Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/38

30 of land as well as, and especially for, the big, medium, and small landowners, and for all those hundreds of thousands of men who, although they do not directly possess land, yet occupy an advantageous position, thanks to the compulsory labour of the people who are deprived of land.

The religious movement now due among the Russian people consists in undoing the great sin which for a long time has been hurting and is dividing men, not only in Russia, but in all the world.

This sin can be undone, not by political reform, nor Socialistic schemes for the future, not by revolutions in the present, and still less by philanthropic assistance or governmental organisation for the purchase and distribution of land among the peasants.

Such palliative measures only distract attention from the essence of the problem and thus retard its solution.

No artificial sacrifices are necessary, no concern about the people there is only necessary the consciousness of this sin by all those who commit or participate in it, and the desire to free themselves from it.

It is only necessary that the undeniable truth which the best men of the people always knew and know—that the land cannot be the exclusive property of some, and that the non-admission to the land of those who are in need of it is a sin—that this truth should become generally recognised by all men; that people should become ashamed of retaining the land from those who want to feed themselves from it; that it should become a shame in any way to participate in this retention of the land from those who need it, a shame to possess land, a shame to profit by the labour of men compelled to work only because they have been deprived of their legitimate right to the land.