Thus seven million Jews—a population exceeding that of Belgium by one million—have borne the brunt of the war. Behind them was Holy Russia, closed to them by the May Laws of 1881. In front were hostile Germany and Austria. To the south was unfriendly Roumania. They were overwhelmed where they stood; and over their bodies crossed and recrossed the German armies from the west, the Russian armies from the east and the Austrian armies from the south. True, all the peoples of this area suffered ravage and pillage by the war, but their sufferings were in no degree comparable to those of the Jews. The contending armies found it politic, in a measure, to court the good will of the Poles, Ruthenians and other races in this area. These sustained only the necessary and unavoidable hardships of war. But the Jews were friendless, their religion proscribed. In this medieval region all the religious fanaticism of the Russians, the chauvinism of the Poles, combined with the blood lusts liberated in all men by the war—all these fierce hatreds were sluiced into one torrent of passion which overwhelmed the Jews. Hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes on a day’s notice, the more fortunate being packed and shipped as freight—the old, the sick and insane, men, women and children, shuttled from one province to another, side-tracked for days without food or help of any kind—the less fortunate driven into the woods and swamps to die of starvation. Jewish towns were sacked and burned wantonly. Hundreds of Jews were carried off as hostages into Germany, Austria and Russia. Orgies of lust and torture took place in public in the light of day. There are scores of villages where not a single woman was left inviolate. Women, old and young, were stripped and knouted in the public squares. Jews were burned alive in synagogues where they had fled for shelter. Thousands were executed on the flimsiest pretext or from sheer purposeless cruelty. These Jews, unlike the Belgians, have no England to fly to. The sympathy of the outside world is shut off from them. They have not the consolation of knowing that they are fighting for their own hearths, or even for military glory or in the hope of a possible reward or indemnity. The only thought they cherish is that after the struggle shall be over they may at last achieve those elementary rights denied to no other people, the right to live and move about freely in the land of their birth or adoption, to educate their children, to earn a livelihood, to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience. RUSSIA