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Title: Carthago Delenda Est Author: Leo Tolstoy Date: 1899 Language: en Topics: letter, religion Source: Original text from http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=10510, 2021.
La Vita Internationale and L'Humanité nouvelle have sent me the
following letter:—
"Sir,—With the object of furthering the development of humanitarian
ideas and civilization, La Vita internationale (of Milan), with the
support of L'Humanité nouvelle (of Paris and Brussels), has deemed it
necessary to concern itself with the difficult problem which has of late
arisen in all its gravity and importance, owing to the delicate question
about which France and the whole world has become so ardently
impassioned,—we mean the problem of war and militarism. With this aim in
view, we beg all those in Europe that take part in politics, science,
art, and the labor movement, and even those that occupy the foremost
positions in the army, to contribute to this most civilizing task by
replying to the following questions:—
"1. Is war among civilized nations still required by history, law, and
progress?
"2. What are the intellectual, moral, physical, economical, and
political effects of militarism?
"3. What, in the interests of the world's future civilization, are the
solutions which should be given to the grave problems of war and
militarism?
"4. What means would most rapidly lead to these solutions?"
I cannot conceal the feelings of disgust, indignation, and even despair
which were aroused in me by this letter. Enlightened, sensible, good
Christian people, who inculcate the principle of love and brotherhood,
who regard murder as an awful crime, who, with very few ​exceptions, are
unable to kill an animal,—all these people suddenly, provided that these
crimes are called war, not only acknowledge the destruction, plunder,
and killing of people to be right and legal, but themselves contribute
toward these robberies and murders, prepare themselves for them, take
part in them, are proud of them.
Moreover, always and everywhere one and the same phenomenon repeats
itself, viz., that the great majority of people—all working-people—those
same people who carry out the robberies and murders, and on whom the
burden falls—neither devise, nor prepare, nor desire these things, but
take part in them against their will, merely because they are placed in
such a position and are so instigated that it appears to them, to each
individual, that they would suffer more were they to refuse. Whereas
those who devise and prepare for these plunders and murders, and who
compel the working-people to carry them out, are but an insignificant
minority, who live in luxury and idleness, upon the labor of the
workers.
This deceit has already been going on for a long time, but lately the
insolence of the impostors has reached its extremest development, and a
great share of what labor produces is being taken away from the workers,
and used for making preparations for plundering and killing. In all the
constitutional countries of Europe the workers themselves—all, without
exception—are called upon to take part in these robberies and murders;
international relations are purposely always more and more complicated,
and this leads on to war; peaceful countries are being plundered without
the least cause; every year, in some place or other, people murder and
rob; and all live in constant dread of general mutual robbery and
murder.
It seems evident that, if these things are done, it can only be because
the great mass of people are deceived by the minority to whom this
deceit is advantageous, and therefore that the first task of those who
are anxious to free people from the evils caused by this ​mutual
murdering and plundering should be to expose the deception under which
the masses are laboring; to point out to them how the deceit is
perpetrated, by what means it is being upheld, and how to get rid of it.
The enlightened people of Europe, however, do nothing of the kind, but,
under the pretext of furthering the establishment of peace, they
assemble now in one, now in another city of Europe, and, seated at
tables, with most serious faces, they discuss the question how best to
persuade those brigands who live by their plunder to give up robbing,
and become peaceful citizens; and then they put the profound questions:
first, whether war is still desirable from the standpoint of history,
law, and progress (as if such fictions, invented by us, could demand
from us deviation from the fundamental moral law of our life); secondly,
as to what are the consequences of war (as if there could be any doubt
that the consequences of war are always general distress and
corruption); and finally, as to how to solve the problem of war (as if
it were a difficult problem how to free deluded people from a delusion
which we clearly see).
This is terrible! We see, for instance, how healthy, calm, and
frequently happy people year after year arrive at some gambling-den like
Monte Carlo, and, benefiting no one but the keepers of those dens, leave
there their health, peace, honor, and often their lives. We pity these
people; we see clearly that the deceit to which they are subjected
consists in those temptations whereby gamblers are allured, in the
inequality of the chances, and in the infatuation of gamblers who,
though fully aware that in general they are sure to be losers,
nevertheless hope for once at least to be more fortunate than the rest.
All this is perfectly clear.
And then, in order to free people from these miseries, we—instead of
pointing out to them the temptations to which they are subjected, the
fact that they are sure to lose, and the immorality of gambling, which
is based on the expectation of other people's misfortunes—assemble with
grave faces at meetings, and discuss how to arrange that the keepers of
gambling-houses ​should of their own accord shut up their establishments;
we write books about it, and we put questions to ourselves as to whether
history, law, and progress require the existence of gambling-houses, and
as to what are the economical, intellectual, moral, and other
consequences of roulette.
