Page:The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï-v20.djvu/13



articles, essays on timely topics,—arbitration, liquor drinking, vegetarianism, non-resistance, disarmament,—prefaces, private and public letters, magnanimous defense of the persecuted Dukhobors or spirit wrestlers, and reports on the famine-stricken districts of Russia make up the bulk of the present volume, which will be found to contain some of the author's most vigorous and most characteristic utterances.

The famine articles, relating the measures instituted to assist the depressed and demoralized peasantry, and picturing the terrible conditions under which no small part of the population of Russia is degenerating, are intensely interesting. There are details which are like extracts from a novelist's note-book. Count Tolstoï lays his finger on the deep, underlying causes of the famine: it is not crop failures; it is not a material, but a moral, famine. The differences between these papers published in the Russian edition and those that have found their way into print in Switzerland or elsewhere throw a curious light on the operations of the censorship. It is evident that the government fears the light of truth, and resents any criticism on its methods of dealing with its internal affairs. Yet no unprejudiced person can fail to accept Count Tolstoï's theory that the paternalism which makes a child of the peasant, subjecting him to the whims of all sorts of function-