The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain: Nineteenth Century EuropeCramb, J. A. (John Adam)
History
The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain: Nineteenth Century Europe
Cramb, J. A. (John Adam)
Great Britain -- Colonies -- Administration -- History -- 19th century; Imperialism; War
Secondly, with regard to a particular religion, the Christian, it is
remarkable that Count Tolstoi, who has striven so nobly to reach the
faith beyond the creeds, and in his volume entitled _My Religion_ has
thrown out several illuminating ideas upon the teachings of Christ as
distinct from those of later creeds or sects, should not have
perceived, or should have ignored the circumstance that in the actual
utterances of Christ there is not to be found one word, not one
syllable, condemnatory of war between nation and nation, between State
and State. The _locus classicus_, "All that take the sword," etc., is
aimed at the impetuosity of the person addressed, or at its outmost
range against civic revolt. It is only by wrenching the words from
their context that it becomes possible to extend their application to
the relations of one State to another. The organic unity, named a
State, is not identical with the units which compose it, nor is it a
mere aggregate of those units. If there is a lesson which history
enforces it is this lesson. And upon the laws which regulate those
unities named States, Christ nowhere breathes a word. The violence of
faction or enthusiasm have indeed forced such decision from his
utterances. Camille Desmoulins, in a moment of rash and unreasoning
rhetoric, styled Him "le bon sans-culotte," and in the days of the
_Internationale_, Michel Bakounine traced the beginnings of Nihilism to
Galilee; just as in recent times the Anarchist, the Socialist have in
His sanction sought the justification of their crimes or their
fantasies. But in His whole teaching there is nothing that affects the
politics of State and State. Ethics and metaphysics were outlined in
His utterances, but not politics. His solitary reference to war as
such contains no reprobation; a perverse ingenuity might even twist it
into a maxim of prudence, a tacit assent to war. And the peace upon
which Christ dwells in one great phrase after another is not the amity
of States, but a profounder, a more intimate thing. It is the peace on
which the Hebrew and the Arab poets insist, the peace which arises
within the soul, ineffable, wondrous, from a sense of reconciliation,
of harmony with the Divine, a peace which may, which does, exist on the
battlefield as in the hermit's cell, in the fury of the onset as deep
and tranquil as in the heart of him who rides alone in the desert
beneath the midnight stars. Tolstoi's criticism here arises from his
extension to the more complex and intricate unity of the State of the
same laws which regulate the simpler unity of the individuals who
compose the State. And of such a war as this in which Britain is now
engaged, a war in its origin and course determined by that ideal which
in these lectures I have sketched, a war whose end is the larger
freedom, the higher justice, a war whose aim is not merely peace, but
the full, the living development of those conditions of man's being
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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