This, however, came too late.  For in the meantime some fifteen hundred Jewish residences, business places, and houses of prayer had been demolished and pillaged, and twenty-four Jews had been wounded, while the monetary loss amounted to several million rubles.  Over three thousand rioters were arrested—­among them a large number of under-aged youths.  On the whole, the rioters were recruited from the dregs of the Polish population, but there were also found among them a number of unknown persons that spoke Russian.  The Novoye Vremya, in commenting upon the pogrom, made special reference to the friendly attitude of the Polish hooligans to the Russians in general and to the officers and soldiers in particular—­a rather suspicious attitude, considering the inveterate hatred of the Poles towards the Russians, especially towards the military and official class.  Here and there the soldiers themselves got drunk in the demolished saloons, and took part in looting Jewish property.

The Polish patriots from among the higher classes were shocked by this attempt to engineer a barbarous Russian pogrom in Warsaw.  In an appeal which the representatives of the Polish intellectuals addressed to the people not later than on the second day of the pogrom they protested emphatically against the hideous scenes which had been disgracing the capital of Poland.  The archbishop of Warsaw acted similarly, and the Catholic priests frequently marched through the streets with crosses in their hands, admonishing the crowds to disperse.  It is interesting to note that, while the pogrom was going on, the governor-general of Warsaw refused to comply with the request of a number of Poles, who applied for permission to organize a civil guard, pledging themselves to restore order in the city in one day.  It would seem as if the official pogrom ritual did not allow of the slightest modification.  The disorders had to proceed in accordance with the established routine, so as not to violate the humane commandment:  “Two days shalt thou plunder, and on the third day shalt thou rest.”  Evidently some one had an interest in having the capital of Poland repeat the experiment of Kiev and Odessa, and in seeing to it that the “cultured Poles” should not fall behind the Russian barbarians in order to convince Europe that the pogrom was not exclusively a Russian manufacture.

As a matter of fact, the opposite result was attained.  The revolting events at Warsaw, which completed the pogrom cycle of 1881, made a much stronger impression upon Europe and America than all the preceding pogroms, for the reason that Warsaw stood in close commercial relations with the West, and the havoc wrought there had an immediate effect upon the European market.

CHAPTER XXIII

NEW MEASURES OF OPPRESSION AND PUBLIC PROTESTS

1.  THE DESPAIR OF RUSSIAN JEWRY