Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/13

 are preparing now to wage war on two fronts. But it is not only war-in the name of patriotism the Russians oppress the Poles and the Germans the Slavs; in the name of patriotism the Communards slaughtered the Versaillistes and the Versaillistes slaughtered the Communards" (p. 76).

Not that all Tolstoy's conclusions were sound. He underrated, perhaps for argumentative reasons, the inherent vitality of Nationalism. Nationalism, as has been proven these last years, can act like a raging prairie fire, and when once the patriotic sentiments, prejudices, and fears of the average citizen have caught alight, the fire sweeps over everything, sustaining itself by them, obliterating the finer altruistic sense of human nature. The roots of Nationalism are not to be destroyed. In this respect," the false public opinion" of which Tolstoy speaks is not so much false in its essence as in its proportions and dimensions. At the same time the Great War was only rendered possible through the automatic manufacture in every country of this "false public opinion," which Tolstoy exposes with extraordinary skill in his account of the Franco-Russian celebrations in Toulon, 1893. (See also pp. 56-64.)

But we need not continue. The truth of Tolstoy's contentions and arguments, if not of his indictment of patriotism, is now accepted by the public conscience of the civilized world, which is now supporting "The League of