f no exception to whittle down this great
and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble
mankind.

When a man like Tolstoy, one of the clearest thinkers in the western
world, one of the greatest writers, one who as a soldier has known
what violence is and what it can do, condemns Japan for having blindly
followed the law of modern science, falsely so-called, and fears for
that country 'the greatest calamities', it is for us to pause and
consider whether, in our impatience of English rule, we do not want to
replace one evil by another and a worse. India, which is the nursery
of the great faiths of the world, will cease to be nationalist India,
whatever else she may become, when she goes through the process of
civilization in the shape of reproduction on that sacred soil of gun
factories and the hateful industrialism which has reduced the people of
Europe to a state of slavery, and all but stifled among them the best
instincts which are the heritage of the human family.

If we do not want the English in India we must pay the price.
Tolstoy indicates it. 'Do not resist evil, but also do not yourselves
participate in evil--in the violent deeds of the administration of the
law courts, the collection of taxes and, what is more important, of
the soldiers, and no one in the world will enslave you', passionately
declares the sage of Yasnaya Polyana. Who can question the truth of
what he says in the following: 'A commercial company enslaved a
nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from
superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does
it mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak and
ordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever,
capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that
not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?'

One need not accept all that Tolstoy says--some of his facts are not
accurately stated--to realize the central truth of his indictment of
the present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistible
power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the
soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us of
evil passions.

There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches.
But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His
logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to p