# The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary/Appendices/Appendix 1

Among the Russians, as among other nations, there are many whose conscience does not permit them to bear arms and fight, many who believe that war is evil in itself, and that it is unchristian to oppose force with force. Russia has its non-resisters, Dukhobors, Molokans, Quakers, who either obtain official exemption from military service, or who suffer punishment for refusing to obey the call. And among the mass of the Russian people who as yet do obey the summons and shoulder the gun for the Fatherland, the question is frequently raised, "Can we reconcile Christianity and war? Can we reconcile the spirit of Russian religion with the using of brute force to overcome a wrong or to defeat an enemy?"
Not that any great number of the Russian peasant soldiers ask themselves questions about the ethics of war. They go forward gladly to fight for the Tsar, and to defend their country. With them fighting is a tradition—Christianity is Christian warfare, not warfare with sin and disease and crime, but war against the heathen. Since the pagan god Peroun was rolled down the cliffs, and the army of Vladimir stepped into the Dnieper and was baptized as one man, Russian Christianity has been a Christianity in arms, in arms against Tartar and Mongol and Turk. The spirit that prompted the Crusades perseveres. That is why a war against the Turk is a great national war; it is still something in the nature of a great ​religious pageant. More than half the man saints on the Russian Calendar are warriors, and the rest are simply monks and hermits.
Still as wars go on they change in type. Fighting has ceased to be a praising of God. There is no raining of splendid blows on the Saracen's head. War for the common soldier has ceased to be fighting, and has become "obeying orders." The soldier does not even know whither his shot has sped. He seldom or never shoots at a man; he shoots at a vague general man called the enemy. He also knows that no one is trying to kill him personally, and that he in his turn is also part of a vague impersonal man—the enemy of the man on the other side.
War becomes a standing to be killed for one's country, and an obeying of orders.
It is a noble and a Christian thing to die for one's native land. It is also one's duty to obey the orders of those put in authority over us. The question is, Are those who direct the war acting in a Christian spirit? They in their turn obey orders of those in authority over them—the Generals, the Commander-in-Chief, the Government, the Tsar. They must render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's.
Is it then Christianity in the Tsar to make war, or to answer force by force? Some Russians say, "It depends on the cause. A war to protect little Servia is a good and Christian war." Others say, "It does not depend on the cause. No cause, not even the best in the world, can justify the carrying on of war; of that wholesale and organised murder which goes by the name of war." So we come to the Russian pacifists, and those who believe that any peace is better than the justest war. They declare that war is evil in itself. They offer no compromise on the subject. In time of peace the Pacifists have a great following, and they seem to be in a majority; but when war breaks out a great number who merely ​sympathise, but do not absolutely believe, fall away and leave the true Pacifists standing, as they have stood in each war up till now, in a hopeless minority.
They hold that war is a survival of barbarism, or, to put it in the words of Solovyof, "Something like cannibalism, a barbarous custom that must in time be isolated and localised among the more savage regions of the world, and then slowly but steadily disappear till it becomes merely a historical curiosity.
The simplest way to test this notion of war would have been to survey the modern history of the civilised world and see if war between civilised community tended on the whole to be less. But here and now as I write is the vast conflagration of the German war. If this war had not come about it might have been possible to say, "Man is on the whole tending towards universal peace." The Spanish-American War was scarcely a war at all. The South African War was an example of the power which could be brought to bear on an uncultured and wild people to make them behave themselves and be peaceful. The Russo-Japanese War was begun in the misconception that the Japanese were yellow devils, and if the Russians had known with whom they had to deal they could have arranged matters. The Italian-Turkish War was simply a cultured nation taking over territory of the wild and warlike Turks, and so precluding war for the future. The wars in the Balkan States were the natural conflicts of wild tribes not yet properly civilised. Up to that point war could be explained away, but then we come to July 1914 with its European conflagration, and the Pacifist inference cannot be made.
For the time being war is redeemed from the imputation of savagery by the great German conflict. It can no longer be classified as a disgusting practice such as cannibalism or sutteeism.
But the minority, those who still take peace as a golden rule, are even now unconvinced. At the best ​they hold that this war is a war to prevent war in the future, a war for the establishment of the Federation of Europe, a war that will make possible universal peace.
Still they hold that notion as a makeshift opinion. They would never in the palmy days of peace have thought it possible that mankind would go to war in order to get a better peace afterwards. They held that war was always avoidable, and that you could not by Satan cast out Satan.
They hold that nationally as individually we should give back good for evil. Amongst the educated Russians there are many pacifists, many non-resisters, a number also of quaker-like people who refer all war arguments to the one simple commandment—"Thou shalt not kill!"
Many Russians hold that Christ substituted for the Jewish law "Thou shalt not kill!" the moral principle "Thou shalt not hate!" And they understand the chastisement of war as performed more in sorrow than in anger.
