The Daily News. SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1904. THE RUSSIAN JEW.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 141, 18 June 1904, Page 2

The Daily News. SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1904. THE RUSSIAN JEW.

The fact that Kussia is sorely in need of money, and that the money can only be obtained through influential Jewish channels, may result, a contemporary observes, in the lot of the Semites ill the Czar's dominions being considerably improved. A deputation of J owe which waited upon M. Plehve in St. Petersburg recently obtained from the Minister a very emphatic definition of the attitude of the Government towards them. It was not truo, he said, that the Czar looked upon tihem as an inferior race. He looked upon them as a superior race, and was simply afraid that if they were granted free admission to the secondary schools they would obtain too much power. This admission,, by the way, can hardly have soothed the deputation. M. Plehve went on to say that ho was not going to help a minority to overrule the. majority, a strange sentimwit to come from a Uussian, and then went on to condemn the .lews as notorious revolutionaries. " You are not only revolutionaries," he declared, " you are murderers. Sly predecessor was shot by Balmaschen. The attempt made upon the life of Üblensky was perpetrated by ti Christian, but all these murders and attempts at murder were inspired and prepared by the Jews. I have irrefutable evidence thereof. You have declared war upon us through the foreign Press. 1 warn you. Every war demands victims. Take care. The Government is inclined to improve the economical position of the Jews, but only very slowly and gradually. You need not count on obtaining equal rights with the Christian population. Were we to grant you equal rights the Kishinetl and Homel occurrences would be repeated to-morrow." M. Plehve is reported to have spoken for over an hour without cessation, and to have given the deputation no opportunity of saying a single word. In face of such a denunciation the Jews may well have been speechless. Many ot the recent troubles in Russia -ifiuve lf(yen due to the laws prohibiting the residence of Jews in any but prescriJ/od "domiciliary districts" and depriving them of the rights of property outside those districts. The attempts to remove them from prohibited areas, however, bus been found to be rather difficult, and thu Standard states that the operation of the obnoxious laws has been suspended, ostensibly because the country is disturbed by the mobilisation of troops. There are signs that when the war is over a bitter campaign will be waged with the object of driving all Jews out of the country. But the revolutionary movement continues. Even now, according to a cable message, hundreds »f arrests have been made in Southern liussin, and the country is flooded with revolutionary literature. The social and political troubles of the Empire arc evidently not to be met with by the mcix> deportation of the Jews. Of course the whole trend of events may !« altered if the Jewish bankers assist Hussin in her hpur of nwd.