An evil chance had placed upon the throne an absolute ruler who combined with much private virtue and very limited faculties all the genuine fanaticism of the great persecutors of the past, and who found a new Torquemada at his side. He reigned over an administration which is among the most despotic, and probably, without exception, the most corrupt and the most cruel in Europe.
W. E. H. LECKY, 1896.
III. IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
TO lock people like wild beasts in a cage, to surround them with disgraceful laws, as in an immense circus, for the sole revolting purpose to let loose the murderous mob upon them whenever practicable for St. Petersburg—terrible, terrible!
Anti-Semitism is a mad passion, akin to the lowest perversities of diseased human nature. It is the will to hate.
The Emperor Hadrian was an honest anti-Semite.One day, the Talmud records, on his journey in the East, a Jew passed the Imperial train and saluted the Emperor. He was beside himself with rage. ‘You, a Jew, dare to greet the Emperor! You shall pay for this with your life.’ In the course of the same day another Jew passed him, and, warned by example, he did not greet Hadrian. ‘You, a Jew, dare to pass the Emperor without a greeting!’ he angrily exclaimed. ‘You have forfeited your life.’ To his astonished courtiers he replied: ‘I hate the Jews. Whatever they do, I find intolerable. I therefore make use of any pretext to destroy them.’
So are all anti-Semites.
LEO TOLSTOY, 1904.