[Footnote 2:  The following extracts from this meek appeal deserve to be quoted:  “The movement against the Jews which is propagated by the Russian press represents an unprecedented violation of the most fundamental demands of righteousness and humanity.  We consider it our duty to recall these elementary demands to the mind of the Russian public....  In all nationalities there are bad and ill-minded persons but there is not, and cannot be, any bad and ill-minded nationality, for this would abrogate the moral responsibility of the individual....  It is unjust to make the Jews responsible for those phenomena in their lives which are the result of thousands of years of persecution in Europe and of the abnormal conditions in which this people has been placed....  The fact of belonging to a Semitic tribe and professing the Mosaic creed is nothing prejudicial and cannot of itself serve as a basis for an exceptional civil position of the Jews, as compared with the Russian subjects of other nationalities and denominations....  The recognition and application of these simple truths is important and is first of all necessary for ourselves.  The increased endeavor to kindle national and religious hatred, which is so contradictory to the spirit of Christianity and suppresses the feelings of justice and humaneness, is bound to demoralize society at its very root and bring about a state of moral anarchy, particularly so in view of the decline of humanitarian ideas and the weakness of the principle of justice already noticeable in our life.  For this reason, acting from the mere instinct of national self-preservation, we must emphatically condemn the anti-Semitic movement not only as immoral in itself but also as extremely dangerous for the future of Russia.”]

Solovyov addressed an impassioned appeal to Alexander III., but received through one of the Ministers the impressive advice to refrain from raising a cry on behalf of the Jews, under pain of administrative penalties.  In these circumstances, the plan of a public protest had to be abandoned.  Instead, the following device was resorted to as a makeshift.  Solovyov’s teacher of Jewish literature, F. Goetz, was publishing an apology of Judaism under the title “A Word from the Prisoner at the Bar.”  Solovyov wrote a preface to this little volume, and turned over to its author for publication the letters of Tolstoi and Korolenko in the defence of the Jews.  No sooner had the book left the press than it was confiscated by the censor, and, in spite of all petitions, the entire edition of this innocent apology was thrown into the flames.  In this way the Russian Government succeeded in shutting the mouths of the few defenders of Judaism, while according unrestricted liberty of speech to its ferocious assailants.

3.  THE GUILDHALL MEETING IN LONDON