If a man is given to drink, and I tell him that he himself can leave off
drinking and that he must do so, there is a hope that he will listen to
me; but if I tell him that his drunkenness is a complicated and
difficult problem which we learned men are trying to solve at our
meetings, then in all probability he will, while awaiting the solution
of this problem, continue to drink.
Thus also with these false and refined external, scientific means of
abolishing war, such as international tribunals, arbitration, and
similar absurdities with which we occupy ourselves, while all the time
carefully omitting to mention the most simple, essential, and
self-evident method of causing war to cease—a method plain for all to
see.
In order that people who do not want war should not fight, it is not
necessary to have either international law, arbitration, international
tribunals, or solutions of problems; but it is merely necessary that
those who are subjected to the deceit should awake and free themselves
from the spell or enchantment under which they find themselves. The way
to do away with war is for those who do not want war, who regard
participation in it as a sin, to refrain from fighting. This method has
been preached from the earliest times by Christian writers such as
Tertullian and Origen, as well as by the Paulicians, and by their
successors, the Mennonites, Quakers, and Herrnhuters. The sin,
harmfulness, and senselessness of military service have been written
about and exposed in every way by Dymond, Garrison, and, twenty years
ago, by Ballou, as well as by myself. The method I have mentioned has
been adopted in the past, and of late has been frequently resorted to by
isolated individuals in Austria, Prussia, Holland, Switzerland, and
Russia, as well as by whole ​societies like the Quakers, Mennonites, and
Nazarenes, and recently by the Dukhobors, of whom a whole population of
fifteen thousand are now for the third year resisting the powerful
Russian government, and, notwithstanding all the sufferings to which
they have been subjected, do not submit to its demands that they should
take part in the crimes of military service.
But the enlightened friends of peace not only refrain from recommending
this method, but cannot bear the mention of it; when it is brought
before them they pretend not to have noticed it, or, if they cannot help
noticing it, they gravely shrug their shoulders and express their pity
for those uneducated and unreasonable men who adopt such an ineffectual,
silly method, when such a good one exists,—namely, to sprinkle salt on
the bird one wishes to catch, i.e. to persuade the governments, who only
exist by violence and deceit, to forsake both the one and the other.
They tell us that the misunderstandings which arise between governments
will be settled by tribunals or arbitration. But the governments do not
at all desire the settlement of misunderstandings. On the contrary, if
there be none they invent some, it being only by such misunderstanding
with the governments that they are afforded a pretext for keeping up the
army upon which their power is based. Thus the enlightened friends of
peace strive to divert the attention of the working, suffering masses
from the only method that can deliver them from the slavery in which
they are held (from their youth upward), first by patriotism, next by
oaths administered by the mercenary priests of a perverted Christianity,
and lastly, by the fear of punishment.
In our days of close and peaceful relations between peoples of different
nationalities and countries, the deceit called patriotism (which always
claims the preeminence of one state or nationality over the rest, and
which is therefore always involving people in useless and pernicious
wars) is too evident for reasonable people of our age not to free
themselves from it; and the religious deceit of the obligation of the
oath (which ​is distinctly forbidden by that very gospel which the
governments profess) is, thank God, ever less and less believed in. So
that what really prevents the great majority from refusing to take part
in military service is merely fear of the punishments which are
inflicted by the governments for such refusals. This fear, however, is
only a result of the government deceit, and has no other basis than
hypnotism.
The governments may and should fear those who refuse to serve, and,
indeed, they are afraid of them because every refusal undermines the
prestige of the deceit by which the governments have the people in their
power. But those who refuse have no ground whatever to fear a government
that demands crimes from them. In refusing military service every man
risks much less than he would were he to enter it.
The refusal of military service and the punishment—imprisonment,
exile—is only an advantageous insurance of oneself against the dangers
of the military service. In entering the service every man risks having
to take part in war (for which he is being prepared), and during war he
may be like a man sentenced to death, placed in a position in which
under the most difficult and painful circumstances he will almost
certainly be killed or crippled, as I have seen in Sevastopol, where a
regiment marched to a fort where two regiments had already been
destroyed, and stood there until it too was entirely exterminated.
Another, more profitable, chance is that the man who enters the army
will not be killed, but will only fall ill and die in the unhealthy
conditions of military service. A third chance is that, having been
insulted by his superior, he will be unable to contain himself, will
answer sharply, will break the discipline, and will be subjected to
punishment much worse than that to which he would have been liable had
he refused military service.
The best chance, however, is that instead of the imprisonment or exile
to which a person refusing military service is liable, he will pass
three or five years of his life amid vicious surroundings, practicing
the art of killing, being ​all the while in the same captivity as in
prison, and in humiliating submission to depraved people. This in the
first place.
Secondly, in refusing military service, every man, however strange it
may seem, can yet always hope to escape punishment—upon his refusal
being that last exposure of the governments' deceit which will render
any further punishment for such a deed, the punishment of one who
refuses to participate in their oppression, impossible. So that
submission to the demands of military service is evidently only
submission to the hypnotization of the masses—the utterly futile rush of
Panurge's sheep into the water, to their evident destruction.
