“ It is unbearably painful to see that human beings who have produced so much that is beautiful, wise and necessary for the world, live among us oppressed by unfair laws, which in all ways restrain their right to life, work and freedom. It is necessary,—for it is just and useful—to give the Jew equal rights with the Russians; it is imperative that we should do so not only out of respect to the people which has rendered and is constantly rendering yeoman service to humanity and our own nation, but also out of self-respect. ”

“ And yet I, a Russian intellectual, a happy representative of the sovereign race, although fully conscious and convinced that the "Jewish question" is no question at all,—I felt powerless and doomed to the most sterile tribulation of spirit. For, all the clear-cut arguments of my intellect, the most fervent tirades and speeches, the sincerest tears of compassion and outcries of indignation unfailingly broke against a dull, unresponsive wall. But all powerlessness, if it is unable to prevent a crime, becomes complicity ”

“ The Jews' tragic love for Russia finds a counterpart in our love for Europe, as tragical in its faithfulness and completeness. Are we not ourselves the Jews of Europe, and is not our frontier—the same "Pale of Settlement"—something in the nature of a Russian Ghetto? And try as our Pushkin and Dostoyevsky and your Byalik may to prove that we, too, are human beings, people do not believe us, as they do not believe you: here is that equality whence we all can derive a bitter consolation ”

“ Whenever I met Russian Jews abroad, I always marvelled at the strangely tenacious love for Russia which they preserve. They speak of Russia with the same longing and the same tenderness as the Russian emigrants; they are equally eager to return and equally saddened if the return is impossible. Wherefore should they love Russia, who is so harsh and inhospitable toward them? ”

“ Lost in the depth of a winter six months long, and wrapt in misty dreams, we love beautiful fairy-tales, but the desire for a beautiful life is undeveloped in us. And when on the plane of our lazy thought something new and disquieting makes its appearance,—instead of accepting and sympathetically scanning it, we hasten to drive it into a dark corner of our mind and bury it there, lest it disturb us in our customary vegetative existence, amidst impotent hopes and grey dreams. ”

“ In the West, Galicia and Roumania excluded, the Jews are well represented in the wealthy classes; in Russia an overwhelming portion of them are proletaries, "free like birds," poverty-stricken people who literally do not know to-day by what they are going to live to-morrow. Heart-rending pictures are painted by impartial observers of the life of the Jewish poorer classes, of all these tradesmen, factory workers, petty merchants and peddlers. They literally starve and cripple both mind and body in the slums of cities and towns. ”

“ Why has the Jewish question become so keen [120] in time of war? For the same reason that the rest of the national problems have made themselves felt.
We have called the present struggle a war of liberation. We entered the war with the avowed purpose of liberating those who are situated at a distance from us. While liberating distant strangers, why then do we oppress those who live close by our side? We wage war against tyranny outside of Russia, and we allow oppression to reign within her. We pity everybody but the Jews. ”

“ No one in Russia is benefited by the unequal rights of her various peoples; this inequality does not add to our political power, it only supports our internal disorder. Its abolition by no means contradicts the fundamental conceptions of Russian statehood.
You will say that Russia has been created by the Russian race. Well, then, her policy must be determined by the qualities of the Russian popular spirit,—but animosity and exclusiveness are things strange and repulsive to it. The soul of the Russian people is trusting and open to all influences. ”

“ How else can a plain man construe this fact than that the Jews are spies, dangerous people, in short, our internal enemy? And so this one-year-old baby whose puffed-up, tiny hand hangs down from its mother's shoulder is also an enemy, just as is this sad girl wearily skulking in a corner, and this old man with his shaking head and wrinkled hands,—all these are our enemies, otherwise why should they have been deported before the arrival of the foe? ”

“ Not an outsider, nor a congress of allies, nor some one social class shall regulate our affairs for the best of Poland, Finland, the Jews and the rest. Neither our allies, nor any one of our social classes, nor the wisest and strongest among us,—but all of us Russian citizens, all of us who joyously and willingly bear the burden of statehood, are called upon to settle in conscience and reason, the fundamental problems of our great home-building. ”

“ And if I persist in speaking of ourselves and our suffering, it is not for personal egoism, nor even class egoism, but the pardonable egoism of a nation, which has been too long playing a miserable part on Europe's stage and in its own conscience, and which now repudiates the suffering of yesterday and, at the dawn of new life, seeks the possibility—oh, only the possibility!—of respecting itself. ”

“ No benefits which may be derived by individual persons or social classes from an inequality of rights can justify the State in depriving a group of citizens of their full rights, as a result of their race and faith. This is the A-B-C of justice, and those who do not know it have yet to learn what justice is.
Neither are the Jews better than we are, nor are we better than they. We are all human beings and, as such, we must all be equal before the impartial and dispassionate Law, which determines our rights and duties towards the State and society. ”

“ Is it not clear from the recent discussion in the British Parliament that the Irish problem weighs like an almost intolerable burden just as much upon the British Empire as it does upon Ireland? Is it not equally clear from England's concession of a cotton tariff to India that she will be obliged for her own sake to make further concessions to justice in that country? And can America ever hope to have any standing in the court of nations as long as our infamous persecution of the negroes and our atrocious attitude towards Asiatics continues? ”

