When in 1913 I re-read Neubauer and Stern’s volume (1892) and Dr. Salfeld’s magnificent edition of the Nuremberg Martyrology (1898)--it was not long before the outbreak of the European war--I was so moved that I sent a donation to the Peace Society. Quite a nice thing to do, some will urge, but is it worth while, for such an end, to rake up these miserable tales? The whole of this class of literature was long neglected because of a similar feeling. Stobbe, who rendered such conspicuous service to the Jewish cause, was actuated by the identical sentiment, when he wrote that it would be “a grim and a thankless task” to enter fully into the sufferings of the Jews in the medieval period. But the Commission above referred to took another view; it printed the texts and circulated them in the completest detail. Now it depends entirely on the purpose with which such remorseless crimes are as remorselessly dragged to the light of day. If the desire is to revive bitterness, then it is a foul desire which ought to be crushed. And not only if this be the desire, if it prove to be the consequence, if as a result of such re-publication animosity is rekindled, then the re-publication is to be condemned. But in the case of the Sorrows of Tatnu, neither the motive nor the consequence is of this character. Salfeld gave us his edition of these monuments of the Jewish tribulations, “den Toten zur Ehre, den Lebenden zur Lehre”; to honor the dead, to inspire the living. Neither he nor any other Jewish writer wishes to play the part of Virgil’s Misenus, who was skilled in “setting Mars alight with his song” (_Martem accendere cantu_). The heroism of the sufferers, not the brutality of the aggressors, is the theme of the Jewish historian who deals with the Sorrows of Tatnu and of many another year; not the lurid glow of the bloodshed, but the white light of the martyrdom; not the pain, but the triumph over it; not the infliction, but the endurance unto and beyond death. These aspects of the story ought, indeed, to be told and retold “to honor the dead, to inspire the living.”