In _Three More Dead_ or _The Divine and the Human_ we shall find a few
specimens of the new generation of revolutionaries: Romane and his
friends, who despise the old Terrorists, and profess to attain their
ends scientifically, by transforming an agricultural into an industrial
people.
[10] Letters to the Japanese Izo-Abe, 1904. (_Further Letters_).
[11] Conversations, reported by Teneromo (published in
_Revolutionaries,_ 1906).
[12] Conversations, reported by Teneromo (published in
_Revolutionaries,_ 1906).
[13] Conversation with M. Paul Boyer. (_Le Temps_, November 4, 1902.)
[14] _The End of a World_.
[15] "The cruellest enslavement is to be deprived of the earth, for the
slave of a master is the slave of only one; but the man deprived of the
land is the slave of all the world." (_The Great Crime_)
[16] Russia was actually in a somewhat special situation; and although
Tolstoy may have been wrong to found his generalisations concerning
other European States upon the condition of Russia, we cannot be
surprised that he was most sensible to the sufferings which touched
him most nearly. See, in _The Great Crime,_ his conversations on the
road to Toula with the peasants, who were all in want of bread because
they lacked land, and who were all secretly waiting for the land to
be restored to them. The agricultural population of Russia forms 80
per cent, of the nation. A hundred million of men, says Tolstoy, are
dying of hunger because of the seizure of the soil by the landed
proprietors. When people speak to them of remedying their evils through
the agency of the Press, or by the separation of Church and State, or
by nationalist representation, or even by the eight-hours day, they
impudently mock at them:
"Those who are apparently looking everywhere for the means of bettering
the condition of the masses of the people remind one of what one sees
in the theatre, when all the spectators have an excellent view of an
actor who is supposed to be concealed, while his fellow-players, who
also have a full view of him, pretend not to see him, and endeavour to
distract one another's attention from him."
There is no remedy but that of returning the soil to the labouring
people. As a solution of the property question, Tolstoy recommends the
doctrine of Henry George and his suggested single tax upon the value
of the soil. This is his economic gospel; he returns to it unwearied,
and has assimilated it so thoroughly that in his writings he often uses
entire phrases of George's.
[17] "The law of non-resistance to evil is the keystone of the whole
building. To admit the law of mutual help while misunderstanding the
precept of non-resistance is to build the vault without sealing the
central portion." (_The End of a World._)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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