introduced in the fourth canto as a genius in music, the great master of
the national instrument, the cymbal; and Mickiewicz makes the
culmination of his poem the moment when Jankiel before Dombrowski
himself plays the Dombrowski marche, symbolical of the whole history of
Poland from 1791-1812, the year in which the poem takes place, the
Napoleon year.

In the year 1860 the equalization of the Jews with the Catholics was a
reality in Warsaw, and when, in February, 1861, at two large public
places in Warsaw, the Russians had shot on the kneeling masses singing
the national anthem, ("Zdymem pozarow,") the Jews felt impelled to show
their national feeling through an unmistakable manifestation.

In masses they accompanied their rabbis into the Catholic churches just
as the Christians in crowds entered the synagogues to sing the same
hymn.

This last feature, the processions of the two creeds into each other's
churches singing the same song, made such an impression on Henrik Ibsen,
the great Scandinavian poet, that again and again he returned in his
conversations to this as one of the greatest and most beautiful
experiences he had ever had.

And now under the whirlstorm of madness which nationalism has driven
across Europe, all this is lost; nay, from a religious reconciliation it
has been turned into flaming hatred between the races.

II.

In 1912 the election of a Deputy to the Duma was to take place in
Warsaw. The population of the town consists of between seven and eight
hundred thousand. As among them there are 300,000 Jews, the majority of
the electors, it was in the power of that majority to elect a Jewish
Deputy. Because of their Polish national feeling, however, they gave up
this right, as they wanted Warsaw, as the capital of the Kingdom of
Poland, to be represented by a man who not only in spirit, but also by
race, was a Pole. Of the Polish committee they only demanded that the
party concerned be no enemy to the Jews. It proved, however, that the
committee in its arrogance would not deal with them at all and proposed
Kucharschewski, a pronounced anti-Semitic candidate and a man who
publicly declared that he desired the election to the Duma only to work
for the extermination of the Jews of Poland. By the way, it is strange
to notice how the word "exterminate," which thirty years ago in the days
of Bismarck and Eduard von Hartmann as _Ausrotten_ was subject to the
curse and condemnation of the Poles, has n