Page:The Kingdom of God is within you, by Leo Tolstoy.pdf/169

 beings who have nothing to eat, breaking furniture and stealing goods, drinking the wine found in the cellars, violating the women in the streets, burning thousands of francs' worth of powder, and leaving misery and cholera in one's track—

"That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous materialism.

"What have they done, those warriors, that proves the least intelligence? Nothing. What have they invented? Cannons and muskets. That is all.

"What remains to us from Greece? Books and statues. Is Greece great from her conquests or her creations?

"Was it the invasions of the Persians which saved Greece from falling into the most hideous materialism?

"Were the invasions of the barbarians what saved and regenerated Rome?

"Was it Napoleon I. who carried forward the great intellectual movement started by the philosophers of the end of last century?

"Yes, indeed, since government assumes the right of annihilating peoples thus, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the peoples assume the right of annihilating governments.

"They defend themselves. They are right. No one has an absolute right to govern others. It ought only to be done for the benefit of those who are governed. And it is as much the duty of anyone who governs to avoid war as it is the duty of a captain of a ship to avoid shipwreck.

"When a captain has let his ship come to ruin, he is judged and condemned, if he is found guilty of negligence or even incapacity.

"Why should not the government be put on its trial after every declaration of war? If the people understood that, if they themselves passed judgment on murderous governments, if they refused to let themselves be killed for nothing, if