The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Leo Tolstoy [reading cloud ebooks .TXT] 📗

unprofitable for people and that peace is a great good, and in the second, to act upon the governments, impressing them with the superiority of the international tribunal over wars, and, therefore, the advantages and the necessity of disarmament. To attain the first end, the Congress turns to the teachers of history, to the women, and to the clergy with the advice that the evil of war and the good of peace be preached to men on every third Sunday in December; to attain the second end, the Congress addresses the governments, proposing that they disarm and substitute arbitration for war.

To preach the evil of war and the good of peace to men! But the evil of war and the good of peace are so well known to men that, so long as we have known men, the best greeting has been, “Peace be with you.” What need is there, then, in preaching?

Not only the Christians, but all the pagans thousands of years ago knew the evil of war and the good of peace⁠—consequently the advice given to the preachers of the Gospel to preach on the evil of war and the good of peace on every third Sunday in December is quite superfluous.

A Christian cannot help but preach this at all times, on all the days of his life. If Christians and preachers of Christianity do not do so, there must be causes for this, and so long as these causes are not removed, no advice will be effective. Still less effective can be the advice given to the governments, to dismiss the armies and substitute international tribunals for them. The governments themselves know very well all the difficulty and burdensomeness of collecting and maintaining armies, and if, in spite of it, they continue with terrible efforts and tension to collect and maintain armies, they obviously cannot do otherwise, and the advice of the Congress cannot change anything. But the learned do not want to see this, and all hope to find a combination by which the governments, who produce the wars, will limit themselves.

“Is it possible to be freed from war?” writes a learned man in the Revue des Revues. “All admit that when it breaks loose in Europe, its consequences will be like a great incursion of the barbarians. In a forthcoming war the existence of whole nationalities will be at stake, and so it will be sanguinary, desperate, cruel.

“It is these considerations, combined with those terrible implements of war which are at the disposal of modern science, that are retarding the moment of the declaration of war and are maintaining the existing temporary order of things, which might be prolonged for an indefinite time, if it were not for those terrible expenses that oppress the European nations and threaten to bring them to no lesser calamities than those which are produced by war.

“Startled by this idea, the men of the various countries have sought for a means for stopping or at least mitigating the consequences of the terrible slaughter which is menacing us.

“Such are the questions that are propounded by the Congress soon to be held in Rome and in pamphlets dealing with disarmament.

“Unfortunately it is certain that with the present structure of the majority of the European states, which are removed from one another and are guided by various interests, the complete cessation of war is a dream with which it would be dangerous to console ourselves. Still, some more reasonable laws and regulations, accepted by all, in these duels of the nations might considerably reduce the horrors of war.

“Similarly Utopian would be the hope of disarmament, which is almost impossible, from considerations of a national character, which are intelligible to our readers.”

(This, no doubt, means that France cannot disarm previous to avenging its wrongs.)

“Public opinion is not prepared for the adoption of projects of disarmament, and, besides, the international relations are not such as to make their adoption possible.

“Disarmament, demanded by one nation of another, is tantamount to a declaration of war.

“It must, however, be admitted that the exchange of views between the interested nations will to a certain extent aid in the international agreement and will make possible a considerable diminution of the military expenses, which now oppress the European nations at the expense of the solution of social questions, the necessity of which is felt by every state individually, threatening to provoke an internal war in the effort to avert one from without.

“It is possible at least to assume a diminution of the enormous expenses which are needed in connection with the present business of war, which aims at the possibility of seizing the adversary’s possessions within twenty-four hours and giving a decisive battle a week after the declaration of war.”

What is needed is, that states should not be able to attack other states and in twenty-four hours to seize the possessions of others.

This practical idea was expressed by Maxime du Camp, and to this the conclusion of the article is reduced.

M. du Camp’s propositions are these:

“A diplomatic congress ought to meet every year.

“No war can be declared sooner than two months after the incident provoking it. (The difficulty will be to determine which incident it is that provokes the war, because with every war there are a very large number of such incidents, and it would be necessary to decide from which incident the two months are to be counted.)

“War cannot be declared before it is submitted to the vote of the nations preparing for it.

“Military action cannot begin sooner than a month after the declaration of war.

“War cannot be begun⁠ ⁠… must⁠ ⁠…”

… and so forth.

But who will see to it that war cannot be begun? Who will see to it that men must do so-and-so? Who will compel the power to wait until the proper time? All the other powers need just as much to be moderated and placed within bounds and compelled. Who will do the compelling? and how?⁠—Public opinion.⁠—But if there is a public opinion which