Tolstoy's Last

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 11 (Supplement)

Tolstoy's Last

It will be 27 years next month since the death took place of Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist and social reformer. This fact, and the trend of things in Russia to-day, make all the more in* teresting an article from his pen on socialism, that turns out to have been, save for a few letters, the last thing he wrote. It was written, only a few days before he passed away, in reply to a letter from the editor of a Bohemian newspaper, and it gives his views in characteristic fashion, not only ohj socialism, but on religion. Secured by Miss Ruth Fry, from a Russian friend in Moscow, some years ago, it was recently translated into English, and published by the Hogarth Press in pamphlet form, along with notes made by Tolstoy on the rough proofs, under the title, "Leo Tolstoy on Socialism." As Miss Fry says in the course of an introductory note, even for its words on the absolute value of following the moral law, it is important in the present-day labyrinth of problems.