Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/96

 Rh results which must follow the enduring of violence without returning evil for evil.

Only "he that endureth to the end the same shall be saved" is said in the Christian law, and I think that it is an indubitable truth, although one which men find it hard to accept. Abstinence from returning evil for evil and non-participation in evil is the surest means not only of salvation but of victory over those who commit evil.

The Chinese could see a striking confirmation of the truth of this law after their surrender of Port Arthur to Russia. The greatest efforts to defend Port Arthur by arms against the Japanese and the Russians would not have produced such ruinous consequences for Russia and Japan as those material and moral evils which the surrender of Port Arthur to the former brought on Russia and Japan. The same will inevitably be the case with Wei-hai-Wei and Kiao-chau, surrendered by China to England and Germany.

The success of some robbers elicits the envy of others, and the prey seized becomes an object of dissension ruining the robbers themselves. Such is the case with dogs, so also is it with men who have descended to the level of animals.

Therefore it is that I now with fear and grief hear and see in your book the manifestation in China of the spirit of strife, of the desire to forcibly resist the atrocities committed by the European nations. Were this to be the case, were the Chinese people indeed to lose patience and, arming themselves according to the methods of Europeans, to expel from their midst all the European robbers—which task they could easily accomplish with their intelligence, persistence, and- energy, and above all by reason of their great numbers—it would be dreadful. Dreadful not in the sense in which this was understood by one of the coarsest and most