Show A SAD STATE OF SOCETY Count Tolstoi Thinks That Tilings Arc Hotter Hot-ter In America Than Elsewhere In the London Standard is given anI I admirable account of an interesting interview in-terview which a Russian journalist has had with Count Leo Tolstoi The journalist had beforehand apprised ap-prised the count of his intention and stated that the themo of conversation he wished to start would be the vicious tendency society or briofly inbred sin and the count consented to give his ideas on the subject as follows Suppose for a moment said he that six tigers had been brought in a solid iron cage to some menagerie in the government of Tula Go qn to suppose sup-pose that the beasts had broken loose and spread over the plains and forests attacking the inhabitants Naturally if these six tigers were killed or caught and shut up again in their cages the mischief would be at an end Some people peo-ple seem to think that the case of vicious vi-cious men is similar in which they are altogether mistaken Vitiated human beings are not tigers in Tula but wolves wolves which regularly breed there and have done so for generations and which it is absolutely impossible to eXterminate eX-terminate You propose then count I declare that if I find that in my own house fleas are breeding it would be strange for me to try and catch these insects one by one A much simpler way is to clean out all the dust and dirt from tho house and the fleas will disappear of themselves And what have you to say count of the rapid development of thevicious tendency which is to be observed now even in the most cultivated society f It is due to the absence of good sense and of love I consider the cultured society so-ciety of today as you call it as something some-thing abnormal Common sense has lost its footing there and as for love it is conspicuous by its absence It is very sad Inbred sin zlaya volia leads to grewsome consequences especially because be-cause it is never possible to define the form in which it is likely to manifest itself or the victims predestined for it If a dying horse in the J street Jnsnes out In spasms any passerby mar fall undp his hoof 4 Yon say aj U < cr And which naSoir the most abnormal at the press tIe American French English Germans Ger-mans At any rate not Americans 1 To their credit must be put an immenso national self love which cannot exist in an abnormal people I one day wrote au article on America and the Americans In which I did not particularly overload the latter with flattery Nevertheless I sent the MSS over the ocean thinking it would be accepted by any paper as eagerly ea-gerly ps my other productions Not a bit of it The translator took it to 14 different editors without it getting accepted ac-cepted and dually it had to be sent to England It lIf not America count then Why France Can anybody consider consid-er France as normal where such things as Panama occur where men occupying occupy-ing high positions in society are ready to commit any crime for gold Is that a normal state A thousand times no |