Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/88

 Governments in regard to the danger of attack from other nations are confirmed in the minds of their peoples.

Divide et impera.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most unmistakable significance is for the governing nothing but a weapon for the attainment of aggressive and mercenary aims, and for the governed is the denial of human dignity, common sense and conscience, and slavish subjection to those who are in authority. This is what is preached wherever patriotism is preached. Patriotism is slavery.

The advocates of peace by means of arbitration argue in this way: two animals cannot divide their prey except by fighting, and children, barbarians, and barbarous nations do the same. But rational men settle their differences by discussion and persuasion, and by referring decision of the question to disinterested third persons. This is how the nations of our day ought to act.

These arguments seem perfectly correct. The peoples of our day have reached the stage of rational development; they have no hostility to one another and could settle their difficulties in a peaceful way. But this argument is true only as regards the peoples, the peoples alone, if they were not under the sway of their Governments. Peoples in subjection to their