Several years before the war broke out this struggle came to a climax over the election of a deputy to the Duma. The Jews of Poland felt that they were entitled to at least one member to represent them in the Duma, particularly in the city of Warsaw, where they constitute nearly half of the population. It happened, however, that in the city of Lodz they unexpectedly elected one Jewish deputy, Bomash. The Jews, therefore, seeking to conciliate the Poles and not to wound their national pride by insisting upon the election of a Jewish deputy from Warsaw, the ancient Polish capital, offered to compromise, stipulating only that the Polish candidate be not an avowed anti-Semite. The Poles, however, insisted upon putting up a notorious anti-Semite. The Jews, equally unable to support such a candidate in self-respect or to elect one of their own, united on a Polish Socialist candidate, electing him to the Duma. This led to retaliation in the form of a boycott directed not only at Jewish tradesmen, but even at Jewish physicians, artisans and other workingmen, which soon spread destitution throughout Poland, affecting, as it did, Jews and Poles alike. So ugly and bitter a form did the boycott assume that at times even the Russian government was compelled to take the part of the Jews as against the Poles. Anti-Semitism in Poland A significant observation upon the economic character of the Polish-Jewish struggle was made by the well known Russian journalist, Madam A. E. Kuskova. “I found red-hot anti-Semitism everywhere in Poland. We have anti-Semitism in Russia, but of a different kind.... Anti-Semitic papers like ‘Dva Grosha’ accused all Jews of all sorts of crimes, without protest from the Progressive press, and succeeded in arousing the Polish people. In Pyasechna, a ruined place near Warsaw, where ten-day battles took place, I spoke to many peasants who accused the Jews of many of their troubles, but could never explain what they really blamed them for. We Russians held a meeting to try to find the causes of this feeling.... =We came to the conclusion that ... the Polish-Jewish question is really a Russian-Polish-Jewish question, and touches us as much as the Poles. They have not room enough to live,= and more and more Jews are coming there. Even democratic organizations are compelled to take cognizance of this. One peasant organization expresses through its organ the idea that it is true that the Jews are a burden to Poland, but it warns the peasants against anti-Semitism nevertheless.”[17] THE WAR IN POLAND