Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 06 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/15

Rh his relationship with the commander-in-chief to escape arduous service. He was sent to Petersburg with despatches, and when he left the army at the end of the campaign he was a lieutenant of artillery. His three sketches, "Sevastopol in December, 1854," "In May, 1855," and "In August, 1855," were published separately in the Sovremennik, or Contemporary, and in book form in 1856. They instantly established the young author's reputation. They were criticized as being fragmentary and formless. But in spite of criticism the power and purpose of the writer were instantly recognized and understood. His mission was to tell the truth about war; to show forth the heroism of the common soldier who uncomplainingly went forth to death, and mutilation, and suffering, while the officer who sent him forth was more concerned with the tying of his cravat or the winning of a decoration than for the country he was paid to serve.

Count Tolstoï could never be a romanticist after that experience; it has been well said that "it finally determined the line of his after development; it gave him an abiding horror of war, an abiding suspicion of thoughtless patriotism, a sheaf of ghastly memories of butchery and death."

As in all Russian books, there is no attempt to preach or draw deductions. The grim reality is presented, and the reader may make what application he pleases. But out of "Dead Souls" and "A Sportsman's Recollections" comes the education that leads to the emancipation of the serfs, and out of the "Sevastopol Sketches," and the awful pictures of war which Tolstoï's pupil Garshin paints,—one may add, out of the realistic paintings of Vereshchagin,—will rise a spirit which shall make the nations refuse to fight, and war, like slavery, shall end.