Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/84

 ATRIOTISM was necessary to unite different nationalities into one state and to make states strong for defence against barbarians, but since the light of Christianity has inwardly transformed all these states alike, giving them the same fundamental principles, patriotism has become, not merely superfluous, but the one obstacle to that unity between nations for which they are prepared by their Christian faith.

Patriotism in our day is a cruel legacy from a past age which persists only through inertia and because the Governments and ruling classes, feeling that their power and their very existence is bound up with this patriotism, strenuously excite and maintain it in their peoples both by violence and by cunning. Patriotism in our day may be compared with scaffolding which has been needed for the construction of the walls of a building, and which, although it now only interferes with the usefulness of the building, is not removed because its presence is profitable to some people.

There have not been for many years, and cannot be, grounds for quarrelling between