Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/177

 SHAME ! 161

after giving tlie man some friendly counsel, Sergius Ivanovitch let him ^o.

The man acfaiii ^ot drunk and fought, and again he was not punislied but only exhorted : ^ Vou are doing yourself great liarm. If you will amend, you will your- self he tlie better for it. So I ask you not to do these things any more/

Tlie man was so struck by this new kind of treat- ment, tliat lie completely altered, and became a model soldier.

Tliis incident was told me by Sergius Ivanovitch's brother, Matthew Ivanovitch, who, like bis brother and all the best men of liis day, considered corporal punishment a shameful relic of barbarism, disgraceful to those who inflict it rather than to those who endure it, Mien telling this story he could never refrain from tears of emotion and pleasure. And indeed for those who heard him tell it, it was hard not to follow his example.

That is how, seventy-five years ago, educated Russians regarded corporal punishment. And in our day, seventy- five years later, the grandsons of these men take their places as magistrates at sessions, and calmly discuss whether such and such a full-iJ:rown man (often the father of a family, or sometimes even a grandfather) should, or should not, be flogged, and how many strokes of the rod he ought to receive.

The most advanced of these grandsons, meeting in committees and Local Government Councils, draw up declarations, addresses, and petitions, to the effect that, on certain hygienic or pedagogic grounds,* it would be better not to flog all the mouzhiks (people of the peasant

" By petitioning, openly, for the repeal of laws such as that empowering the local magistrates to have peasants flogged, the petitioners would risk being looked at askance by those in power. But members of local Health Com- mittees, or Educational Committees sometimes find oppor- tunities to utter veiled protests with a minimum amount of risk.

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