The Petrograd “Retch,” the great liberal daily, August 20 (September 2), 1915, points out that the measure is merely tentative and must be legalized by statutory enactment within six months. It hopes that this enactment will not preserve the absurd limitations of the original decree. “If it has at last been recognized as expedient to remove that shameful blot, the Pale, we ought to leave not even a small speck of it. From a moral point of view,—and even an empire must have a point of view—it matters little whether a man is held by a long chain or a short one. =There should be no chains at all=....” This is echoed by the Petrograd “Courier”: “If there is only one corner of Russia left to which Jews may not be admitted, the Pale still remains, no matter what arguments may be used, and no matter what promises of future ‘privileges’ may be made. A principle cannot be measured quantitatively. The step taken so far is merely a beginning, and life demands that it should be completed. Besides the ‘right to live’ there are other rights derived from it:—the right to attend school, to do business, to own property, to choose one’s occupation freely.”[11] Even the extreme reactionary organ, “Kolokol,” which has hitherto been most insistent in its demand that “True Russians” be protected from Jewish competition by the confinement of Jews to the Pale, now declares: “Abolish the Pale entirely. Even now it is, in fact, nothing but a sieve. All of real ability in Jewry, every Jewish faculty sharpened for the struggle for existence, easily escapes the Pale. But this constant necessity for circumvention of the law only corrupts the Jews and exasperates them.”[12] The persons most affected, the six million Jews of Russia, received the “Emancipation Act” with deep mistrust. They were chiefly concerned lest the news of this act should deceive their co-religionists abroad. At a national conference of Jewish publicists and relief workers at Petrograd these resolutions were adopted: =“We are unwilling that our brethren in other lands shall gain a false impression from our attitude toward the abolition measure.... The permission to reside in cities outside of the Pale in no way remedies the evil, nor does it relieve the pressing needs of our times, nor does it affect in any way the legal restrictions in force against Jews.... In expressing our profound indignation at the humiliation and persecution to which the Jews have been subjected since the beginning of the war, we declare that the State can do justice to the Jews and prevent further persecutions only by the total and unconditional repeal of all special restrictions.”= The leading Russian Jewish Weekly, “Evreyskaya Zhizn,” of August 23 (September 5), 1915, declared editorially: