Page:Tolstoy - Pamphlets.djvu/83

30 will please the men in power—the Superior Class.

"We will not enlist. We will not shoot on their order. We will not 'charge bayonet' upon a mild and gentle people. We will not fire upon shepherds and farmers, fighting for their firesides, upon suggestion of Cecil Rhodes. Your false cry of 'Wolf, wolf,' shall not alarm us. We pay your taxes only because we have to, and we will pay no longer than we have to. We will pay no pew-rents, no tithes to your sham charities, and we will speak our minds upon occasion.

"We will educate men.

"And all the time our silent influence will be going out, and even the men who are conscripted will be half-hearted and refuse to fight. We will educate men into the thought that the Christ Life of Peace and Good-will is better than the Life of Strife, Bloodshed, and War.

"'Peace on earth!'—it can only come when men do away with armies, and are willing to do unto other men as they would be done by."

So writes a citizen of the United States; and from 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