Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/30

 reason brought their children to them and held them up to be kissed, and when the Russian sailors gratified this desire everyone present was moved to ecstasy and shed tears.

This strange excitement was so infectious that one correspondent relates that a Russian sailor who had till then seemed perfectly normal, after a fortnight's contemplation of all that was going on around him leaped in the middle of the day from the ship into the sea and swam shouting: "Vive la France!" When he was pulled out and asked why he had done this he answered that he had taken a vow to swim round the ship in honour of France.

The excitement thus unchecked grew and grew like a rolling snowball, and at last reached such proportions, that not merely those who were witnesses, not merely those who were predisposed and neurotic, but even strong normal people were infected by the general state of mind and brought into an abnormal condition.

I remember that, carelessly reading one of these descriptions of the triumphal reception of the sailors, I became suddenly and unexpectedly conscious of something like a feeling of emotion, even of being nearly moved to tears, so that I had to make an effort to struggle against the feeling.