Upon this I bowed and resumed my place. My little speech was received most kindly. There could not have been a better reward for my laconism. {112} CHAPTER VIII JEWISH RUSSOPHOBIA The Jews and the War--Their Attitude in 1876--Their Hatred of Slavism--The Problems of Other Countries--English Sympathy--The Guildhall Meeting--The Russian Government Blamed--Tolstoy and the Jews--My Jewish Friends--A Curious Tradition--Self-Protection In many respects the Jewish Question in Russia has now become an anachronism. I am happy to say that a new argument in favour of the Jews is the part played by many of them in our ranks during the present struggle against the Central Empires. Their present attitude has effaced the great hatred they used to manifest against everything Russian. But a survey of my work for Anglo-Russian friendship would be incomplete and would not be honest if it passed over my attitude on this question, and especially as the attacks made upon me have been very vigorous and have forced me to retort in what was, for me, an almost single-handed struggle. My first public expression of views upon the Jewish Question was in 1882, when I addressed two letters to _The Times_ in which I protested against the accusations levelled against the Russian Government that it encouraged the social war against the Jews in the southern provinces. I pointed out that {113} the origin of the disturbances was economic rather than religious. I said then, as I shall always say, that the worst charges brought against the Jews could not by any form of special pleading be held to justify outrage and murder. I reminded the Jews that when thousands of harmless peasants, men, women and children, were being ruthlessly slaughtered in Bulgaria, they ranged themselves beside those responsible for the massacres, the Turks. The next worst thing to committing a murder is to look calmly on and sympathise with another who is taking life. That is what the Hebrews did in 1876. At least they should be logical, and if they do not like the application of "the Law," which demands "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," they should have acted differently in 1876. When Mr. Gladstone and his friends were fighting what seemed to be a losing battle, the Jews were against them. It was a Jew, Disraeli, who was the arch-plotter against the freeing of Bulgaria, and with a few exceptions his race was with him. The Jews hated Slavism, and the Slavs could not be expected to retort with soft words of brotherly love. In spite of this, I repeat that the peasant riots against the Jews in some provinces deserved blame; but the actions of mobs are never based upon religious principles or religious teaching.