“ The fatherland is for all of us, because we are all for the fatherland. The fatherland is our common home, and this home we build, keep in good order, and defend. We build our common home not like hirelings, to whom, after they get their pay, the building becomes alien. In rearing, decorating and defending it we bargain with no one, we give everything that is necessary for its upbuilding and defence,—we give our property, our labour, our very life. ”

“ We must all understand that the end of Jewish sufferings is the beginning of our self-respect, without which Russia cannot exist. The black days of war will pass, and the "German barbarians" of to-day will again become cultured Germans, to whose voice the world will once more hearken with deference. And we must never again allow this or any other voice to utter aloud: "The Russian barbarians." ”

“ Who ought to know better than the Russian peasant that in "Holy Russia" the innocent are too often tried and beaten? But his conception of right and wrong has been confused from time immemorial, the sense of injustice is undeveloped in his dark mind, dimmed by centuries of Tartardom, boyardom, and the horrors of serfdom. ”

“ The war has opened our eyes to many things, and therein lies for us Russians the sad advantages of it. And now when Germany brands France and England for the union with "the Russian barbarians who...," when the allies, while relying on our elemental force, tremble with doubts and fear behind the screen of their noisy sympathies,—I begin to understand in whose interests it was, who needed it, that in the legion of European states we should remain all alone with our barbarism. ”

“ The Jews—mankind's old, strong leaven,—have always exalted its spirit, bringing into the world restless, noble ideas, goading men to embark on a search for finer values.
All men are equal; the soil—is no one's, it is God's; man has the right and the power to resist his fate, and we may stand up even against God,—all this is written in the Jewish Bible, one of the world's best books. And the commandment of love for one's neighbour is also an ancient Jewish commandment, just as are all the rest, "thou shalt not kill" among them. ”

“ Hundreds of thousands of Jews are shedding their blood for Russia, while at home they are deprived of such elementary rights as other Russian subjects could lose only when convicted of crime. When a population of six million occupies such a position, the fact is bound to make itself felt in all walks of life; but what the war has made supremely clear is the limitations to which the Jew is subjected as to his right to choose freely his place of residence and to give his children an education. ”

“ What is forty pounds for a family often very large? They can hardly afford to take some underwear and warm clothes.... Behind each family there remained a home, probably a store, a stand, a workshop or simply a sewing-machine, the sole source of income.... All are equal now in this dreadful train, which carries them away from home, naked wrecks of humanity, torn from their customary course of life and deprived of the daily toil, which fed the family. ”

“ Emigration, the safety valve of poverty, was now impossible. Into the midst of this suffering came pouring in the refugees from the border regions, on the one hand, and on the other, the exiles from Germany and Austria, where they had previously found food and shelter, and whence they had now, so to speak, been thrown overboard.
The economic rôle of such an element, hungry and unemployed, is easily appraised. Small wonder, then, that such a condition should become absolutely unbearable; starvation has become a common occurrence, and many prefer suicide to asking for alms. ”

“ But few of us educated Americans have the intellectual and moral courage of the educated classes of Russia. We feel that we can avoid our moral and intellectual responsibilities by turning our back on existing crimes. It has frequently been pointed out that in spite of a government even more anti-democratic than that of Germany, the Russian people have been infinitely more democratic than the Germans. In the same way, while the institutions of America are much further developed in the direction of general democracy than those of Russia, the very reverse is the case with public opinion. ”

“ The tragic history of late years and the epoch through which we are living can disturb the inner composure of the most indifferent spectator of current events. It is painful to touch upon many aching and essentially clear questions, but life constantly and severely demands that they should be brought before our minds, and life awaits an answer to them from the thought and conscience of Russian society.
It is not our intention to discuss the necessity for the removal of Jewish disabilities from the humanitarian standpoint. ”

“ All those persons who are united by the fact of their belonging to the Russian state must have, within the limits of the empire, the minimum of rights, which, to our shame, are refused the Jews. This minimum each one of us receives not for his personal or racial deserts or distinctive traits, but as a citizen of the state. To obey the common Russian laws, to pay the established taxes, to serve in the army,—all these are the duties of a Russian subject, corresponding to the amount of rights of which he can be deprived only by a court ruling for a crime. ”

“ And if you were to stop and ask who established the guilt of these people, and whether it is thinkable that all these tens of thousands of men, women, and children should have been caught red-handed, no one will stop to listen to you. A Jew is a spy,—this is the only impression that becomes indelibly branded in the brains of the Russian population which witnesses the new tragedy of the Jewish nation. The effect of the passage of these trains is truly terrible, it is a series of systematic object-lessons of hatred.... ”

“ A blind denial of a nationality engenders an equally blind affirmation of it. An absolute "Nay" naturally brings forth an absolute "Yea."
Whom do we call a "Judophile" in Russia at the present time? Presumably, it is he or she who loves the Jews with a singular love, who finds in them greater values than in any other nationality. In the eyes of the so-called "true Russians" we, the Intellectuals, are such Judophiles.
"Why worry over the Jews all the time?" the Russian Nationalists say to us. ”

“ But the deportation of the Jews took place as if on the sly, without attracting any one's attention, without engaging the sympathies of the people at large to the degree which might be expected.
The deported proved a heavy burden not only for the Jewish but also for the Gentile population of the humble villages of the government of Tavrida, which were flooded by the newcomers. The prices of food, and the rent soared up, and competition among tradesmen and small merchants grew more ruthless,—in a word, life here became much harder than the War alone would have made it. ”