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Show WHAT TOLSTOY FORESAW. Count Leo Tolstov In 1910 forecast war in Europe in 1913. In a prophecy given bis grendniece In 1910, the famous fa-mous Rusplan made this prediction "I see floating upon the surface of the sea of human fate the huge silhouette sil-houette of a DUde woman She is with her beauty, poise, her smil her jewels a super Venus Nations rush madly after her each of thflm eager to attract her especially But she. like an eternal courtesan flirt with nil. In her hair ornaments, of diamond! and rubies is engraved her name, 'Commercialism. As alluring and bewitching aa she seems, much destruction and agony follow In her wake. Her breath, reeking of sordid transactions her voice of metallic. character like gold, ana her iook oi greed are so much poison to the na tlons who fall victims to her charms "And behold, she has three gl Kantlc orms wlih three torches of universal corruption In her hands. The first torch represents the flame of war, that the beautiful courtesan carries from city to city and country to country. Patriotism answers with flashes of honest flame, but the end Is a roar of guns and or muskets "The second torch bears the flame of bigotry and hypocrisy. It lights the lamps only in temples and on altars al-tars of Bacred institutions It car rles the seed of falsity and fanati ism. It kindles the minds that are still in cradles and follows them to their graves, "The third torch is that of the law . that dangerous foundation of all unar. thentlc traditions, which first does its fatal work in the family then sweeps through the larger world of literature, are and statesmanship, "The great conflagration will start about 1912, set by the torch of the first arm in the countries of southeastern south-eastern Europe It will develop Into a destruction and calamity in 191. In that year 1 see all Europe in flames and bleeding. I hear the lamenta tions of huge battlefields. "But about the year 1915 the strange figure from the north a new Napoleon enters the stage of the blood drama. He is a man of little militaristic training a writer or a journalist, but in his grip most of Europe will remain until 1926. "The end of the great calamity will mark a new political era for the old world. There will be left no empires or kingdoms, but the world will form a federation of the United States of Nations There will remain only four great giants the Anglo-Saxon, the Latin, the Slavs and the Mongolians. "After the year 1925 I 6ee a change in religious sentiment The second torch of the courtesan has brought about the fall of the church. The ethical idea has almost vanished Hu manity Is without moral feeling But then a great reformer arises He will clear the world of the relics of monotheism and lay the cornerstone corner-stone of the temple of pantheism. God, soul, spirit and Immortality will be molten in a new furnace, and 1 see the peaceful beginning of an ethical eth-ical era The man determined to this mission is a Mongolian Slav He is already walking the earth a man of active arfalrs He himself does nm now realize the mission nsslpncd to him by Superior Powers. "And. behold, the flame of the third torch which has alreadv begun to destroy our family relations our standards of art and morals. The relation re-lation between woman and man ib accepted ac-cepted BB a prosaic partnership of the. sexes. Art has become realistic degeneracy de-generacy Political and religious disturb ances have shaken the spiritual foundations foun-dations of all nations. "Only small spots here ami un-re have remained untouched by those three destructive flames The anti-natlonal anti-natlonal Vars in Europe, the class war of America and the race wars In Asia have strangled progress for a half a century By then, in th? middle of this century. I see a heroine hero-ine of literature and art rising from the ranks of the Latins and Persians, the world of the tedious stuff of the obvious. "It is the Hghl of symbolism thai shall outshine the ligh' of the torch of commercialism In place of polygamy poly-gamy and monogamy of today there will come a poetOgamy relations of Hie sexes based fundamentally on the poetic ( onceptlons of lif "And I see the nations growing larger and realizing that the alluring woman of their deslln Is after all nothing but an illusion There will be a time when the world will have no use for armies, hypocritical rellgl- One ana degenerate an " -lution and evolution is development from the simple to the more compli cated forms of the mind and body. "I see the passing show of the world-drama in Its present form, how-It how-It fades like the glow of eening upon the mountains One motion of the hand of commercialism and a new his tory begins ' |