o kill, torture, and
mutilate each other in the most cruel way. What can this be? Is it a
dream or a reality? Something is taking place which should not, cannot
be; one longs to believe that it is a dream and to awake from it. But no,
it is not a dream, it is a dreadful reality!

One could yet understand how a poor, uneducated, defrauded Japanese, torn
from his field and taught that Buddhism consists not in compassion to all
that lives, but in sacrifices to idols, and how a similar poor illiterate
fellow from the neighborhood of Toula or Nijni Novgorod, who has been
taught that Christianity consists in worshipping Christ, the Madonna,
Saints, and their ikons--one could understand how these unfortunate men,
brought by the violence and deceit of centuries to recognize the greatest
crime in the world--the murder of one's brethren--as a virtuous act, can
commit these dreadful deeds, without regarding themselves as being guilty
in so doing.

But how can so-called enlightened men preach war, support it, participate
in it, and, worst of all, without suffering the dangers of war
themselves, incite others to it, sending their unfortunate defrauded
brothers to fight? These so-called enlightened men cannot possibly
ignore, I do not say the Christian law, if they recognize themselves to
be Christians, but all that has been written, is being written, has and
is being said, about the cruelty, futility, and senselessness of war.
They are regarded as enlightened men precisely because they know all
this. The majority of them have themselves written and spoken about this.
Not to mention The Hague Conference, which called forth universal praise,
or all the books, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and speeches
demonstrating the possibility of the solution of international
misunderstandings by international arbitration--no enlightened man can
help knowing that the universal competition in the armaments of States
must inevitably lead them to endless wars, or to a general bankruptcy, or
to both the one and the other. They cannot but know that besides the
senseless, purposeless expenditure of milliards of roubles, _i.e._ of
human labor, on the preparations for war, during the wars themselves
millions of the most energetic and vigorous men perish in that period of
their life which is best for productive labor (during the past century
wars have destroyed fourteen million men). Enlightened men cannot but
know that occasions for war are always such