Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/63



UT two provinces have been taken from the French, children have been torn from a beloved mother. But Russia cannot suffer Germany to dictate laws to her and deprive her of her historical mission in the East; she cannot submit to be robbed like the French of her territory—the Baltic Provinces, Poland, the Caucasus. But Germany cannot submit to the loss of the advantages she has gained by such sacrifices. But England cannot yield her naval supremacy to anyone."

And when such things are said, it is usually taken for granted that the Frenchman, and the Russian, and the German, and the Englishman, ought to be ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of regaining their lost provinces, of maintaining their influence in the East, of preserving their unity and power or their supremacy at sea, and so on.

It is taken for granted that the feeling of patriotism is, in the first place, a feeling innate in everyone; and, in the second place, that it is such a lofty moral feeling that, if absent, it ought to be awakened in those who do not possess it. But neither of these propositions is true. I have spent half a century