The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-08-11
TOLSTOI IS
 INTERVIEWED Has Entirely Recovered From Illness. AT WORK RE-coMPnNG Gives His Views ot Worlds
 Politics. says He Doesn't See Much Worth Reading Among the Latest writ
 ers-Best Suffer Fr6m
 Artificiaiity.
BY WALTER DuNKIRK.

Berlin, August 10.--Anton Ismailoff, author of the famous drama Doomed. has returned from 'Yasnaya Polyana, where he found Count Leo Tolstoi completely recovered from his illness. though convinced that his death is not far off. Tolstoi is again working, writing and even playing games.
 T am engaged" he said, recon piling my Circle of Children's Read ing. And l have to hurry. I am on my way to the grave. 1 wait death no longer with fear. but with indif- ference
 .I don't see much worth reading among the latesf writers" said Tolstoi, holding up several new publications. Maxim Gorky has been driven rom the true path. Everything he writes is artificial. 1t smacks of compost tion. And l feel the same towards most of our younger writers. Kuprin is the best of them. he is real writer. But he, too, suffers from artificiallity.
 Foreign literature is in as bad a way. There are practically no great men. Take France for instance. France has only one really great writer now. That is Anatole France"
 Tolstoi talked of politics. The Du- ma, he said. produced a comic effect. comic" he added, 'in the sense em- ployed by Schopenhauer, that is op- posed to the natural to the necessary. It did everything that was not neces- sary. To save humanity you must make people better, 1t is no use gathering in a pine wood and talking about 1t.
 The present troubles will end only when society improves, There is no salvation in parliamentarism.
 q am not defending the government. It is in the same bad way. It will never pacify Russia. There are today more angry minds, more reVolutloh- ized citizens than ever!
 'Yesterday a workman came to me and asked for money to buy a revolver, He wanted to avenge his friends Who were in the gaol. I had to use all my moral influence in order to de- hypnotize him.
 This will all pass. Perhaps it is necessary to mankind as a lesson. It is the inevitable result of leading the wrong life as we lead it. And after we have had some more such lessons we will learn how to live. Once we held slaves, and 1t. semed proper and natural; now we see the horror of It.. That kind of progress is still going on and 1t is the only progress l recog- nize
 rake our peasants. Black bread and onions are their only food. Morn ing, bread and onions; evening, bread and onions And thank God if enough! And we eat this:'
 Tolstoi pointed to his supper table.
 "The time will come when it will seem as unnatuSal to eat well while others starve, as it now seems to keep slaves"
 The time is still far off," said Ismailoff.
 .NIa,,ar rnindT God has plenty of time"
 Toistoi talked about the church and faith.
 People differ less on religion than they think" was his final judgment. "In the end it is the same with the man who believes in the divinity of Christ. and the man who merely be- 1ieves that he was a man who raised mankind to a recognition of their son ship to God. reason thus; He con vinced men that they are the sons of God. With such a conviction there can be only one system of morals. At present I am engaged in a long