The party against which we are arraying ourselves seems to have contemplated nothing less than to decree for Austria a sort of moral state of siege, and thereby to bring a pressure to bear on the timorous souls of whom there are more than enough, whereby many of these will allow themselves to be enrolled in order not to call down upon their heads the wrath of that association, which is always ready with the appellative _Judenknecht_. Special laws directed against the Jews, like those that have reached such a magnificent development in Russia, would naturally not have been long in making their appearance, and ultimately, as a logical consequence, special laws against all who do not think as do those gentlemen of the persecuting party. Well, to-day, by good fortune, it appears that there are still Austrians who will not submit to such a reign of terror, and who answer such demands with the cry, “Browbeating won’t work.” In the bosom of the opposing party, on the other hand, the reign of terror has broken out; every one who there believes himself called to be a leader takes the proverb “Bend or break” to heart; every one collects his troops around him and forms a detachment which snarls at every other. Skirmishes also have already been fought, with fists and words, and the lawsuits growing out of them show us clearly and distinctly what is going on behind the scenes of that stage. This ought to open the eyes of many an objective observer who has supposed that he was falling in with the demands of the times if he joined that troop. Originally, when Herr Stöcker was still having his day, Anti-Semitism attempted to put itself on the ground of Christianity, and of threatened Christianity at that, and to conjure up a religious question. This plan was a lamentable failure, for there were enough honorable religious teachers who opposed it. Then the attempt was made to lay emphasis on race differences and to make these the basis of up-to-date persecution. Here also the results were meager, and so they ultimately hit upon the method of rousing human passion, of heating up the hatred and envy of all those, bringing all those to the burning-point, who had little or nothing to lose but hoped to gain much. Of course the matter could not be allowed to pass as mere commercial or competitive jealousy; a scientific whitewash had to be applied to the whole thing, and so they got footing on the social question: accumulated capital is the destroyer of the little man; the Jew has accumulated capital in his hands, therefore the Jew is the destroyer of the little man. That there are among the Jews themselves whole masses of little men who have scarcely a crust to nibble was entirely lost from sight—such a thing simply does not count with logicians of that stamp; they have in sight only the Christian little man and the Jewish big man.