ented is not
one which all the people concerned are disposed to regard as quite fair
to themselves.

The play presents the terrible clash which resulted from the calls
Tolstoy made on himself and on others to abandon all customary ways of
life and to start afresh in a new direction. In his own case he was
never allowed to test the effects of a life of extreme poverty and
manual labour, such as he advocated; nor did those of his followers who
adopted such a life achieve much success therein. Tolstoy's artistic
sincerity is indeed shown by the fact that, despite his spiritual
fervour and his profound conviction that he had really found the road to
salvation for mankind, he has not, in this play, minimised the failure
of his efforts to carry convictions to those about him, or to achieve
any other success than that of obtaining an inward assurance that he was
fulfilling the will of God. This assurance would, no doubt, have been
more fully indicated in the last act, had he lived to complete it.

Tolstoy was well aware of the advantages a play possesses over a novel
as a means of propaganda, and but for the existence of the Censorship he
would have written more for the stage. When asked, in 1892, whether he
would write any more plays, he replied: "I would do so with great
pleasure, and I even feel a special need to express myself in that way;
but I feel certain the Censor would not pass my plays. You would not
believe how, from the very commencement of my activity, that horrible
Censor question has tormented me! I wanted to write what I felt; but at
the same time I felt that what I wrote would not be permitted; and
involuntarily I abandoned the work. I abandoned, and went on abandoning,
and meanwhile the years passed away."

* * * * *

There is one other matter of some importance on which I must here say a
word.

No accepted standard of transliteration for Russian names into English
has hitherto existed. Each writer has been a law unto himself. Now, at
last, the Liverpool School of Russian Studies has prepared and privately
circulated a scheme, which deserves to be, and is likely to be, generally
adopted. It differs in some particulars from the plan I have followed
heretofore; but the advantage to Anglo-Russian literature of the general
adoption of a uniform and authoritative rule will be so great that I
hasten to put myself in accord with the Liverpool scheme, without even
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