Here I can add a word from experience, for I have been standing in the very midst of the stormy waves, and I shall still stand there as long as the office is intrusted to me of representing that portion of my fellow-citizens which has undertaken to oppose the assaults of the preachers of hatred and the apostles of persecution. By virtue of this office I feel myself called upon, indeed in duty bound, to put in my word and to speak of the experiences which the Union for Resistance to Anti-Semitism has had since it was founded. I need only to point out the Rescue Society as an example of what opposition humanitarian associations meet with from the influential classes. Our Union was meant to be a rescue society in a certain sense, namely, for the purpose of rescuing the good old Austrian spirit, the spirit of patience, of justice, of brotherly love, the spirit that used to prevail at that time when, in the struggle for freedom and human dignity, Christians and Jews stood together in the very van, united in purpose and in genuine brotherhood, to conquer or to die. This spirit we desired to help rise to its old honorable condition; this was the reason for our emerging from our peaceful calm in order to take up the battle against poisoned arrows and every kind of disgusting weapon. What was more natural and more justifiable than for us to yield to the expectation that every one who had any claim to culture and morality should joyfully join with us and thus raise a millionfold protest against the mad actions of the thoughtlessly unbridled spirits? What was more reasonable than to hope that in the influential circles in whose hands the reins are placed we should be greeted with joy as the breakwater against the onrush of the destroying billows, as the dam which is to be carefully repaired and made secure at a time when a freshet is expected?... Yes, we believed and expected that, but we had forgotten just one thing,—Opportunism. Only gradually did we come to realize that warm feelings, honorable enthusiasm, fresh, fiery zeal, are ideal concepts which have found no place in the lexicon of higher politics; we learned that everything must be diplomatically weighed, accurately, even to milligrams, so that if possible, even in the most heterogeneous conditions, a transaction may be satisfactory to A and B and C; in short, that all things and everything must first be placed on the scales of the Opportune before there can be any departure from reserve.