By MAXIM GORKY
From time to time—more often as time goes on!—circumstances force the Russian author to remind his compatriots of certain indisputable, elementary truths.
It is a very hard duty:—it is painfully awkward to speak to grown-up and literate people in this manner:
"Ladies and gentlemen! We must be humane; humaneness is not only beautiful, but also advantageous to us. We must be just; justice is the foundation of culture. We must make our own the ideas of law and civil liberty: the usefulness of such an assimilation is clearly demonstrated by the high degree of civilisation reached by the Western countries, for instance, by England.
"We must develop in ourselves a moral tidiness, and an aversion to all the manifestations of the brute principle in man, such as the wolfish, degrading hatred for people of other races. The hatred of the Jew is a beastlike, brute phenomenon; we must combat it in the interests of the quicker growth of social sentiments and social culture.
"The Jews are human beings, just like others, and, like all human beings, the Jews must be free.
"A man who meets all the duties of a citizen, thereby deserves to be given all the rights of citizenship.
"Every human being has an inalienable right to apply his energy in all the branches of industry and all the departments of culture, and the broader the scope of his personal and social activities, the more does his country gain in power and beauty."
There are a number of other equally elementary truths which should have long since sunk into the flesh and blood of Russian society, but which have not as yet done so.
I repeat—it is a hard thing to assume the rôle of a preacher of social proprieties and to keep reiterating to people: "It is not good, it is unworthy of you to live such a dirty, careless, savage life—wash yourselves!"