In a few of the cases where plunder and murder of a Jewish population in Russia have taken place, the outrages have partly been excused, or at any rate explained, through the almost incomprehensible ignorance of the peasants. Russia's most famous political economist, who at the same time is a great estate owner, has told me himself that when the elections to the First Duma took place he was informed that each of the peasants on his estate had voted for himself. He asked them, surprised, what they meant, and explained to them that in this way none of them could be elected; but they answered with the question, "Does not each Deputy get so many rubles a day? Yes. And do you think that we should let so much money go to another if we, perhaps, might get it ourselves?" The same prominent estate owner told me that one day he asked some of his peasants if they really had partaken in a Pogrom which had taken place in the neighboring parish--he could not believe it, as they looked so good-natured. To his astonishment they answered yes, and when he asked them about the reason they replied: "You know it very well." They then explained that they had killed these Jews because the Jews had killed their Saviour. He: "But that was so long ago and it was not they who did it and it did not happen in this country." To which they, again astonished, exclaimed: "Was it long ago? We thought it was last week." It appeared that they had understood from the priest's explanation that the crucifixion had taken place then and there. Under such conditions one is not surprised by any outrage. But to see the hatred of the Jews spread in Russian Poland, where people understand how to read and write, that must surely fill one with wonder. The great number of Jews in the old Polish Kingdom originated in the days of Casimir the Great (1309-1370), who out of love for his concubine, Esther, opened his country to the Jews and made conditions favorable for them. Since then the number has increased, as the Czars locked up all their Jewish subjects there. So they have been living separated and with a special dress like the Jews of Denmark at the time of Holberg. They have, however, felt and suffered as Polish patriots. As early as 1794 a regiment of Jewish volunteers fought under Kosciusko; their Colonel fell in 1809. In 1830 the shallow Polish national Government refused the Jews' petition to be allowed to enter the army. As they then ventured to apply for admission to the Polish public schools Nicholas I. punished them, allowing 36,000 families to be carried away to the steppes of South Russia, where the regulation for the enlistment of children overtook them. All their small boys from the age of 6 years were sent to Archangel in Cossack custody to be trained as sailors. They died in multitudes on the way.