‘Yes, yes,’ said Prince Andrey absently. ‘There’s one thing I would do, f I were in power,’ he began again. ‘I wouldn’t take orisoners. What ense is there in taking prisoners? That’s chivalry. The French have iestroyed my home and are coming to destroy Moscow; they have out- aged and are outraging me at every second. They are my enemies, they re all criminals to my way of thinking. And so thinks Timohin, and all he army with him. They must be put to death. Since they are my nemies, they can’t be my friends, whatever they may have said at Tilsit.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince Andrey. ‘I ntirely agree with you! ’
The question that had been disturbing Pierre all that day, since the dozhaisk hill, now struck him as perfectly clear and fully solved. He aw now all the import and all the gravity of the war and the impending iattle. All he had seen that day, all the stern, grave faces of which he ad had glimpses, appeared to him in a new light now. He saw, to borrow
term from physics, the latent heat of patriotism in all those men he ad seen, and saw in it the explanation of the composure and apparent :vity with which they were all preparing for death. ‘We ought not to ike prisoners,’ said Prince Andrey. ‘That change alone would transform le whole aspect of war and would make it less cruel. But playing at war, lat’s what’s vile; and playing at magnanimity and all the rest of it. hat magnanimity and sensibility is like the magnanimity and sensibility f the lady who turns sick at the sight of a slaughtered calf—she is so indhearted she can’t see blood—but eats fricasseed veal with a very bod appetite. They talk of the laws of warfare, of chivalry, of flags of ;uce, and humanity to the wounded, and so on. That’s all rubbish. I iw enough in 1805 of chivalry and flags of truce: they duped us, and we aped them. They plunder other people’s homes, issue false money, and.
worse than all, kill my children, my father, and then talk of the laws of warfare, and generosity to a fallen foe. No prisoners; and go to give and to meet death! Any one who has come to think this as I have, through the same sufferings . .
Prince Andrey, who had thought that he did not care whether they took Moscow as they had taken Smolensk, was suddenly pulled up in his speech by a nervous catch in his throat. He walked to and fro several times ir silence, but his eyes blazed with feverish brilliance and his lip quivered as he began to speak again.
‘If there were none of this playing at generosity in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for as now. Then there would not be wars because Pavel Ivanitch had insulted Mihail Ivanitch. But if there is war as now, let it be really war. Anc then the intensity of warfare would be something quite different. All these Westphalians and Plessians Napoleon is leading against us woulc not have come to fight us in Russia, and we should not have gone to wai in Austria and in Prussia without knowing what for. War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to accept it sternly and solemnly as s fearful necessity. It all comes to this: have done with lying, and if it’s war, then it’s war and not a game, or else warfare is simply the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous. . . . The military is the most honoured calling. And what is war, what is needed for success in war, what are the morals of the military world? The object of warfare is murder; the means employed in warfare—spying, treachery, and the encouragement of it, the ruin of a country, the plundering of its inhabitants and robbery for the maintenance of the army, trickery and lying, which are calleo: military strategy; the morals of the military class—absence of all inde pendence, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery and drunkenness. And in spite of all that, it is the highest class, respectec by every one. All sovereigns, except the Chinese, wear a military uniform and give the greatest rewards to the man who succeeds in killing mosl people. . . . They meet together to murder one another, as we shall dc to-morrow; they slaughter and mutilate tens of thousands of men, anc then offer up thanksgiving services for the number of men they have killed (and even add to it in the telling), and glorify the victory, supposing that the more men have been slaughtered the greater the achievement How God can look down from above and hear them!’ shrieked Prince Andrey in a shrill, piercing voice. ‘Ah, my dear boy, life has been a bittei thing for me of late. I see that I have come to understand too much. Anc it is not good for man to taste of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. . . . Ah, well, it’s not for long!’ he added. ‘But you are getting sleepy and it’s time I was in bed too. Go back to Gorky,’ said Prino Andrey suddenly.
