"But they challenged their fate!"
"That is a part of the fight against the régime. They seek martyrdom, since they have become convinced that nothing can be attained by bare protests and petitions. Perhaps a trace of Asiatic fatalism, and a lower valuation upon life than is given it in the West, plays a part in their acts, but, more powerful than all else probably, their conviction that public opinion appreciates their sacrifices and approves of their conduct."
"Then ambition is also an influence?"
"If you care to call it so. There is a little ambition in every martyrdom. But the strongest motive is that youthful self-sacrifice, and the belief that something can be attained for the cause by their offering themselves up—in short, fanaticism. In this way some of the most incredible things occur; for example, a student in prison emptied an oil lamp over his body and set fire to it only in order to protest against absolutism."
"I have heard this horrible story."
"Those who are now under arrest," the professor continued, "will probably most of them soon be let free, for I do not believe that the authorities have at present any desire to raise much of a storm. But as many of them as are Jews will in all probability be more severely punished, if only for statistical reasons."
"I understand."
"Oh yes. You know that the police have their special code for the Jews, so as to prove that the discontent is entirely due to them. Plehve asserts that he has forty thousand political indictments, eighty per cent. of the indicted being Jews. That is made up to suit themselves, and has nothing to do with turbulence. On the other hand, I dare say, that quite often just for this statistical reason, and because the Jews are punished quite differently from the sons of distinguished families, the Jews are urged by their congeners not to expose themselves; but they, too, are of course infected by the general fanaticism of self-sacrifice."
"But from what do the special student disturbances about which we hear so much proceed? Are they not caused by troubles in the universities?"
"Only in the very rarest cases. It is occurrences of general politics which find a particularly lively echo among the students; the reforms which are demanded for the university by us, the professors, are even repudiated by the students, because they do not wish to let the causes of their discontent be removed."