After Karl Marx came a crowd of his compatriots, who led the industrial proletariat in rebellion against the increasing power of the capitalist system, and began to organize a determined revolt. Before the Great War one could say that the whole of the Socialist movement, so far as its staff and direction were concerned, was Jewish; and while it took this purely economic form in the West, in the East--in the Russian Empire--it took a political form as well, and the growing revolutionary force in that Empire was equally Jewish in direction and driving power. Such was the situation on the eve of the Great War. Men were beginning to be thoroughly alive to what was meant by the Jewish problem. The old security was dispelled for ever; but as yet only a minority, though now a large one, was prepared to deal with that problem and to discuss it openly. All that was official, and particularly the Press, with its vast influence, had as yet refused in any department to face the realities of the position. The convention forbidding public allusion to the Jewish question was still very strong. On the surface it seemed as though the old Liberal policy still stood firm and, indeed, unshakeable. The Jews were in every place of 'vantage: they taught in the Universities of all Europe; they were everywhere in the Press; everywhere in finance. They were continually to be found in the highest places of Government and in the chanceries of Christendom they had acquired a dominant power which none could question. But the challenge against this unnatural position necessarily worked against great odds, it remained private and had great difficulty in finding expression. None the less, it extended, and by 1914 had become serious.