It is with deep emotion that I have read in the Polish _New Gazette_ an interview about the Jewish question with a personage of high station who seems to be really well informed. According to this personage, a number of measures are being proposed and planned, which are intended to lighten the grievous lot of the Jews in Russia: the abolition of the "Pale of Settlement" in relation to towns large and small, the abrogation of the percentage "norm" in the secondary and higher educational institutions, the establishment of special Jewish schools, the reorganisation of Jewish emigration on a broad and rational basis. I confess that I was not prompt in giving credence to these good tidings. And those with whom I shared the news, although excited no less than I, accepted them also with some degree of diffidence, which is only natural in Russians: life indulges us so rarely and so reluctantly. But private rumours corroborate this news, and to persist in one's disbelief would mean to doubt the very meaning of the present great "emancipatory" war, which is building a glorious temple of renovated life on the blood of Russians, Poles, Jews and Lithuanians. And finally, I simply cannot help believing, for my soul is weary with waiting and repeating together with the great Jewish poet: "How long, how long, how long?" An aged journalist, who, it seems, has lost all fervour and faith, has recently laughed in his sleeve at the word "miracle," which nowadays comes so often to our lips: according to him, miracles, generally speaking, do not exist. It is my opinion also that there are no miracles, if we understand by a miracle an arbitrary violation of the natural, logical, inevitable order of things. But to him who contemplates life proper, not the table of multiplication,--logic itself appears as the greatest of all miracles. Oh, if logic would really reign supreme in life; oh, if in our cursed human existence, where there are so many aimless and unnecessary sorrows and tears and wild outrages, the simplest "two and two is four" would not be the rarest of miracles, equal to the transubstantiation of water into precious wine. Would millions of individually innocent human beings perish in this most terrible of wars, if instead of a dark and terrible _alogism_ a clear and lucid syllogism lay at the basis of our intricate and enigmatical existence? It is logic that is the true miracle, and "two and two is four" is that extraordinary happiness, which falls so seldom to our lot!