OLIVE SCHREINER, 1906.
THE RUSSIAN AGONY[59]
I. THE BEGINNINGS
IN 1563 Ivan the Terrible conquered Polotzk, and for the first time the Russian Government was confronted by the fact of the existence of the Jewish nationality. The Czar’s advisers were somewhat perplexed, and asked him what to do with these newly acquired subjects. Ivan the Terrible answered unhesitatingly: ‘Baptize them or drown them in the river’. They were drowned.
P. MILYUKOV, 1916.
II. IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY[60]
FEW facts in the nineteenth century have been so well calculated to disenchant the believers in perpetual progress with their creed as the anti-Semite movement, which in a few years has swept like an angry wave over the greater part of Europe.
The recent movement for proscribing, under pretence of preventing cruelty to animals, the mode of killing animals for food which is enjoined in the Jewish ritual, is certainly at least as much due to dislike to the Jews as to consideration for cattle. It appears to have arisen among the German anti-Semites, especially in Saxony....
The Russian persecution stands in some degree apart from the other forms of the anti-Semite movement, both on account of its unparalleled magnitude and ferocity, and also because it is the direct act of a Government deliberately, systematically, remorselessly seeking to reduce to utter misery millions of its own subjects.