Though the Government was compelled to relax for a while its oppression of the Jews, social Judæophobia, fanned by the chauvinism incident to war time, broke out with greater violence than ever. Irritated by the rapid failures of the Russian arms and by the unexpected military superiority of the Japanese, the reactionary press, headed by the _Novoye Vremya_, began to circulate preposterous rumors to the effect that the Jews were secretly helping the Japanese, their "kinsmen by race," in order to wreak their vengeance upon Russia for having perpetrated the Kishinev massacres. The story of the Jewish-Japanese alliance issued from the public press of the capital to make its rounds through the provinces, and each day gave birth to a rumor more absurd than the other: the Jews are exporting gold abroad, they are purchasing horses for Japan, they are collecting money to build cruisers for the Mikado, they are provoking England and America against Russia, and similar preposterous stories. It was clear that these rumors were the work of a gang of unscrupulous agitators _à la_ Krushevan, who were eager to instigate anti-Jewish pogroms on a modern basis--the accusation of "treachery." This assumption is confirmed by the additional fact that these incendiary rumors were particularly circulated in February and March, before the Easter festival, the old-time pogrom season, just as in the preceding year the ritual murder libel of Dubossary had been kept afloat during the same months. "The incendiaries have already set out upon their work"--with these words the Jewish organ _Voskhod_ warned its readers in its issue of March 11. A week later, the same paper had occasion to publish accounts of the panic which had spread among the Jewish population, particularly in the South. In Kishinev, a second pogrom was feared, calling forth an intensified emigration to America. In Odessa, the Jews were agitated by sinister rumors, and began to prepare themselves for self-defence. This state of alarm was reflected in the foreign press. It was rumored that the American ambassador at St. Petersburg had received instructions to make representations to the Russian Government--which rumor was subsequently officially denied.