Moreover, besides the consideration of advantage, there is yet another
reason which should impel every man to refuse military service who is
not hypnotized and is conscious of the importance of his actions. No one
can help desiring that his life should not be an aimless and useless
existence, but that it should be of service to God and man; yet
frequently a man spends his life without finding an opportunity for such
service. The summons to accept the military service presents precisely
such an opportunity to every man of our time.
Every man, in refusing to take part in military service or to pay taxes
to a government which uses them for military purposes, is, by this
refusal, rendering a great service to God and man, for he is thereby
making use of the most efficacious means of furthering the progressive
movement of mankind toward that better social order which it is striving
after and must eventually attain. But not only is it advantageous to
refuse the participation in the military service, and not only should
the majority of the men of our time so refuse; it is, moreover,
impossible not to refuse, if only they are not hypnotized. To every man
there are some actions which are morally impossible—as impossible as are
certain physical actions. And the promise of slavish obedience to
strangers, and to immoral people who have the murder of men as their
acknowledged object, is, to ​the majority of men, if only they be free
from hypnotism, just such a morally impossible action. And therefore it
is not only advantageous to and obligatory on every man to refuse to
participate in the military service, but it is also impossible for him
not to do so if only he be free from the stupefaction of hypnotism.
"But what will happen when all people refuse military service, and there
is no check nor hold over the wicked, and the wicked triumph, and there
is no protection against savage people—against the yellow race—who will
come and conquer us?"
I will say nothing about the fact that, as it is, the wicked have long
been triumphing, that they are still triumphing, and that while fighting
one another they have long dominated the Christians, so that there is no
need to fear what has already been accomplished; nor will I say anything
with regard to the dread of the savage yellow race, whom we persistently
provoke and instruct in war,—that being a mere excuse, and one-hundredth
part of the army now kept up in Europe being sufficient for the
imaginary protection against them,—I will say nothing about all this,
because the consideration of the general result to the world of such or
such actions cannot serve as a guide for our conduct and activity.
To man is given another guide, and that an unfailing one,—the guide of
his conscience, following which he indubitably knows that he is doing
what he should do. Therefore, all considerations of the danger that
threatens every individual who refuses military service, as well as what
menaces the world in consequence of such refusals—all these are but a
particle of that enormous and monstrous deceit in which Christian
mankind is enmeshed, and which is being carefully maintained by the
governments who exist by the power of this deceit.
If man act in accordance with what is dictated to him by his reason, his
conscience, and his God, only the very best can result for himself as
well as for the world.
People complain of the evil conditions of life in our Christian world.
But is it possible for it to be otherwise, ​when all of us acknowledge
not only that fundamental divine law proclaimed some thousands of years
ago, "Thou shalt not kill," but also the law of love and brotherhood of
all men, and yet, notwithstanding this, every man in the European world
practically disavows this fundamental divine law acknowledged by him,
and at the command of president, emperor, or minister, of Nicholas or
William, arrays himself in a ridiculous costume, takes an instrument of
murder and says, "Here I am, ready to injure, ruin, or kill any one I am
ordered to"?
What must a society be like which is composed of such men? Such a
society must be dreadful, and indeed it is so!
Awake, brethren! Listen neither to those villains who, from your
childhood, infect you with the diabolic spirit of patriotism, opposed to
righteousness and truth, and only necessary in order to deprive you of
your property, your freedom, and your human dignity; nor to those
ancient impostors who preach war in the name of a cruel and vindictive
God invented by them, and in the name of a perverted and false
Christianity; nor, even less, to those modern Sadducees who, in the name
of science and civilization, aiming only at the continuation of the
present state of things, assemble at meetings, write books, and make
speeches, promising to organize a good and peaceful life for people
without their making any effort! Do not believe them. Believe only the
consciousness which tells you that you are neither beasts nor slaves,
but free men, responsible for your actions, and therefore unable to be
murderers either of your own accord or at the will of those who live by
these murders.
And it is only necessary for you to awake in order to realize all the
horror and insanity of that which you have been and are doing, and,
having realized this, to cease that evil which you yourselves abhor, and
which is ruining you. If only you were to refrain from the evil which
you yourselves detest, those ruling impostors, who first corrupt and
then oppress you, would disappear like owls before the daylight, and
then those new, ​human, brotherly conditions of life would be established
for which Christendom—weary of suffering, exhausted by deceit, and lost
in insolvable contradictions—is longing. Only let every man without any
intricate or sophisticated arguments accomplish that which to-day his
conscience unfailingly bids him do, and he will recognize the truth of
the Gospel words:—
"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it
be of God, or whether I speak of myself."[1]
[1] John vii. 17.