What was done in Toulon and in Paris, and now continues to be done in the newspapers, obviously leads to the same, or to a still more terrible calamity. Just so all kinds of generals and ministers will at first, to the sounds of "God save the Tsar" and the Marseillaise drink the health of France, of Russia, of the various regiments of the army and the navy; the newspapers will print their lies; the idle crowd of the rich, who do not know what to do with their powers and with their time, will babble patriotic speeches, fanning hatred against Germany, and no matter how peaceful Alexander III. may be, the conditions will be such that he will be unable to decline a war which will be demanded by all those who surround him, by all the newspapers, and, as always seems, by the public opinion of the whole nation. And before we shall have had time to look around, there will appear in the columns of the newspapers the usual, ominous, stupid proclamation:
"By God's grace, we, the most autocratic great Emperor of all Russia, the King of Poland, the Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., inform all our faithful subjects that for the good of these dear subjects, entrusted to us by God, we have considered it our duty before God to send them out to slaughter. God be with them," and so forth.
The bells will be rung, and long-haired men will throw gold-embroidered bags over themselves and will begin to pray for the slaughter. And there will begin again the old, well-known, terrible deed. The newspaper writers, who under the guise of patriotism stir people up to hatred and murder, will be about, in the hope of double earnings. Manufacturers, merchants, purveyors of military supplies, will bestir themselves joyfully, expecting double profits. All kinds of officials will bestir themselves, foreseeing a chance to steal more than they usually do. The military authorities will bestir themselves, for they will receive double salaries and rations, and will hope to get for the killing of people all kinds of trifles, which they value very much,—ribbons, crosses, galloons, stars. Idle gentlemen and ladies will bestir themselves, inscribing themselves in advance in the Red Cross, preparing themselves to dress the wounds of those whom their own husbands and brothers will kill, and imagining that they are thus doing a most Christian work.
And, drowning in their hearts their despair by means of songs, debauches, and vódka, hundreds of thousands of simple, good people, torn away from peaceful labour, from their wives, mothers, children, will march, with weapons of murder in their hands, whither they will be driven. They will go to freeze, to starve, to be sick, to die from diseases, and finally they will arrive at the place where they will be killed by the thousand, and they will kill by the thousand, themselves not knowing why, men whom they have never seen and who have done them and can do them no harm.
And when there shall be collected so many sick, wounded, and killed that nobody will have the time to pick them up, and when the air shall already be so infected by this rotting food for cannon that even the authorities will feel uncomfortable, then they will stop for awhile, will somehow manage to pick up the wounded, will haul off and somewhere throw into a pile the sick, and will bury the dead, covering them with lime, and again they will lead on the whole crowd of the deceived, and will continue to lead them on in this manner until those who have started the whole thing will get tired of it, or until those who needed it will get what they needed.
And again will men become infuriated, brutalized, and bestialized, and love will be diminished in the world, and the incipient Christianization of humanity will be delayed for decades and for centuries. And again will the people, who gain thereby, begin to say with assurance that, if there is a war, this means that it is necessary, and again they will begin to prepare for it the future generations, by corrupting them from childhood.
VII.
And so, when there appear such patriotic manifestations as were the Toulon celebrations, which, though still at a distance, in advance bind the wills of men and oblige them to commit those customary malefactions which always result from patriotism, every one who understands the significance of these celebrations cannot help but protest against everything which is tacitly included in them. And so, when the journalists say in print that all the Russians sympathize with what took place at Kronstadt, Toulon, and Paris; that this alliance for life and death is confirmed by the will of the whole nation; and when the Russian minister of education assures the French ministers that his whole company, the Russian children, the learned, and the authors, share his sentiments; or when the commander of the Russian squadron assures the French that the whole of Russia will be grateful to them for their reception; and when the chief priests speak for their flocks and assure the French that their prayers for the life of the most august house have reëchoed joyfully in the hearts of the Russian Tsar-loving nation; and when the Russian ambassador in Paris, who is considered to be the representative of the Russian nation, says after a dinner of ortolans à la soubise et logopédes glacés, with a glass of champagne Grand Moët in his hand, that all Russian hearts are beating in unison with his heart, which is filled with a sudden outburst of exclusive love for fair France (la belle France),—we, the people who are free from the stultification, consider it our sacred duty, not only for our own sakes, but also for the sake of tens of millions of Russians, in the most emphatic manner to protest against it and to declare that our hearts do not beat in unison with the hearts of the journalists, ministers of education, commanders of squadrons, chief priests, and ambassadors, but, on the contrary, are full to the brim with indignation and loathing for that harmful lie and that evil which they consciously and unconsciously disseminate with their acts and their speeches. Let them drink Moët as much as they please, and let them write articles and deliver addresses in their own name, but we, all the Christians, who recognize ourselves as such, cannot admit that we are bound by everything that these men say and write. We cannot admit it, because we know what is concealed beneath all these drunken transports, speeches, and embraces, which do not resemble the confirmation of peace, as we are assured, but rather those orgies and that drunkenness to which evil-doers abandon themselves when they prepare themselves for a joint crime.