e?" I mused, perplexed, feeling that in the light of the European sun
my cursed hump assumes immense proportions and like a screen shuts off
the light which comes from the East, and in which the aged and weary
West is quite inclined to believe. To whom is it necessary for me to
ramble among the cultured nations like a leper, to conceal my race and
obtain the ironical bow so essential to my unacknowledged dignity, by
means of exorbitant "tips" flung right and left? A barbarian, a
barbarian!...

The war has opened our eyes to many things, and therein lies for us
Russians the sad advantages of it. And now when Germany brands France
and England for the union with "the Russian barbarians who...," when
the allies, while relying on our elemental force, tremble with doubts
and fear behind the screen of their noisy sympathies,--I begin to
understand in whose interests it was, who needed it, that in the
legion of European states we should remain all alone with our
barbarism. Whatever is a misfortune for us is favourable for Germany,
with her "well-tried" friendship for us, to which Wilhelm referred so
loudly from the balcony of his palace. As barbarians we are only an
excellent and indispensable market for the Germans' merchandise, a
two-hundred-million flock of sheep ready for the shears. As a cultured
nation we are a power dangerous to the Teuton's dream of world
dominion. And the Jewish question, with its excesses and nails driven
into heads, is that trump which our honest German neighbour has always
kept hidden in his cuff and which he throws out on the green table at
the necessary moment. And he was right from his standpoint. But why
had we to drink off the bitter cup? Losing our self-respect, having no
faith in our power, growing corrupted by an unnatural existence,
cutting down by means of the celebrated "norm" the number of our
educated and cultured men--a devilish joke!--our entire nation was
diligently performing the "Fools' Dance," which, under the name of a
drama from Russian life, has recently met with such a success in the
Berlin playhouses. It must not be forgotten that the ardent Polish
anti-Semitism, which frightens us so much and which seriously hinders
the upbuilding of a new life, as well as the cold Finnish
anti-Semitism, the power of which is still unknown to us,--that these
two phenomena are nothing but the logical development of the
fundamental absurdity, its natural and poisonous fruits. But the time
has