A GREAT empire can hardly be expected to explain to the world why it takes certain measures which to the world seem uncalled for, except when it enters onawar. In this case it is usual to publish in the form of a letter to its representatives at foreign Courts its reasons for breaking the peace. The civilised world, however, would like it very much if Russia would condescend to explain to the world why she persecutes her Jewish subjects so severely. She has a more or less unofficial champion in the celebrated " O.K.", Madame Novikoff, but her explanation is obviously inadequate, for it amounts merely to this, that no one has any right to question the Czar's action, because he disposes of two millions of soldiers; a ladylike way of saying, "If you ask me impertinent questions, I'll punch your head." It really appears from the note which we print in another column, and from the telegrams of which the papers are fall, that in Russia now a Jew has no rights which orthodox' Christians are bound to respect; he has almost no locus standi before the law, if he is the prosecutor or plaintiff: special taxes are levied on him, and the tax-gatherer to levy them prias into his most intimate concerns: he may not take up any profession, or hold any public office, even the foremanship of jury: he may not pray publicly or privately without a license, and he may not hold public worship at all in any place where there are less than eighty Jewish families: in many towns the Jews form half the population, but no school may: have more than ten per cent. of Jewish pupils, jand as a Jew is only allowed to send his children to school in the town where he resides, a Jarge number of Jewish {children have to go without education. A more ridiculous regulation than all is that now the Jews are not allowed to converted, because the conversion may not be genuine, and may be assumed only to avoid all these disabilities.
It is not altogether a question of religion, for Russia is not entirely intoler grant of any form of religion outside the Greek, Church; and religious to superstition as the Russians are, policy dictates toleration of competing forms of Christianity. Rich Jews are tolerated, because they can afford to bribe freely, and the official class in Russia is as corrupt as in China, according to popular belief. The hatred of the populace to the Jews is intelligible enough, for the jcommion people regard the Jews much in the spirit of the traditional Irishman who knocked down the Jew in the Bowery, New York. "'Uhey hate them," as the Spectator says, "for their history, they hate them for their separateness, and they hate them for their skill in minute bargaining which is the only decent method left them of gaining a subsistence." But this does not explain why the Czar and the ruling classes should treat them so abominably, The Jew is nowhere a danger to the government under which he lives; there is as a rule no more patriotic citizen in a country than the Jew. Whatever else of Christ's teaching he disregards, the Jew acts faithfully on the injunction, "Render therefore unto Cresar the things that are Czsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." There is nothing objectionable: in his religion, which is the purest monotheism. To quote the Spectator again: "'hey are not bad subjects, but particularly submissive ones, serve like the rest in the army, pay taxes with timorous punch triality, ask and receive no alms from anybody, and are about as likely to rise in insurrection as the household cats." Any one who is fortunate enough to have friends of the Hebrew race, knows what true and warm-hearted friends they are. We can understand, if we cannot sympathise with, the cowardice that prohibits their entering the learned. professions in Russia. 'The Russians know that if only. permitted they would rise to all the highest positions, as in Germany where, according to the common saying, "every pleasant post that is not filled by a 'Von' is occupied by a Jew." The Russian
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.