Page:Leo Tolstoy - The Russian Revolution (1907).djvu/98

 Rh communication were very primitive, merely produced the result of bringing a small portion of the population into subjection to the violence of the rulers, whereas the majority could live a peaceful life without coming into direct touch with the oppressors. Thus it was in the whole world, and so until quite latterly did it continue amongst the Eastern nations as well, and especially in the vast land of China.

But such a situation could not and cannot continue, for two reasons: firstly, because coercive power through its very essence keeps continually becoming more depraved, and secondly, because the subjugated people, becoming more and more enlightened, see with increasing clearness the evil of their submission to power. The effect of this is further increased by technical improvements in the means of communication: roads, the post, telegraph, telephones, owing to which the rulers manifest their influence in places where it could not otherwise have reached; and the oppressed also interassociating ever more closely, understand clearer and clearer the disadvantages of their position.

And the disadvantages in course of time become so heavy that the subdued feel impelled to alter in some way or another their relation to authority.

The Western nations have long felt this necessity and have long since changed their attitude to power by the one means, common to all Western peoples—by the limitation of power throughrepresentatives, that is as a matter of fact by the spreading of power, by its transference from one or a few to the many.

At the present time I think that the term has arrived for the Eastern nations also and for China similarly to realise all the evil of despotic power and to search for the means of liberation from it the present conditions of life having become unbearable.

I know that in China there exists a teaching implying that the chief ruler, the "Bogdikhan," should be the wisest and most