AN EXTRAORDINARY PROPHECY BY COUNT TOLSTOY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1306, 3 October 1914, Page 4

AN EXTRAORDINARY PROPHECY BY COUNT TOLSTOY.

Washingtonians are recalling a prophecy made by Count Tolstoy in 1911, concerning the coming of “The Second Napoleon,” for which the stage appears to be set now in Europe. The aged Russian foretold with considerable accuracy the state in which Europe now finds herselt. Whether he was correct as to his vision of a single man again holding the destiny of the old world for a decade remains to be seen.

Emperor William, of Germany, asked the Czar ot Russia three years ago to obtain for him a message from Tolstoy—something that he had never written before. The Czar, anxious to oblige, commanded Countess ' Nastasia Tolstoy, grandniece of the sage, to interview Leo. Nicolaevitch, as he was familiarly called, and to secure from him the desired document.

This prophetic message is known as “Tolstoy’s Vision” by his admirers. Printed in Russia in 1912, it was translated and first circulated among friends of the Moscovite philosopher as a privately printed and little known pamphlet. Following the royal command, Countess Tolstoy visited her granduncle at his country estate and explained briefly her mission. He listened curiously and replied : “Very strange, I would be glad to send a message to royalty, but the trouble with me is that I have written all my life messages for the mob. I am not accustomed to the conventions of court diction. However, I will think the matter over.” A few moments afterwards her aged host asked the countess to write, as his hands were then paralyzed. Tolstoy slowly leaned back in his chair, covering bis eyes with his hand and remained absolutely silent. Then, straightening up like one in a trance, be began in a low and hollow voice :

“This is a revelation of events of a universal character, which must shortly come to pass. Their spiritual outlines are now before my eyes. I see floating upon the surface of the sea of human fate the huge silhouette of a nude woman. She is—with her beauty, her poise, her smile, her jewels—a super-Venus. Nations rush madly after her, each of them eager to attract her especially. But she, like an eternal courtesan, flirts with all. In her hair ornament of diamonds and rubies is engraved her name, “Commercialism.” As alluring and bewitching as she seems, much destruction and agony follows in her wake. Her breath, reeking of sordid transactions ; her voice, of metallic character, like gold, and her look of greed are so much poison to the nations who ialj, victims to her charms, “And behold, she has three gigantic arms, with three torches of universal corruption in her hand. The first torch represents tfie 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 the roar of guns and musketry. “The second torch bears the name of bigotry and hypocrisy. It lights the lamps only in temples and on the altars of false institutions. It carries th? seed of falsity and fanaticism, 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 unauthentic traditions, which first does its work in the family, then sweeps through the larger

worlds ot literature, art and statesmanship.

“The great, conflagration will start about 1912, set by the torch of the first arm in the countries of south-eastern Europe. It will develop into a destructive calamity in igr3. In that year I see all Europe in flames and bleeding. I hear the lamentations of huge battlefields. But about the year 1915 a strange figure from the north —a new Napoleon— enters the stage of the bloody drama. He is a man of little militaristic training, a writer or a journalist, but in his grip most of Europe will remain till 1925. “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-Saxons, the Latins, the Slavs and the Mongolians.”— Washington Star.