or heat, to forget the elements of such a problem merely because it has been presented to us suddenly in an acute form, is the negation of reason. As well might a man who is dealing with the problem of fermented liquor, and trying to get people to use it rationally, let his judgment be overcome by a case of delirium tremens and rush thereupon into some scheme of prohibition. The very test which distinguishes good statesmanship from bad is the power to keep one's head under provocations like these; to maintain a middle course and to aim at whatever solution our reason tells us to be just under normal circumstances. We who saw the gravity of the Jewish problem long before the recognition of it was general, and who studied it under calmer conditions for many years, have a right to be heard now: now that the tide is making against these people and that the fear of anarchy threatens to turn men's heads.
We were long blamed for attacking the Jews, we are already blamed for defending them. It is a proof that our attitude is well grounded and unaffected by fashion.
The Bolshevist revolution will not last. Its Jewish character was inevitable. It had a side to it of Jewish enthusiasm for a sort of incorporeal justice, and, in any case, it ought not to be allowed to deflect us from a conclusion which the much larger lines of history and all general considerations of reason impose.
Our conclusion, as I have said, is a recognition and protection of the Jewish nation as something quite different from ourselves and yet necessarily inhabiting our society. Such a full recognition leaves us fore-armed against the tendency in the Jew (which we cannot avoid) to forget our national feelings and to misconceive our sense of ownership. It would render impossible the conspiracies and the vengeance which have destroyed Russia, and I believe that had the former Russian Government treated the Jews as I say they should be treated, it would be in power to-day.