PROTESTS OF LIBERAL RUSSIA
The cruelty of the government’s policy toward the Jews has not received the support of the Russian people, as the numerous protests uttered in the Duma, in public assemblies and in the press clearly indicate. When it is remembered that those non-Jews who, in Russia, dare to utter a word in favor of the despised Jews, risk their position and prestige to a degree unparalleled in any other country, the following calendar of protests and manifestoes constitutes a body of evidence against the Russian government which must compel conviction.
These protests have been grouped, for convenience, into four classes:
THE VOICE OF THE DUMA
Early in the session of the Duma the Left groups proposed an interpellation of the Government with respect to its illegal acts against the Jews. After some debate the proposed questions were referred to the Committee on Interpellations, which reported them out, on August 30, 1915, in this form:
I. Do the president of the Council of Ministers and the Ministers of the Interior and Justice know of the illegal conduct of their administrative officers with respect to the following:
1. That officers of the prison administration received persons taken by the military authorities as hostages from the local Jewish population of Riga, Prushkov ... etc.?
2. That the prosecuting attorneys took no steps to obtain the immediate release of these persons, accused of no crime and illegally imprisoned?
3. That the expelled were driven by agents of the police in Vilikomir, Zhagory and Shadov into freight cars inadequate for the accommodation of one-tenth of them, and that the remainder, including children, aged men and women, and invalids were compelled to follow afoot?
4. That the officers of the local governments took no steps to check the repeated robberies by the local population of the property left by the exiles?