TO A NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICER 235
who have repudiated the Orthodox teaching, and ac- knowledge Christ's teaching as explained in the Gospels, and especially in the Sermon on the Mount — are not tricked by this deception, but have frequently refused, and still do refuse, to be soldiers, considering such an occupation incompatible with Christianity, and pre- ferring to bear all kinds of persecution, as hundreds and thousands of people are doing : in Russia many of the Doukhobors andMolokans; in Austria the Naza- renes, and in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany some members of the Evangelical sects. The Government knows this, and is therefore exceedingly anxious that the general Church deception, without which its power could not be maintained, should be commenced with every child from early infancy and be continually maintained in such a way that none may escape it. The Government tolerates anything else : drunkenness and vice (and not only tolerates but even organizes drunkenness and vice — they help to stupefy people), but by all means in its power it hinders those who have escaped out of its trap from assisting others to escape.
The Russian Government perpetrates this fraud with special craft and cruelty. It orders all its subjects to baptize their children during infancy into the false faith called Orthodoxy, and it threatens to punish them if they disobey. And when the children are baptized — that is, are reckoned as Orthodox — then, under threats of criminal penalties, they are forbidden to discuss the faith into which, without their wish, they were baptized; and for such discussion of that faith, as well as for re- nouncing it and changing to another, they are actually punished. So that it cannot be said of Russians in general that they believe the Orthodox Faith — they do not know whether they believe it or not. They were converted to it during infancy, and kept in it by violence — that is, by the fear of punishment. All Russians were entrapped into Orthodoxy by cunning fraud, and are kept in it by cruel force.
Using the power it wields, the Government per-
