Page:Michael Farbman - The Russian Revolution & The War (1917).djvu/46

 Provisional Governments like sober and respectable citizens, and they are making the greatest efforts to secure the success of the Liberty Loan. Generally they stand for maintaining the unity of the State and are opposed to centrifugal and separatist ideas. Of the Jews as a body we may expect that they will play a large part in the future reconstruction of Russia, but it cannot be said of them that they played a great and active part in the Revolution. The only Jews that took an active part in the Revolution were the small but energetic Socialist minority of Jewish idealists. If the millions of Jews of Russia have gained their freedom to-day they owe it to that minority of Jewish idealists.

Yet the very existence of these Jewish idealists is a peculiar demonstration of the force and reality of Russian idealism. Though members of an oppressed race and with every excuse for racial bitterness, they never faltered in their faith in Russia. In all the Revolutionary parties they played an active part. They went to