Page:The Kingdom of God is within you, by Leo Tolstoy.pdf/38

 service, which is especially important and interesting now in these days of universal conscription.

People will ask, perhaps: How ought a subject to behave who believes that war is inconsistent with his religion while the government demands from him that he should enter military service?

This question is, I think, a a most vital one, and the answer to it is specially important in these days of universal conscription. All—or at least the great majority of the people—are Christians, and all men are called upon for military service. How ought man, as Christian, to meet this demand? This is the gist of Dymond's answer

"His duty is humbly but steadfastly to refuse to serve."

There are some people, who, without any definite reasoning about conclude straightway that the responsibility of government measures rests entirely on those who resolve on them, or that the governments and sovereigns decide the question of what is good or bad for their subjects, and the duty of the subjects is merely to obey. think that arguments of this kind only obscure men's conscience. I can not take part in the councils of government, and therefore am not responsible for its misdeeds. Indeed, but we are responsible for our own misdeeds. And the misdeeds of our rulers become our own, if we, knowing that they are misdeeds, assist in carrying them out. Those who suppose that they are bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers, deceive themselves. They say:

"We give our acts up to the will of others, and our acts cannot be good or bad there is no merit in what is good nor responsibility for what is evil in our actions, since they are not done of our own will."

It is remarkable that the very same thing is said in the instructions to soldiers which they make them learn—that is, that the officer is alone responsible for the consequences