Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/346

322 their dwellings and settled in localities where, homeless and without means of earning their food, they are gradually dying out from want and disease. And all this is being done in the greatest secrecy. Those incarcerated in prisons, and those who are being exiled, are kept separate from every one else; the exiled are not allowed to communicate with Russians, they are kept exclusively among non-Russian tribes, true information concerning the Dukhobors is forbidden in the press, letters from them are not forwarded, letters to them do not reach them, special police guard against any communication between the Dukhobors and Russians, forbidding it; and those who have endeavored to help the Dukhobors, and spread information about them among the public, have been banished to distant places or else altogether exiled from Russia. And, as is always the case, these measures only produce the reverse result to that which the government desires.

In our time it is impossible un perceived to sweep off the face of the earth a religious, moral, and industrious population of ten thousand souls. Those same people, soldiers and jailers, who guard the Dukhobors, those tribes amongst whom they are dispersed, also those individuals who, notwithstanding all the efforts of the government, communicate with the Dukhobors,—all these discover that for which, and in the name of which, the Dukhobors are suffering; they find out the utterly inexcusable cruelty of the government and its fear of publicity; and men who formerly never doubted the lawfulness of the government and compatibility of Christianity with the military service, not only begin to have doubts, but are becoming completely persuaded of the rightness of the Dukhobors, and of the falsity of the government, and are liberating themselves and others from the deceit which has held them up to this time.

And it is this liberation from deceit and consequent approach toward the effectual establishment of peace on earth which to-day constitutes the great worth of the Dukhobors.