Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/277

 PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT 261

you are free to live where you will, if even you be an Alsatian, an Irishman, or a Pole. Understand, too, that by stirring up patriotism you will only make the case worse, for the subjection in which your people are kept has resulted simply from the struggle between patriotisms, and every manifestation of patriotism in one nation provokes a corresponding reaction in another. Understand that salvation from your woes is only pos- sible when you free yourself from the obsolete idea of patriotism and from the obedience to Governments that is based upon it, and when you boldly enter into the region of that higher idea, the brotherly union of the peoples, which has long since come to life, and from all sides is calling you to itself.

If people would but understand tliat they are not the sons of some fatherland or other, nor of Govern- ments, but are sons of God, and can therefore neither be slaves nor enemies one to another — tliose insane, unnecessary, worn-out, pernicious organizations called Governments, and all the sufferings, violations, humilia- tions, and crimes which tliey occasion, would cease.

[May 10, O.S., 1900.]