Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/92

66 the consideration of the people's representatives in the Imperial Duma which had just come into being. The opinion of the first two sessions of the Duma is well known. The People's representatives in the first two Dumas announced directly and unambiguously that the realisation of full civic freedom, for Jews as well as for the rest of the citizens, was one of their first tasks. Then a new reactionary election law was introduced. It made a radical change in the composition of the Imperial Duma and also in the attitude of the latter toward the Jewish question. The outright usefulness of the part played by the Jews in the economic life of both town and village,—this fact, which even reactionary governments, ministers and committees ceased doubting, was again questioned by the newly elected representatives of the Russian people. It is only from that moment on that it became possible to plan such measures as the abolition of those meagre rights which the Jews are still enjoying. Thus, together with the victory of political reaction the new anti-Semitism, which we cannot any longer overlook, has become triumphant.