work, be productive and useful. Their fathers are
old and poor. Their mothers, who have loved them for twenty
years, worshiped them as none but mothers can, will learn in
six months' time, or a year perhaps, that their son, their boy,
the big boy reared with so much labor, so much expense, so much
love, has been thrown in a hole like some dead dog, after being
disemboweled by a bullet, and trampled, crushed, to a mass of
pulp by the charges of cavalry. Why have they killed her boy,
her handsome boy, her one hope, her pride, her life? She does
not know. Ah, why?

"War! fighting! slaughter! massacres of men! And we have now,
in our century, with our civilization, with the spread of
science, and the degree of philosophy which the genius of man
is supposed to have attained, schools for training to kill, to
kill very far off, to perfection, great numbers at once, to
kill poor devils of innocent men with families and without any
kind of trial.

"AND WHAT IS MOST BEWILDERING IS THAT THE PEOPLE DO NOT RISE
AGAINST THEIR GOVERNMENTS. FOR WHAT DIFFERENCE IS THERE
BETWEEN MONARCHIES AND REPUBLICS? THE MOST BEWILDERING THING
IS THAT THE WHOLE OF SOCIETY IS NOT IN REVOLT AT THE WORD WAR."

"Ah! we shall always live under the burden of the ancient and
odious customs, the criminal prejudices, the ferocious ideas of
our barbarous ancestors, for we are beasts, and beasts we shall
remain, dominated by instinct and changed by nothing. Would
not any other man than Victor Hugo have been exiled for that
mighty cry of deliverance and truth? 'To-day force is called
violence, and is being brought to judgment; war has been put on
its trial. At the plea of the human race, civilization
arraigns warfare, and draws up the great list of crimes laid at
the charge of conquerors and generals. The nations are coming
to understand that the magnitude of a crime cannot be its
extenuation; that if killing is a crime, killing many can be no
extenuating circumstance; that if robbery is disgraceful,
invasion cannot be glorious. Ah! let us proclaim these
absolute truths; let us dishonor war!'

"Vain wrath," continues Maupassant, "a poet's indignation. War is
held in more veneration than ever.

"A skilled proficient in that line, a slaughterer of genius,
Von Moltke, in reply to the peace delegates, once uttered these
strange words:

"'War is holy, war is ordained of God. It is one of the most
sacred laws of the world. It maintains among men all the great
and noble sentiments--honor, devotion, virtue, and courage, and
saves them in short from falling into the most hideous
materialism.'

"So, then, bringing millions of men together into herds,
marching by day and by night without rest, thinking of nothing,
studying nothing, learning nothing, reading nothing, being
useful to no one, wallowing in filth, sleeping in mud, living
like brutes in a continual state of stupefaction, sacking
towns, burning villages, ruining whole populations, then
meeting another mass of human flesh, falling upon them, making
pools of blood, and plains of flesh mixed with trodden mire and
red with heaps of corpses, having your arms or legs carried
off, your brains blown out for no advantage to anyone, and
dying in some corner of a field while your old parents, your
wife and children are perishing of hunger--that is what is
meant by not falling into the most hideous materialism!

"Warriors are the scourge of the world. We struggle against
nature and ignorance and obstacles of all kinds to make our
wretched life less hard. Learned men--benefactors of all--
spend their lives in working, in seeking what can aid, what be
of use, what can alleviate the lot of their fellows. They
devote themselves unsparingly to their task of usefulness,
making one discovery after another, enlarging the sphere of
human intelligence, extending the bounds of science, adding
each day some new store to the sum of knowledge, gaining each
day prosperity, ease, strength for their country.

"War breaks out. In six months the generals have destroyed the
work of twenty years of effort, of patience, and of genius.

"That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous
materialism.

"We have seen it, war. "We have seen men turned to brutes,
frenzied, killing for fun, for terror, for bravado, for
ostentation. Then when right is no more, law is dead, every
notion of justice has disappeared. We have seen men shoot
innocent creatures found on the road, and suspected because
they were afraid. We have seen them kill dogs chained at their
masters' doors to try their new revolvers, we have seen them
fire on cows lying in a field for no reason whatever, simply
for the sake of shooting, for a joke.

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