men of our time, especially the learned, have grown so coarse that they, owing to their coarseness, are even unable to understand the significance and effect of spiritual force. A shell of fifty pounds of dynamite, fired at a crowd of living men—this they understand and recognise as a force; but thought, truth which has been realised and practised in the life, even to martyrdom, which has now become accessible to millions—this, according to their conception, is not a force, because it makes no noise, and one cannot see broken bones and pools of blood. Learned men (true, it is those whose learning is misdirected) are using all the power of erudition to prove that mankind lives like a herd of cattle, that man is guided by economic considerations alone, and that his intellect is given him merely for amusement. But governments well know what it is that rules the world, consequently—guided by the instinct of self-preservation—they are undoubtedly chiefly concerned about the manifestation of spiritual forces; upon which forces depend their existence or their ruin.
And this is precisely the reason why all the energies of the Russian Government were, and still continue to be, exerted to render the Doukhobors harmless, to isolate them, to banish them beyond the frontier.
Notwithstanding all these efforts, however, the struggle of the Doukhobors has opened the eyes of millions.
I know hundreds of military men, old
