"His position was already weakened. Above all, his enemies succeeded in placing him under suspicion as guilty of philo-Semitism. You know, or perhaps do not know, that it is also a part of the system here to keep the Jews—particularly the Jews—from higher education; and this higher education in itself runs contrary to the desire of the dictator-general of the Holy Synod and to that of the police. A minister of public instruction, particularly when he hails from the learned professions, may easily commit the error of making science readily accessible to all properly qualified. Sänger granted some alleviation to the Jews, so that the most gifted among them, especially when their academy professor had already taken a warm interest in them, could enter the university without great difficulty. He was reproached with that, and that would have been sufficient to weaken the position of a stronger man."
"I am not familiar with the disabilities of Jewish students."
"A detailed description of these disabilities would carry you too far afield. Suffice it to state that we possess a very complicated system, particularly developed in Moscow, for the exclusion of Jewish children from the schools. The ratio of three to one hundred must, however, be conveniently tolerated. Now it happens quite frequently that, no matter how strict the director at admission, on promotion from the lower to the higher class this relation is shifted in favor of the Jews, because of their diligence and sobriety in contrast to the characteristics of the sons of the Russian officials. Then the trouble begins anew. Splendidly qualified candidates cannot enter the university, since the prescribed percentage has already been reached. The professors, however, who are not pronounced anti-Semites really like these Jewish students who have survived this process of selection, for they are really studious. But that again is opposed to the principles of the accepted policy. And whoever is inclined to take sides with the professors rather than with the bulwarks of this general policy may easily find himself in the toils, as it happened, for instance, in Sänger's case."
"Who are these bulwarks of this general policy?" An involuntary glance towards the door, as if to see whether some uninvited listener was not accidentally near—a glance I have frequently seen only in Russia—was the first answer. Then, even in lower tones than before, he proceeded.
"That is still a portion of the legacy of Alexander III., rigidly guarded by the dowager-empress, and particularly by the Grand-Duke Sergius in Moscow. When in the Russo-Turkish war enormous peculations of the military stores were discovered, the heir to the throne, then commander of a corps in the reserve, was persuaded that the Jewish contractors had defrauded the army, and the officer of the secret police, Zhikharev, exerted himself to prove that two-thirds of all the revolutionaries were Jews. That belief remained, just as a great portion of the French still cling to the belief that Dreyfus is a traitor because he is used as a scapegoat for the information-mongers of high rank on the general staff. Something similar happened here. I really have no desire to defend any Jewish contractor; but when there was in our stores lime-dust instead of flour in the sacks, quite other people than the Jews pocketed the difference. However, that is another story. Grand-Duke Sergius, of Moscow, has among his other passions bigotry and a fanatical hatred of Jews. And he is the uncle and brother-in-law of the Czar."
"Then Sänger found himself in a rather dubious position mainly as a philo-Semite?"
"At least as a man of not sufficiently pronounced anti-Semitism. But also because he was not really the man to hold his own with the generals and talents of the career-maker von Plehve. Finally, he was blamed for adverse criticism of the general principles of the government expressed at various conventions."
"At what conventions?"
"There was lately a convention of public-school teachers that presumed to criticise by speaking the truth about an intimate of Plehve's, Pronin, of Kishinef. I must emphasize here, by-the-way, that there was only an insignificant minority of Jews at that convention. Then there was a medical congress whose hygienic resolutions hid under a very thin hygienic disguise an arraignment of the system of stupefying the populace. The Lord knows Sänger had surely no premonition of these occurrences. But they concerned his department; the spirit of his staff was not right, and he alone was to blame for it, especially since von Plehve knew very well what Sänger thought of him."