On the other hand, there is no doubt that the situation of the six millions of Russian Jews occupies a certain place in the thoughts and cares of the governments. Several countries have an interest in turning away from their frontiers the ever more violently swelling stream of Jewish emigration, and doing so otherwise than with the brutal method of locking up their boundaries and posting a police watch before them. Others have the well-being of Russia at heart; they understand that the sufferings and the despair of her six millions of Jews are a source of dire evils and that the emancipation of this hard-working and highly gifted population will bring about the material prosperity, the general progress, and the powerful strengthening of Russia. Other countries again, the statesmen of which are more farseeing than the average and have been able to rise to the conception of a political world hygiene, are aware that the systematic crushing of six millions of intellectual and strong-feeling people driven to despair must create a hotbed of the most dangerous anarchistic and revolutionary epidemics, the spreading of which cannot easily be limited to the spot of their origin. Lastly, even the most irreclaimable pessimist will admit at least the possibility that governments may not be entirely inaccessible to purely humane sentiments of pity and justice, and may regard the treatment of the Jews of Russia and Roumania as an indictment against the civilization and the ruling religion of white mankind. _(2) The Precedent of 1878_ THE hope of the peace conference resulting in great achievements for the Jewish people, moreover, can evoke an historical precedent. The Berlin Congress of 1878 which brought the Russo-Turkish war to an end, created the Bulgarian state, raised Roumania to the rank of an independent kingdom, and gave Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary, found time to occupy itself with a Jewish matter and to introduce into the treaty condensing its decisions the well known article obliging the new kingdom of Roumania to bestow on her Jews equality of civil franchises. It is not the fault of the Berlin Congress that this article has remained to this day a dead letter. The case, at any rate, is of a nature to encourage Jewish optimism against those sceptics who sneer: "A diplomatic conference distributes no presents; complacency and liberality play no part there; there are only such interests enforced which are backed by a victorious army or at least by an army which still inspires some fears." Well, in 1878, too, the Jewish people had no country, no army, no government, no accredited ambassador, and yet two of the most influential members of the Berlin Congress, the representative of Great Britain, Earl Beaconsfield, and that of France, Waddington, were ready to step forward as advocates of the Jewish cause, and the president of the Congress, Prince Bismarck, evidently favored their action. _But We Ignore a Valuable Lesson_