Russian people, and in the interests of political freedom generally. A political freedom which would be doled out to some sections of the people and withheld from others, a freedom of the Press which would be granted to some papers and refused to others, a religious toleration which would be conceded to the Catholics and refused to the Jews or the Armenians will not work. There is a limit to political contradiction, even in a land of contrasts such as Russia. The Russian bureaucracy and the Russian Church must give up their traditional policy of racial and religious antagonism, or they will inevitably revert to the evil of their ways.
And let us hear no more of the feeble argument that the Russian people have perfectly legitimate grievances against the Jews, that they have old scores to pay off. I know they have. It would have been a miracle, indeed, if the degrading legislation imposed for centuries upon the inmates of the ghetto and the ghastly persecution they have suffered had not left its mark on the Hebrew race. But what have a thousand legitimate grievances to do with the concession of political rights? In so far as the Jews act dishonourably in private life, they
