'Merely because we found the rest of the Revolutionary body too clumsy for words. It was always getting caught, its printing-presses exhumed, its leaders buried. So we split off, the better to help our fellow-working-men. But we are a Labour party, not a Jewish party. We have the whole Russian Revolution on our shoulders; how can we throw away our lives for the capitalists of the Milovka Ghetto? Then there are the elections at hand--I have to work for the Left. Ah, here come some of our bourgeois; ask _them_, if you like. I will keep my father-in-law out of the shop.' Two men in close confabulation strolled in, a third disconnected, but on their heels. With five Jews the concourse soon became a congress. One of the couple turned out to be a Progressive Pole. He mistook David for a Zionist, and denounced him for a foreigner. 'We of the P.P.P.,' he said, 'will peacefully acquire equal rights with our fellow-Poles--nay, we shall be allowed to become Poles ourselves. But you Zionists are less citizens than strangers, and if you were logical, you would all----' 'Where's your own logic?' interrupted the disconnected man. 'Why don't you join the P.P.N. at once?' The Progressive Pole frowned. 'The Nationalists! They are anti-Semites. I'd as soon join the League of True Russian Men.' 'And do you trust the P.P.P.?' his companion asked him. 'I tell you, Nathan, that only in the Progressive Democratic Party, with its belief in the equality of all nationalities----' 'If you want a Party free from anti-Semites,' David intervened desperately, 'you must join the _Samoo_----' 'I fear you will get no recruits here,' interrupted the Bundist, not unkindly. He added with a sneer: 'These gentlemen of the P.P.P. and the P.P.N. and the P.P.D. are all good Poles.' 'Good Poles!' echoed David no less bitterly. 'And the Poles voted _en bloc_ to keep every Jewish candidate out of the Duma.' 'Even so we must be better Poles than they,' sublimely replied the member of the P.P.P. 'We are joining even the Clerical Parties of the Right for the good of our country. And now that the Party of National Concentration----' 'Go to the Labour Parties,' advised the P.D. 'There you may perchance find sturdy young men with the necessary Ghetto taint.' Of the four great Labour Parties, he proceeded to recommend the P.S.D. as the most promising for David's purposes. 'Not the Bolshewiki faction,' he added, 'but the Menshewiki. Recruits might also be found in the Proletariat or the P.P.S.----' 'No, I've tried the P.P.S.,' said David. 'But at any rate, gentlemen, since you must all see that the defence of our own lives is no undesirable object, a little contribution to our funds----' A violent chorus of protest broke out. It was scarcely credible that only four men were speaking. All explained elaborately that they had their own Party Funds, and what a tax it was to run their candidates for the Duma, not to mention their Party Organ.