The advance of constructive labor and the subsidence and disappearance of destructive warfare is a genuine line of progression. One sees much of protection and something of construction in the office of war, as the Roman bridges survived throughout Europe long after the legions which built them and crossed them for new conquests had passed out of mind. Also, in the rising tide of labor there is a large admixture of warfare, of the purely militant spirit which is sometimes so dominant that it throws the entire movement into confusion and leads the laborer to renounce his birthright;but nevertheless the desire for battle is becoming constantly more restricted in area. It still sways in regions where men of untamed blood are dwelling, and among men who, because they regard themselves as a superior race, imagine that they are free from the ordinary moral restraints; but its territory constantly grows smaller and its manifestations more guarded. Doubtless war will exist for many generations among semi-savage tribes, and it will also break out in those nations which may be roused and dominated by the unrestricted commercial spirit; but the ordinary life of man will go ( 230) on without it, as it becomes transmitted into a desire for normal human relationship.
It is difficult to predict at what moment the conviction that war is foolish or wasteful or unjustifiable may descend upon the earth, and it is also impossible to estimate among how many groups of people this conviction has already become established.
The Doukhobors are a religious sect in Russia whose creed emphasizes the teaching of nonresistance. A story is told of one of their young men who, because of his refusal to enter the Russian army, was brought for trial before a judge, who reasoned with him concerning the folly of his course and in return received a homily upon the teachings of Jesus. "Quite right you are," answered the judge, "from the point of abstract virtue, but the time has not yet come to put into practice the literal sayings of Christ." "The time may not have come for you, your Honor," was the reply, "but the time has come for us." Who can tell at what hour vast numbers of Russian peasants upon those Russian steppes will decide that the time has come for them to renounce warfare, even as their prototype, the mujik, Count Tolstoy, has already decided that it has come for him? Conscious as the peasants are of religious motive, they will ( 231) meet a cheerful martyrdom for their convictions, as so many of the Doukhobors have done. It may, however, be easy to overestimate this changed temper because of the ****** yet dramatic formulation given by Tolstoy to the nonresisting spirit. How far Tolstoy is really the mouthpiece of a great moral change going on in the life of the Russian peasant and how far he speaks merely for himself, it is, of course, impossible to state.
If only a few peasants are experiencing this change, his genius has certainly done much to make their position definite. The man who assumes that a new degree of virtue is possible, thereby makes it real and tangible to those who long to possess it but lack courage. Tolstoy at least is ready to predict that in the great affairs of national disarmament, it may easily be true that the Russian peasants will take the first steps.
Their armed rebellion may easily be overcome by armed troops, but what can be done with their permanent patience, their insatiable hunger for holiness? All idealism has its prudential aspects, and, as has been pointed out by Mr. Perris,[ 2 ] no other form of revolution is so fitted to an agricultural people as this continued outburst of passive resistance among whole communities, not ( 232) in theory, but in practice. This peasant move-ment goes on in spite of persecution, perfectly spontaneous, self-reliant, colossal in the silent confidence and power of endurance. In this day of Maxim guns and high explosives, the old method of revolt would be impossible to an agricultural people, but the non-resistant strike against military service lies directly in line with the temperament and capacity of the Russian people. That "the government cannot put the whole population in prison, and, if it could, it would still be without material for an army, and without money for its support," is an almost irrefutable argument.
We see here, at least, the beginnings of a sentiment that shall, if sufficiently developed, make war impossible to an entire people, a conviction of sin manifesting itself throughout a nation.
Whatever may have been true of the revolutionist of the past when his spike was on a certain level of equality with the bayonet of the regular soldier, and his enthusiasm and daring could, in large measure, overcome the difference, it is certainly true now that such ****** arms as a revolutionist could command, would be utterly futile against the equipment of the regular soldier. To continue the use of armed force means, under these circumstances, that we must refer the possi ( 233)-bilities of all social and industrial advance to the consent of the owners of the Maxim guns. We must deny to the humble the possibility of the initiation of progressive movements employing revolution or, at least, we must defer all advance until the humble many can persuade the powerful few of the righteousness of their cause, and we must throw out the working class from participation in the beginnings of social revolutions.
