Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/391

 increasing number of suicides—all these are the signs of that internal contradiction which must be solved and cannot remain unsolved. And of course solved in the sense of acknowledging the law of love and denying violence. And so your activity in the Transvaal, as it seems to us, at the end of the world, is the most essential work, the most important of all the work now being done in the world, and in which not only the nations of the Christian, but of all the world, will unavoidably take part.

I think that you will be pleased to know that here in Russia this activity is also fast developing in the way of refusals to serve in the Army, the number of which increases from year to year. However insignificant is the number of our people who are passive resisters in Russia who refuse to serve in the Army, these and the others can boldly say that God is with them. And God is more powerful than man.

In acknowledging Christianity even in that corrupt form in which it is professed amongst the Christian nations, and at the same time in acknowledging the necessity of armies and armament for killing on the greatest scale in wars, there is such a clear clamouring contradiction, that it must sooner or later, possibly very soon, inevitably reveal itself and annihilate either the professing of the Christian religion, which is indispensable in keeping up these forces, or the existence of armies and all the violence kept up by