Those who try to follow out literally the patterns of behaviour set out in the Gospel ask what would the Good Samaritan have done if he had come earlier than he did and had met the man who fell among thieves just at the moment when the thieves were attacking him with apparently murderous intent. Would he then have had to pass by on the other side like the Levite, or should he have fallen on his knees and prayed, or should he have rushed to the physical assistance of the man who was being attacked. Many held that it would have been the Samaritan's duty to defend his neighbour with all the means in his power. As the General says in Solovyof's conversation, "I prayed best when giving commands to the horse-artillery." So in August 1914, when Austria fell upon Servia and Germany fell upon Belgium, Russia in the East and Britain in the West rushed generously to give their physical assistance to the nations in distress. ​America, like the Levite, averted his eyes and said, "It is no concern of mine."
The action of Britain and Russia is no doubt popular Christianity. It is the way of the world. Christianity was not preached to nations but to individuals.
The true Christian attitude of the man who falls among thieves is to give up his money and strip off his clothes and hand them to the thieves saying, "Would to God there were more for thee!" He would offer no show of defence, but, on the contrary, would rejoice. For in taking away money and clothes they took away earthly material things, things that should be lightly prized. To have given them freely and affectionately to those who wanted them was to blossom spiritually or, to use another figure, it was to quicken the circulation of love. And directly he gives up these things the Good Samaritan comes along and he, out of pure affection, gives from his superfluity the means to the naked one to be clothed and restored.
If the Good Samaritan had come up in time he would as a Christian have been ready to give his things also to the thieves. Or if the thieves had been actuated by the impulse of murder, he would have fallen on his knees and prayed. Such is the way of those who deny "the world," and with it deny also the power of physical force.
Somewhat of this interpretation of Christian impulse is given in the following Russian conversation taken from the book on War and Christianity written by the great Russian philosopher, Vladimir Solovyof:
Prince. He who is filled with the true spirit of the Gospel will find in himself when necessary the ability by words and gestures, and by his whole spiritual demeanour so to act upon the soul of his unhappy brother who would commit a murder, that the latter will be suddenly overwhelmed and converted, and will see the error of his ways and turn away from the wrong road. ​General. Holy Martyrs! Is that the way you'd have me behave towards, for instance, the Bashi-Oozooks, who in Asiatic Turkey massacre the women and children of the Armenian villages. You think I ought to stand before them making touching gestures, saying touching words and making a tender religious appeal to them.
Mr. Z. Your words would not be heard owing to the instance of the murderers, and if heard would not be understood since you know not one another's languages. Then as regards gestures, as you will of course, but I should have thought that under the circumstances the best gesture one could think out for the occasion would be the firing of a few volleys.
Lady. But, seriously, could the General have explained his Christian sentiments to the Bashi-Oozooks?
Prince. I did not at all assume that the Russian army should have acted according to the spirit of the Gospel when dealing with the Bashi-Oozooks. But I do say that a man filled with the true spirit of the Gospel would have found even the possibility then of awakening in dark souls that good which lies hidden in every human being.
Mr. Z. You really think that!
Prince. Not a whit do I doubt.
Mr. Z. Well, do you think that Christ Himself was sufficiently filled with the true spirit of the Gospel?
Prince. Is that a question or a joke?
Mr. Z. I put the question because I'd like to know why Christ did not so apply the true spirit of the Gospel as to awaken the good hidden in the souls of Judas and Herod and of the Jewish chief priests and of the wicked thief of whom we commonly forget when speaking of his repentant brother.
Which confuses the issue because Christianity is not a converting of non-Christians to itself, it is a way of bearing oneself with regard to the world and God, a witnessing of the truth. This life is not truth. For that reason among others, Christ does not save Himself from death; material gains on earth are not real gains, so to the man who would take the coat the cloak is given also; the kingdom of this world is not a real kingdom, so Christ turns His back on the Devil when the presidency ​of the world is offered to Him on the mountain. When St. Peter smote off the ear of the High Priest's servant, Christ restored the ear as a sign that His kingdom could not be won by the sword. When war is brought to the test of Christian idealism, especially as interpreted by the Russians, it is found to be of the world—a rendering to Caesar of the things which are Caesar's.
Nevertheless, if we say that war is unchristian, or if we hold that those waging war are by their very behaviour unchristian, we are wrong. We are mistaking the true spirit of Christianity. For Christianity is no rule which people must obey; it is no set of rules for people. The deepest thing in Christianity is personal choice. Those who are saved are those who personally choose. If a man goes to bear arms for love of his country, if he offers his life as a sacrifice on the altar of his Fatherland, he is still a true Christian though engaged in violence. Or if a man stands out to refuse to go like the peasant in Peer Gynt, who cut off one of his fingers so as to be rejected by the army doctor, we still have Christianity exemplified in personal choice and in the readiness to sacrifice material things for spiritual gain.
What, then, of the peasant soldiers who presumably make little choice? Of them it must be said, they are Christians on the emotional plane, not on the intellectual. By their splendid enthusiasm it is evident that the peasants do make an emotional choice. Perhaps in that choice lies their Christianity with regard to war.
They are Christians also in that they do not regard death as something terrible. Death for them is a sacrament, a new baptism, a second time going down of the warriors of King Vladimir to the River Dneiper.