Vll

These friends seem to forget that non-violence does
not depend for its working upon the sufferance of the
tyrant. It is independent of his will. It is self-sustained.
For instance, it was not lack of will or confidence in Ms
capacity to annihilate that " dark contemptible supersti-
tious heresy" — as Christianity was then known — that
stayed Nero's hand when he started burning alive Christ-
ian heretics to illuminate the nocturnal garden sports of
Rome or throwing them to gladiators and hungry lions
in the Colosseum to make a Roman holiday. Enlightened
public opinion of his day was wholly on his side. To ex-
terminate Christians like a pest was regarded as a
laudable and meritorious act of public service. They
were regarded as by nature corrupt and steeped
In sedition, enemies of the State and of true religion.
No anti-Jewish diatribe of Goebbels or Streicher could
exceed in virulence or cold-blooded hatred words put by
Anatole France into the mouth of Pontius Pilate,* which
very correctly sum up the historical attitude of Roman
proconsuls towards the early Christians. Nor were the
Christians sufficiently numerous or important to employ
" embarrassment tactics" successfully. And their per-
secutors knew it. Had they actually decided upon their

* " Since we cannot govern them, we shall be driven to destroy
tliem. Never doubt it. Always in a state of insubordination, brew-
ing rebellion in their inflammatory minds, they will one day burst
forth upon us with a fury beside which the wrath of the Numidians
and the mutterings of the Parthians are mere child's play. They
are secretly nourishing preposterous hopes and madly pre-meditating
our ruin. How can it be otherwise, when, on the strength of an
oracle, they are living in expectation of the coming of a Prince of
their own blood whose kingdom shall extend over the whole of
the earth ? There are no half measures with such a people. They
must be exterminated. Jerusalem must be laid waste to the very
foundation. Perchance, old as I am, it may be granted me to behold
the day when her walls shall fall and the flames shall envelop her
houses, when her inhabitants shall pass under the edge of the sword,
when salt shall be strewn on the place where once the temple
-stood. And in that day, I shall at length be justified." — Anatole
France : Procurator of Judaea.