Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/30

 Rh attached to power: bribery, flattery, vanity, self-conceit, idleness and, above all, immoral participation in deeds of violence. Every member of Parliament is exposed to all these temptations in a yet greater degree. Every Deputy always begins his career of power by befooling people, making promises he knows he will not keep; and when sitting in the House he takes part in making laws that are enforced by violence. It is the same with all Senators and Presidents. Similar corruption prevails in the election of a President. In the United States the election of a President costs millions to those financiers who know that when elected he will maintain certain monopolies or import duties advantageous to them, on various articles, which will enable them to recoup the cost of the election a hundredfold.

And this corruption, with all its accompanying phenomena—the desire to avoid hard work and to benefit by comforts and pleasures provided by others; interests and cares, inaccessible to a man engaged in work, concerning the general business of the State; the spread of a lying and inflammatory press; and, above all, animosity between nation and nation, class and class, man and man—has grown and grown, till it has reached such dimensions that the struggle of all men against their fellows has become so habitual a state of things, that Science (the Science that is engaged in condoning all the nastiness done by men) has decided that the struggle and enmity of all against all is a necessary, unavoidable and beneficent condition of human life.

That peace, which to the ancients who saluted each other with the words "Peace be unto you!" seemed the greatest of blessings, has now quite disappeared from among the Western peoples; and not only has it disappeared, but by the aid of science, men try to assure themselves that not in peace, but in the strife of all against all, lies man's highest destiny.

And really, among the Western nations, an unceasing industrial, commercial and military strife is continually waged; a strife of State against State, class against class, Labour against Capital, party against party, man against man.