, he quickly went on, passing by the houses which looked at
him with their glass eyes, indifferent and dead.

All this is insignificant and simple, is it not?

Yet many a time in the darkest days of my life I remembered with
gratitude the courage and bravery of the little Jewish boy. And now,
in these sorrowful days of suffering and bloody outrages which fall
upon the grey head of the ancient nation, the creator of Gods and
religion,--I think again of the boy, for in him I see the symbol of
true manly bravery,--not the pliant patience of slaves, who live by
uncertain hopes, but the courage of the strong who are certain of
their victory.

* * * * *

THE FATHERLAND FOR ALL

_Fyodor Sologub is the pseudonym of Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov,
novelist and poet. A considerable portion of his prose works has
been recently made accessible to the English reader. Sologub's
poetic output includes lyrical pieces of rare beauty. He was born
in 1864._

THE FATHERLAND FOR ALL

BY FYODOR SOLOGUB

The great war, which we did not want, but which we are conducting with
intense fervour, exerting all our spiritual and material forces, has
put before our consciousness and our moral sense the fundamental
problems of our social and political organisation. Not in vain have
the newspapers hastened to style this war a Fatherland War. The
question of the Fatherland has suddenly acquired for us a peculiar
keenness and significance.

The war has taken Russian society and the Russian people by surprise,
but luckily it has come to us at the moment when the questions which
were confronting us had already been settled both in our reason and
conscience. The heroic labour of the Russian intellectual has not been
in vain. And now what we have to do is not to argue and demonstrate,
but to determine the meaning of events. And the meaning of what is
going on is such that we are forced to consider this war not only as
one of defence, but also as one of emancipation. It appears to us not
only as a struggle for the rights of small states threatened by large
ones, and as a war against German militarism, but also as a strife
against...[1] internal danger, whatever may be the various forms this
danger assumes.

The first and chief danger which threatened, and is still threatening
us, is the danger of internal division and disorder. The equal
readiness and zeal to stand up for her which all the