Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/215



S there in Russia sufficient grain to feed the people until the new crop is gathered?

Some say there is, others say there is not; but no one knows this absolutely. But this must be known, and known definitely now before the beginning of the winter—just as it is necessary for men who are going off on a long voyage to know whether the ship has a sufficient supply of fresh water and food or not.

It is terrible to think what would happen to the officers and passengers of the ship when in the middle of the ocean it should transpire that all the provisions had gone. It is still more terrible to think what will happen to us if we believe in those that assure us that we have grain enough for all the starving, and it should prove before spring that they were mistaken in their assurances.

It is terrible to think of the consequence of such a blunder. Why, the consequence of this blunder would be something awful: the death of millions by starvation, and, worst of all misfortunes, the exasperation and anger of men. It is good merely by cannon-shots to warn the inhabitants of Petersburg that the water is rising, because that is all that can be done. No one knows, no one can know, how high the water will rise; whether it will stand where it stood the year before, or reach its limit of four and twenty years ago, or rise still higher.

The famine of this year, moreover, is a misfortune incomparably greater than the misfortune of the flood,