At the beginning of the war the number of Jews in the Russian Empire was estimated at six million or more, comprising fully half of the total Jewish population of the world. =Ninety-five per cent. of these six million people were confined by law to a limited area of Russia, known as the Pale of Settlement,= consisting of the fifteen Governments of Western and Southwestern Russia, and the ten Governments of Poland, much of which territory is now under the German occupation. In reality, however, residence within the Pale was further restricted to such an extent that territorially the =Jews were permitted to live in only one two-thousandth part of the Russian Empire.=[1] No Jew was permitted to step outside this Pale unless he belonged to one of a few privileged classes. Some half-privileged Jews might, with effort, obtain special passports for a limited period of residence beyond the Pale; but the great majority could not even secure this privilege for any period whatsoever. A tremendous mass of special, restrictive legislation converted the Pale into a kind of prison with six million inmates, guarded by an army of corrupt and brutal jailers. The Recent “Abolition” of the Pale In August, 1915, the Council of Ministers issued a decree permitting the Jews of the area affected by the war to move into the interior of Russia. This act has been supposed in some quarters to constitute the virtual abolition of the Pale, this interpretation being chiefly attributable to the extensive publicity given the measure by the Russian government; but the evidence, official and otherwise, clearly indicates that far from being a generous act of a liberal Government toward an oppressed people, it is in reality only a temporary expedient, dictated mainly by military necessity and partly by the need of a foreign loan; it is evident that it was granted grudgingly, with galling limitations which served to emphasize the servile state of the Jews; that it is in practice ignored or evaded at the convenience of the local authorities; and that it has been utilized, if not designed, to mislead the public opinion of the world. Evidence in support of this view will now be considered: =1. It is a temporary measure dictated by military necessity. It does not remove any of the disabilities to which the Jews in Russia are legally subject.= This is admitted officially in the Minute of the Council of Ministers for August 4 (17), 1915, at which session the abolition decree was promulgated. This Minute reads as follows: