Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/164

 in the second place, the Polish question stands on a quite distinct plane from the question of the other nationalities of the Russian Empire. The question of which I have now to speak is one of which very much is heard in England: it is a burning question, and indeed I think it the most difficult question in the whole Russian Empire, and that is the Jewish question. The greater part of the Jews came into the Russian Empire with the partition of Poland, and the region they were compelled by law to inhabit comprises the western and southern provinces of European Russia, the so-called Pale of Settlement, which through the vicissitudes of the war has been abolished, I hope for ever. Now the Jewish question is so very difficult, it is such a tragic question, that it cannot be discussed only in terms of current politics; it cannot be understood if it is made the subject of invective on either one side or the other. It is too deep. It cannot be treated casually or flippantly, and one thing I should like to establish is that while the Jewish question is most acute in Russia it is not only a Russian question but a world question, and, even if the present political disabilities of the Jews in Russia are removed, the Jewish question will not have been finally solved. The Jewish question, constantly present and ever evading solution, is one of the very strange experiences by which the human race in persistent self-questioning is finding its way to a clearer knowledge of itself. It is a difficult question. The finest of the Jews realise this difficulty, and it has led some of them to adopt as their ideal Zionism, or the establishment of a Jewish centre of civilisation in Palestine. But in Russia the Jewish question is most acute, first of all