Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/68

 used to think the revanche upon the French was necessary for Sevastopol.

"Why should we go to war?" asked the village elder.

"Why, how can we let France arrange our affairs?"

"But you say yourself that things are better arranged among them than with us," said the village elder with perfect seriousness. "Let them arrange them for us too."

And my friend told me that this comment so impressed him, that he did not know what to answer, and only laughed, as people laugh on waking up from a dream.

Such criticisms may be heard from every sober Russian, unless he is under the hypnotic influence of the Government.

They talk of the love of the Russian peasantry for their religion, their Tsar, and their country, and yet there is not one commune of peasants in Russia which would hesitate for a minute over choosing between two possible places to settle in: one in Russia with their little father the Tsar, as the phrase is in books, and their holy orthodox faith, in their own adored native country, but with less and inferior land; and the other without their little father, the white Tsar, and without the orthodox faith, somewhere outside Russia, in Prussia, China, Turkey, or Austria, but with more and better land. This we have seen in the past, and we see it