Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/25

Rh George, or else, above all, they reject it simply because it does not conform with those pedantic, arbitrary, superficial principles of so-called political economy which are recognised as indisputable truths.

Yet, notwithstanding this, the truth that land cannot be an object of property has become so elucidated by the very life of contemporary mankind, that in order to continue to retain a way of life in which private landed property is recognised, there is only one means—not to think of it, to ignore the truth, and to occupy oneself with other absorbing business. So, indeed, do the men of our time.

Political workers of Europe and America occupy themselves for the welfare of their nations in various matters; tariffs, colonies, income taxes, military and naval budgets, socialistic assemblies, unions, syndicates, the election of presidents, diplomatic connections—by anything save the one thing without which there cannot be any true improvement in the condition of the people—the re-establishment of the infringed right of all men to use the land. Although in the depth of their souls political workers of the Christian world feel—cannot but feel—that all their activity,the commercial strife with which they are occupied, as well as the military strife in which they put all their energies—can lead to nothing but a general exhaustion of the strength of nations; still they, without looking forward, give themselves up to the demand of the minute, and, as if with the one desire to forget themselves, continue to turn round and round in an enchanted circle out of which there is no issue.

However strange this temporary blindness of the political workers of Europe and America, it can be explained by the fact that in Europe and America people have already gone so far along a