ith the physical Pale, then we will be able to discuss the
spiritual one. Until then, all our protestations and declarations of
righteousness will only prove to the Jews our insincerity.

Why has the Jewish question become so keen in time of war? For the
same reason that the rest of the national problems have made
themselves felt.

We have called the present struggle a war of liberation. We entered
the war with the avowed purpose of liberating those who are situated
at a distance from us. While liberating distant strangers, why then do
we oppress those who live close by our side? We wage war against
tyranny outside of Russia, and we allow oppression to reign within
her. We pity everybody but the Jews. Why?

Are they not dying on the battlefields for our sake? Do they not love
us--who hate them? Do we not hate them--who love us? If we continue to
act as we have done in the past, would not everybody lose faith in us,
and would not the nations of the earth be justified in saying to us:
"You can love only from afar. You are liars!"

We believed our righteousness to be our strongest weapon. We wanted to
conquer brute force by the truth. If we persist in this desire, let us
not lie; let us not weaken our truth by falsehood.

The Teutons say: "We fight to be the rulers of the world,"--and they
act accordingly. We say: "We fight for universal peace, for the
emancipation of the world," but we do not act accordingly.

Let us begin then with the liberation of the Jews at home. Let the
oppressed nations in our land bear in mind, however, that only a free
Russian people will be able to give them freedom.

Let the Jews remember that the Jewish question is a Russian
question.

* * * * *

CONCERNING THE IDEOLOGY OF THE JEWISH QUESTION

_Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov was born in 1866. A poet of great
mastery and a refined critic, his thought, is steeped in
hellenism and in the most abstruse mystic lore._

CONCERNING THE IDEOLOGY OF THE JEWISH QUESTION

BY VYACHESLAV IVANOV

One of the wiliest and the most harmful doctrines of our times is, I
believe, the fashionable ideology of spiritual anti-Semitism. It
attributes to Aryanism, which by the way, is a quantity ethnically if
not linguistically enigmatical, many excellent and splendid qualities,
while in the Semitic influences and admixtures to the Aryan element it
sees nothing but negative energies, which have always h