B

EFORE we reach the end of this war, whose days of grief and terror now seem to be numbered, let us weigh for the last time in our minds the words of hatred and malediction which it has so often wrung from us. We have to deal with the strangest of enemies. He has deliberately, scientifically, in full possession of his senses, without necessity or excuse, revived all the crimes which we had believed to be forever buried in the barbarous past. He has trampled under foot all the precepts which the human race had so painfully gleaned out of the cruel darknesses of its origins; he has violated all the laws of justice, of humanity, of loyalty, of honor,

not like that which we love. For us heroism should be, above all, voluntary, free from all restraint, active, ardent, joyous, spontaneous; whereas with them it is mixed with much of servility, of passivity, of sadness, of gloomy, ignorant

from the highest, which almost touch the divine, to the simplest and most elementary, which still appertain to the lower orders. There is no longer any doubt on this point; the proof of it has been established and re-established, the certitude definitively acquired.

But, on the other hand, it is no less certain that the enemy has displayed virtues which it would not be right for us to deny; for one honors one's self by recognizing the valor of those whom one combats. He has gone to death in deep, compact, disciplined masses, with a blind, obstinate, hopeless heroism, for which history furnishes no example equally sombre, and which often has compelled our admiration and our pity.

I am well aware that this heroism is

mass submission, and of fears more or less base. Yet in a moment of peril these distinctions vanish for the most part; no force on earth could drive toward death a nation that did not have within itself the will to confront death.

Our soldiers have not deceived themselves on this point. Ask those who return from the trenches. They execrate the enemy; they have a horror of the aggressor, unjust, arrogant, gross, too often cruel and perfidious; they do not hate the man, they pity him; and, after the battle, in the defenseless wounded or the disarmed prisoner they recognize with astonishment a brother in misery who, like themselves, has been trying to do his duty, and who has laws which he considers high and necessary. Underneath the intolerable enemy they see the unfortunate mortal who likewise is bearing the burden of life.

Leaving out of account the unpardonable aggression and the inexpiable violation of treaties, very little is lacking to make this war, despite its madness, a bloody but magnificent testimonial of grandeur, of heroism, of the spirit of sacrifice. Humanity was ready to raise itself, above itself, to surpass all that it had achieved up to this hour. And it

has done it. We had not known of nations that were capable, through months and years, of renouncing their rest, their security, their wealth, their well-being, all that they possessed and loved, even life itself, to accomplish what they believed to be their duty. We had never seen whole nations that were able to understand and admit that the happiness of each of those living at the moment of trial does not count when it is a question of the honor of those no longer living or of the happiness of those not yet living.

Here we stand on summits that had never before been attained. And if, on the part of our enemies, this unexampled renunciation had not been poisoned at its source, if the war which they wage against us had been as beautiful, as loyal, as generous, as chivalrous as that which we wage against them, one might believe that it was to be the last war, and that it was to end, not in mortal combat, but in the awakening from a bad dream with a noble and fraternal astonishment. They have not permitted this to be so; and it is their deception, we may rest assured, that the future will have the greatest difficulty in pardoning.

Now, what are we going to do? Must we go on hafing to the end of our days? Hatred is the heaviest load that man can bear on this earth, and we should be bowed down by the burden. But, on the other hand, we do not wish to be again the victims of trust and love. Here once more our soldiers, in their clear-eyed simplicity and nearness to truth, anticipate the future and teach us what is best to do and not to do. As we have seen, they do not hate the individual, but they do not trust him. They do not see the human being in him until he is without arms. They

know from sad experience that as long as he has weapons he does not resist the mad impulse to injure, to betray, to kill, and that he becomes good only when he is powerless.

Is he thus by nature, or has he been made thus by those who lead him? Have the chiefs carried away the whole nation, or has the whole nation driven its chiefs? Have the leaders made the people like themselves, or have the people chosen the leaders and supported them only because they resembled themselves? Did the disease come from below or from above, or was it everywhere? This is the great obscure point of the awful adventure. It is not easy to explain, and it is still less easy to find an excuse.

If they prove that they have been deceived and corrupted by their masters, they are proving at the same time that they are less intelligent, less firmly grounded in justice, honor, and humanity-in a word, less civilized-than those whom they pretend to have a right to subjugate in the name of a superiority which their own demonstration annihilates; on the other hand, if they do not prove that their errors, their perfidies, and their cruelties, which it is no longer possible to deny, are to be imputed solely to their masters, these sins fall back upon their own heads with all their pitiless weight. I do not know how they will escape the jaws of this dilemma, nor what decision will be rendered by the future, which is wiser than the past, even as the morning, to quote the old Slavic proverb, is wiser than the night. Meanwhile let us imitate the prudence of our admirable soldiers, who know better than we do what path to follow.

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Glimpse of an Aviation Camp on the Somme, and of the Swift and Deadly Craft That Have Given the French

the Mastery of the Air.

(Photo International News Service.)

D

URING the years just preceding

the war the Jews in Russia were passing through a grievous period; the Government's antiSemitism had increased, being expressed in a more intensified system of limitations of rights and in a tendency to extend this system not only by the application of already existing limitations but also by the elaboration of new legislation. The laws concerning Jews have always been characterized by a remarkable vagueness; they had to do with such elementary human rights as the right to live in this or that locality, the right to carry on trade and industry, the right to receive an education, and so forth; yet these laws constantly and invariably raised doubts when they had to be applied to the complicated and varied conditions of life which did not fit into the framework of the prohibitory laws. They were so all-embracing that the mere application of the laws in a more restrictive or in a more liberal sense, without any change in the law itself, would mean either the oppression of many millions of Jews in Russia or a slight alleviation of their condition.

Official Anti-Semitism

The vital interests of this population and the corresponding interests of the whole population were therefore more dependent on the practice in the application of the laws than on the laws themselves. It was the Government's policy to adapt the administrative apparatus of circulars and edicts to the requirements of its anti-Semitic state of mind. Government did not need to issue new restrictive laws in order to manifest its anti-Semitism; the same results-restriction and limitation-could be secured by

The

a simple circular or by an edict of the Senate.

This is why it was always possible for every local administrator-not to speak of persons in the Higher Central Government, from Governors of provinces down to the lowest police agentsto follow their individual policy with regard to the Jews. At any given moment one could divide Russia into regions, and, on a general background of absence of rights, note that the situation of the Jews was comparatively better or worse, according to the administrator of the district, although the laws were equally binding for all localities. There was still greater variety according to epochs, in spite of absence of new legislative measures.

For more than twenty-five years I have been in very close touch with the question of the application of the restrictive laws on Jews, and I must state that there never was a more oppressive period than that of the several years just preceding the war. Without the enactment of any new laws, the noose of legal limitations on Jews was pulled tighter every month by interpretative circulars of the Minister of the Interior, Maklakov, and by edicts of the Senate, under the direction of the Minister of Justice, Shcheglovitov.

[These two Ministers resigned in June, 1915, under the pressure of public opinion.-Translator.]

Again the political law was confirmed of the direct correspondence between the increase of reaction in general and the increase of Governmental anti-Semitism. The Jewish question has for a long time been a political question; and recently, from 1905 on, it has been the main axle around which turned the wheel of re