On the other hand he was boldly and ardently casting his mystical and polemical writings upon the social battlefield. From 1900 to 1910 such work absorbed the greater part of his time and energy. Russia was passing through an alarming crisis; for a moment the empire of the Tsars seemed to totter on its foundations and about to fall in ruin. The Russo-Japanese war, the disasters which followed it, the revolutionary troubles, the mutinies in the army and the fleet, the massacres, the agrarian disorders, seemed to mark "the end of a world," to quote the title of one of Tolstoy's writings. The height of the crisis was reached in 1904 and 1905. During these years Tolstoy published a remarkable series of works: _War and Revolution, The Great Crime, The End of a World._ During the last ten years of his life he occupied a situation unique not only in Russia but in the world. He was alone, a stranger to all the parties, to all countries, and rejected by his Church, which had excommunicated him.[4] The logic of his reason and the revolutionary character of his faith had "led him to this dilemma; to live a stranger to other men, or a stranger to the truth." He recalls the Russian proverb: "An old man who lies is a rich man who steals," and he severs himself from mankind in order to speak the truth. He tells the whole truth, and to all. The old hunter of lies continues, unweariedly, to mark down all superstitions, religious or social, and all fetishes. The only exceptions are the old maleficent powers--the persecutrix, the Church, and the imperial autocracy. Perhaps his enmity towards them was in some degree appeased now that all were casting stones at them. They were familiar; therefore they were already not so formidable! After all, too, the Church and the Tsar were carrying on their peculiar trades; they were at least not deceptive. Tolstoy, in his letter to the Tsar Nikolas II.,[5] although he speaks the truth in a manner entirely unaccommodating to the man as sovereign, is full of gentleness for the sovereign as man; addressing him as "dear brother," praying him to "pardon him if he has hurt him unintentionally," and signing himself, "Your brother who wishes you true happiness." What Tolstoy can least find it in him to pardon--what he denounces with the utmost hatred--are the new lies; not the old ones, which are no longer able to deceive; not despotism, but the illusion of liberty. It is difficult to say which he hates the more among the followers of the newer idols: whether the Socialists or the "Liberals."