Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/272

 256 ESSAYS AND LETTERS

various sides, in various forms, such voices are sounding-.

This is what a German soldier writes :

'I went through two campaigns with the Prussian Guards (in 1866 and 1870), and I hate war from the bottom of my soul, for it has made me inexpressibly unfortunate. We wounded soldiers generally receive such a miserable recompense that we have indeed to be ashamed of having once been patriots. I, for instance, get ninepence a day for my right arm, which was shot through at the attack on St. Privat, August 18, 1870. Some hunting dogs have more allowed for their keep. And I have suffered for years from my twice wounded arm. Already in 1866 1 took part in the war against Austria, and fought at Trautenau and Koniggratz, and saw horrors enough. In 1870, being in the reserve I was called out again ; and, as I have already said, I was wounded in the attack at St. Privat : my right arm was twice shot through lengthwise. I had to leave a good place in a brewery, and was unable afterwards to regain it. Since then I have never been able to get on my feet again. Tlie intoxication soon passed, and there was nothing left for the wounded invalid but to keep himself alive on a beggarly pittance eked out by charity. . ..

' In a world in which people run round like trained animals, and are not capable of any other idea than thafe of overreaching one another for the sake of mammon — in such a world let people think me a crank ; but, for all that, I feel in myself the divine idea of peace, which is so beautifully expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. My deepest conviction is that war is only trade on a larger scale — the ambitious and powerful trade with the happiness of the peoples.

' And what horrors do we not suffer from it ! Never shall I forget the pitiful groans that pierced one to the marrow !

' People who never did each other any harm begin to slaughter one another like wild animals, and petty, slavish souls— implicate the good God, making Him their confederate in such deeds.