not come yet to speak about that.

May I be pardoned that in an hour so momentous for the Jews I persist
in speaking not of them and their sufferings, but of ourselves. I
repeat, the Jewish question was never a question for me, and in order
to justify the proposed measures I need not allege the heroism shown
by the Jews in defending Russia, their love for Russia, tragic in its
faithfulness. As for demonstrating again and again that a Jew, too, is
a human being, to do so would mean not only to bow too low to
absurdity, but also to insult those whom I respect and love. And if I
persist in speaking of ourselves and our suffering, it is not for
personal egoism, nor even class egoism, but the pardonable egoism of a
nation, which has been too long playing a miserable part on Europe's
stage and in its own conscience, and which now repudiates the
suffering of yesterday and, at the dawn of new life, seeks the
possibility--oh, only the possibility!--of respecting itself.

Yes, we are still barbarians, the Poles still mistrust us, we are a
dark terror for Europe, a baffling menace to her civilisation, but we
do not want to be that any more, we long for purity and reason, our
wretched rags burden us beyond all measure. The Jews' tragic love for
Russia finds a counterpart in our love for Europe, as tragical in its
faithfulness and completeness. Are we not ourselves the Jews of Europe,
and is not our frontier--the same "Pale of Settlement"--something in
the nature of a Russian Ghetto? And try as our Pushkin and Dostoyevsky
and your Byalik may to prove that we, too, are human beings, people do
not believe us, as they do not believe you: here is that equality
whence we all can derive a bitter consolation; here is the punishment
by means of which impartial life takes revenge on the Russians for the
Jews' sufferings.

The thirst for self-respect--that is the fundamental feeling which
now, in the days of the most terrible war, has seized all Russian
society, which has exalted the people to the heights of heroism, and
which makes us fear all that reminds us of our sad past. That is why
persecution of Germans in our own country is so unbearable to us; we
want no persecution; that is why we hate all that, like the belching
of yesterday's drinking, distorts our disinterested aims and
intentions: better yield than take too much of what belongs to other
people--that is nowadays the motto of the majority. Could the country
become sober if no