all our Douhobortsi, Molokani, and others who do not belong to any definite sect, who consider that the use of force--and,

all our Douhobortsi, Molokani, and others who do not belong to any

definite sect, who consider that the use of force--and,

consequently, military service--is inconsistent with Christianity.

Consequently there are every year among us in Russia some men

called upon for military service who refuse to serve on the ground

of their religious convictions.  Does the government let them off

then?  No.  Does it compel them to go, and in case of disobedience

punish them?  No. This was how the government treated them in

1818.  Here is an extract from the diary of Nicholas Myravyov of

Kars, which was not passed by the censor, and is not known in

Russia:

   "Tiflis, October 2, 1818.

   "In the morning the commandant told me that five peasants

   belonging to a landowner in the Tamboff government had lately

   been sent to Georgia.  These men had been sent for soldiers,

   but they would not serve; they had been several times flogged

   and made to run the gauntlet, but they would submit readily to

   the cruelest tortures, and even to death, rather than serve.

   'Let us go,' they said, 'and leave us alone; we will not hurt

   anyone; all men are equal, and the Tzar is a man like us; why

   should we pay him tribute; why should I expose my life to

   danger to kill in battle some man who has done me no harm?  You

   can cut us to pieces and we will not be soldiers.  He who has

   compassion on us will give us charity, but as for the

   government rations, we have not had them and we do not want to

   have them'  These were the words of those peasants, who declare

   that there are numbers like them Russia.  They brought them

   four times before the Committee of Ministers, and at last

   decided to lay the matter before the Tzar who gave orders that

   they should be taken to Georgia for correction, and commanded

   the commander-in-chief to send him a report every month of

   their gradual success in bringing these peasants to a better

   mind."

How the correction ended is not known, as the whole episode indeed

was unknown, having been kept in profound secrecy.

This was how the government behaved seventy-five years ago--this

is how it has behaved in a great cumber of cases, studiously

concealed from the people.  And this is how the government behaves

now, except in the case of the German Mennonites, living in the

province of Kherson, whose plea against military service is

considered well grounded.  They are made to work off their term of

service in labor in the forests.

But in the recent cases of refusal on the part of Mennonites to

serve in the army on religious grounds, the government authorities

have acted in the following manner:

To begin with, they have recourse to every means of coercion used

in our times to "correct" the culprit and bring him to "a better

mind," and these measures are carried out with the greatest

secrecy.  I know that in the case of one man who declined to serve

in 1884 in Moscow, the official correspondence on the subject had

two months after his refusal accumulated into a big folio, and was

kept absolutely secret among the Ministry.

They usually begin by sending the culprit to the priests, and the

latter, to their shame be it said, always exhort him to obedience.

But since the exhortation in Christ's name to forswear Christ is

for the most part unsuccessful, after he has received the

admonitions of the spiritual authorities, they send him to the

gendarmes, and the latter, finding, as a rule, no political cause

for offense in him, dispatch him back again, and then he is sent

to the learned men, to the doctors, and to the madhouse.  During

all these vicissitudes he is deprived of liberty and has to endure

every kind of humiliation and suffering as a convicted criminal.

(All this has been repeated in four cases.)  The doctors let him

out of the madhouse, and then every kind of secret shift is

employed to prevent him from going free--whereby others would be

encouraged to refuse to serve as he has done--and at the same time

to avoid leaving him among the soldiers, for fear they too should

learn from him that military service is not at all their duty by

the law of God, as they are assured, but quite contrary to it.

The most convenient thing for the government would be to kill the

non-resistant by flogging him to death or some other means, as was

done in former days.  But to put a man openly to death because he

believes in the creed we all confess is impossible.  To let a man

alone who has refused obedience is also impossible.  And so the

government tries either to compel the man by ill-treatment to

renounce Christ, or in some way or other to get rid of him

unobserved, without openly putting him to death, and to hide

somehow both the action and the man himself from other people.

And so all kinds of shifts and wiles and cruelties are set on foot

against him.  They either send him to the frontier or provoke him

to insubordination, and then try him for breach of discipline and

shut him up in the prison of the disciplinary battalion, where

they can ill treat him freely unseen by anyone, or they declare

him mad, and lock him up in a lunatic asylum.  They sent one man

in this way to Tashkend--that is, they pretended to transfer to

the Tashkend army; another to Omsk; a third him they convicted of

insubordination and shut up in prison; a fourth they sent to a

lunatic asylum.

Everywhere the same story is repeated.  Not only the government,

but the great majority of liberal, advanced people, as they are

called, studiously turn away from everything that has been said,

written, or done, or is being done by men to prove the

incompatibility of force in its most awful, gross, and glaring

form--in the form, that is, of an army of soldiers prepared to

murder anyone, whoever it may be--with the teachings of

Christianity, or even of the humanity which society professes as

its creed.

So that the information I have gained of the attitude of the

higher ruling classes, not only in Russia but in Europe and

America, toward the elucidation of this question has convinced me

that there exists in these ruling classes a consciously hostile

attitude to true Christianity, which is shown pre-eminently in

their reticence in regard to all manifestations of it.

CHAPTER II.

CRITICISMS OF THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE ON

THE PART OF BELIEVERS AND OF UNBELIEVERS.

Fate of the Book "What I Believe"--Evasive Character of Religious

Criticisms of Principles of my Book--1st Reply: Use of Force

not Opposed to Christianity--2d Reply: Use of Force Necessary

to Restrain Evil Doers--3d Reply: Duty of Using Force in

Defense of One's Neighbor--4th Reply: The Breach of the Command

of Nonresistance to be Regarded Simply as a Weakness--5th

Reply: Reply Evaded by Making Believe that the Question has

long been Decided--To Devise such Subterfuges and to take

Refuge Behind the Authority of the Church, of Antiquity, and of

Religion is all that Ecclesiastical Critics can do to get out

of the Contradiction between Use of Force and Christianity in

Theory and in Practice--General Attitude of the Ecclesiastical

World and of the Authorities to Profession of True

Christianity--General Character of Russian Freethinking

Critics--Foreign Freethinking Critics--Mistaken Arguments of

these Critics the Result of Misunderstanding the True Meaning

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