Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/48

 a man who is stronger than another is a danger, and the others must combine in alliances to resist him.

The question is asked: "What is there wrong in the fact that France and Russia have expressed their mutual sympathies for the safeguarding of peace?"

What is wrong is that it is a lie, and a lie is never uttered and never acted for nothing.

The devil is a slayer of men and the father of lying. And lying always leads to the slaying of men. And in this case that is more obvious than in any.

Before the Turkish War, just as now, a sudden love flamed up all at once between our Russians and some brother Slavs whom no one had known anything about for hundreds of years, while Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen, have always been, and still are, incomparably nearer and more akin to us than any Montenegrins, Serbs, or Bulgars. And there were the same receptions, celebrations, and enthusiasms, fanned by the Aksakovs and the Katkovs, who are mentioned now in Paris as models of patriotism. Then, even as now, they talked of nothing but the sudden mutual love between the Russians and the Slavs. At first, just as now in Paris, they ate and drank and said silly things to one another in Moscow, were touched by their own elevated feelings, talked of unity and peace, and were silent