About four years ago,--the first swallow of the Toulon spring,--a
certain French agitator in favour of a war with Germany came to
Russia for the purpose of preparing the Franco-Russian alliance,
and he visited us in the country. He arrived at our house when we
were working in the mowing. At breakfast, as we returned home, we
made the acquaintance of the guest, and he immediately proceeded to
tell us how he had fought, had been in captivity, had run away from
it, and how he had made a patriotic vow, of which he was apparently
proud, that he would not stop agitating a war against Germany until
the integrity and glory of France should be reëstablished.
In our circle all the convictions of our guest as to how necessary
an alliance between Russia and France was for the reëstablishment of
the former borders of France and its might and glory, and for making
us secure against the malevolent intentions of Germany, were of no
avail to him. In reply to his arguments that France could not be at
peace so long as the provinces taken from it were not returned to
it, we said that similarly Prussia could not be at rest, so long as
it had not paid back for Jena, and that, if the French "_revanche_"
should now be successful, the Germans would have to pay them back,
and so on without end.
In reply to his arguments that the French were obliged to save
their brothers, who had been torn away from them, we said that the
condition of the inhabitants, of the majority of the inhabitants, of
the working people in Alsace-Lorraine, was hardly any worse under
German rule than it had been under France, and that, because some
Alsatians preferred to belong to France rather than to Germany,
and he, our guest, found it desirable to reestablish the glory of
French arms, it was not worth while, either to begin those terrible
calamities which result from war, or even to sacrifice one single
human life.
In reply to his arguments that it was all very well for us to
speak thus, since we had not experienced the same, and that we
should be speaking differently, if we had the Baltic provinces and
Poland taken away from us, we said that even from the political
standpoint the loss of Poland and of the Baltic provinces could not
be a calamity for us, but might rather be considered an advantage,
since it would diminish the necessity for a military force and the
expenses of state; and from the Christian point of view we never
could permit a war, since a war demanded the killing of men, whereas
Christianity not only forbade every murder, but even demanded
that we do good to all men, considering all, without distinction
of nationalities, as our brothers. The Christian state, we said,
which enters upon war, to be consistent, must not only haul down
the crosses from the churches, turn all the churches into buildings
for different purposes, give the clergy other offices, and, above
all, prohibit the Gospel, but must also renounce all the demands
of morality which result from the Christian law. "_C'est à prendre
ou à laisser_," we said. But until Christianity was abolished, it
would be possible to entice men to war only by cunning and deceit,
as indeed is being done nowadays. We see this cunning and deception,
and so cannot submit to it. As there was no music, no champagne,
nothing intoxicating about us, our guest only shrugged his shoulders
and with customary French amiability remarked that he was very
thankful for the fine reception accorded to him in our house, but
that he was sorry that his ideas were not treated in the same way.