They illustrate the story that is the same
always and everywhere, and the tumult of the dawning century to which
they are born is an accident. Peter and Andrew and Natasha and the
rest of them are the children of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow;
there is nothing in any of them that is not of all time. Tolstoy has
no thought of showing them as the children of their particular
conditions, as the generation that was formed by a certain historic
struggle; he sees them simply as the embodiment of youth. To an
English reader of to-day it is curious--and more, it is strangely
moving--to note how faithfully the creations of Tolstoy, the
nineteenth-century Russian, copy the young people of the twentieth
century and of England; it is all one, life in Moscow then, life in
London now, provided only that it is young enough. Old age is rather
more ephemeral; its period is written on it (not very deeply, after
all), and here and there it "dates." Nicholas and Natasha are always
of the newest modernity.
Such is the master-motive that at first sight appears to underlie the
book, in spite of its name; such is the most evident aspect of the
story, as our thought brushes freely and rapidly around it. In this
drama the war and the peace are episodic, not of the centre; the
historic scene is used as a foil and a background. It appears from
time to time, for the sake of its value in throwing the nearer
movement of life into strong relief; it very powerfully and
strikingly shows what the young people _are_.
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