I lifted his shirt. On his back, running down from his left shoulder to the side, was a wide dark scratch which had now become dried up into a thick crust. While he was exhibiting his tricks the wound broke open in several spots and red blood was now trickling from the openings. "It doesn't hurt any more," said he with a smile. "It doesn't hurt, it only itches." And bravely, as it becomes a hero, he looked in my eyes and went on, speaking like a serious grown-up person: "You think--I have been doing this for myself? Upon my word--I have not. My father ... there is not a crust of bread in the house, and my father is lying badly hurt. So you see, I have to work hard. And to make matters worse, we are Jews, and everybody laughs at us. Good-bye." He spoke with a smile, cheerfully and courageously. With a nod of his curly head, he quickly went on, passing by the houses which looked at him with their glass eyes, indifferent and dead. All this is insignificant and simple, is it not? Yet many a time in the darkest days of my life I remembered with gratitude the courage and bravery of the little Jewish boy. And now, in these sorrowful days of suffering and bloody outrages which fall upon the grey head of the ancient nation, the creator of Gods and religion,--I think again of the boy, for in him I see the symbol of true manly bravery,--not the pliant patience of slaves, who live by uncertain hopes, but the courage of the strong who are certain of their victory. * * * * * THE FATHERLAND FOR ALL _Fyodor Sologub is the pseudonym of Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, novelist and poet. A considerable portion of his prose works has been recently made accessible to the English reader. Sologub's poetic output includes lyrical pieces of rare beauty. He was born in 1864._ THE FATHERLAND FOR ALL BY FYODOR SOLOGUB The great war, which we did not want, but which we are conducting with intense fervour, exerting all our spiritual and material forces, has put before our consciousness and our moral sense the fundamental problems of our social and political organisation. Not in vain have the newspapers hastened to style this war a Fatherland War. The question of the Fatherland has suddenly acquired for us a peculiar keenness and significance.