I should never finish this article if I continued to add to it all that confirms its chief thought.  Yesterday news was received of the sinking of Japanese battleships.  In what are called the higher circles of Russian fashionable society, wealthy and intelligent people are rejoicing, with no prickings of conscience, at the destruction of thousands of human lives.  And today I have received from a simple seaman, a man of the lowest rank of society, the following letter:[10]

Much respected Lëv Nikoláevich:

I greet you with a low bow and with love, much respected Lëv Nikoláevich.  I have read your book.  It was very pleasant reading for me.  I am very fond of reading what you write, and as we are now in military action.  Lëv Nikoláevich, will you please tell me whether or not it is pleasing to God that our commanders compel us to kill.  I beg you to write me, Lëv Nikoláevich, please, whether or not truth exists now on earth.  At the church service the priest speaks of the Christ-loving army.  Is it true or not that God loves war?  Please, Lëv Nikoláevich, have you any books showing whether truth exists on earth or not?  Send me such books and I will pay what they cost.  I beg you not to neglect my request, Lëv Nikoláevich.  If there are no such books, then write to me.  I shall be very glad to receive a letter from you and shall await it with impatience.

Now farewell.  I remain alive and well and wish you the same from the Lord God.  Good health and good success in your work.

[Then follows the address, Port Arthur, the name of his ship, his rank, and his Christian name, patronymic, and family name.]

I cannot reply directly to that good, serious, and truly enlightened man.  He is in Port Arthur, with which there is no longer any communication either by post or by telegraph.  But we still have a means of mutual communication: God, in whom we both believe and concerning whom we both know that military “action” displeases him.  The doubt that has arisen in the man’s soul is at the same time its own solution.  And that doubt has now arisen and lives in the souls of thousands and thousands of men, not Russians and Japanese only, but all those unfortunate people who are forcibly compelled to do things most repugnant to human nature.

The hypnotism by which the rulers have stupefied and still try to stupefy people soon passes off and its effect grows ever weaker and weaker; whereas the doubt “whether or not it is pleasing to God that our commanders compel us to kill” grows stronger and stronger.  It can in no way be extinguished and is spreading more and more widely.

The doubt “whether or not it is pleasing to God that our commanders compel us to kill” is that spark which Christ brought down upon earth, and which begins to kindle.

And to know and feel this is a great joy.

Yásnaya Polyána, May 8, 1904

[10] Translator’s note – This letter in the Russian is ungrammatical, badly spelled, badly punctuated, and with capital letters constantly misused.