Die Welt

Published every Friday.

Editorial Office and Administration: VIENNA IX., Türkenstrasse No. 9. Telephone 14199.

Correspondence is to be addressed not to individual persons but to the Editorial Office or the Administration: Vienna, IX., Türkenstrasse No. 9. Unstamped letters are not accepted, and manuscripts are not returned. Editorial consulting hours daily from 10—1/212 o'clock.

Advertisement rates: according to the tariff available on request. The advertisement section closes on Tuesday evening. Single numbers 30 Heller.

Subscription rates: Austria-Hungary: yearly Kr. 12.—, half-yearly Kr. 6.—, quarterly Kr. 3.—. Abroad: Germany yearly Mk. 13.70, half-yearly Mk. 6.85, quarterly Mk. 3.45; England yearly Shg. 14.—, half-yearly Shg. 7.—, quarterly Shg. 3.10; Russia yearly R. 7.—, half-yearly R. 3.50, quarterly R. 1.75; Switzerland, France, Italy, Turkey, Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Greece, Egypt yearly Frcs. 17.—, half-yearly Frcs. 8.50, quarterly 4.25; America yearly Doll. 3.40, half-yearly Doll. 1.70, quarterly Doll. —.85

No. 19. | Vienna, 8th May 1903 — II. Iyar 5663. | 7th Year

Kishineff and the Sardines.

I mean real sardines in oil, those pretty little creatures whose delicate flesh, steeped in savoury, genuine French oil, tempts the palate and flatters the stomach.

And I mean the real Kishineff, within whose walls so many of my poor brothers and sisters struggle for a life full of sorrow under the most humiliating conditions. The same Kishineff in which this life of suffering, to which they cling as fondly as their more fortunate fellow-men, has now and again been violently torn from them.

In truth one cannot quite picture the thing. One reads: "Anti-Jewish riots in Kishineff." Just so, between the telegrams on the doings of the Bourse, the travels of the King of England and the receptions of the German Emperor. Very well, a newspaper item! One reads so much of want and misery, of murder and robbery in the papers, that one is thoroughly blunted.

Our child, however, a grown girl, takes the matter more seriously. Good Heavens, she is still so young, so unspeakably susceptible to every stirring of the soul. To-day she is the first to lay hands on the paper, and for her there is no other news in the whole journal. Whether I keep silent or speak, she cannot rid herself of the news, and she cannot comprehend my calm. Now I do not care to have my temper disturbed at breakfast. The day brings trouble and care enough, torment and agitation enough as it is; one must husband one's composure. As usual, I butter my roll and cut up a sardine in oil, whose piquant savour rises pleasantly to my nostrils. — Our child will not be calmed.

"Father, have you not read it, then? They took the children from their mothers, they killed them in their presence, before their very eyes!"

I lay the sardines aside and look our daughter in the eyes. They are moist with tears. I stroke her cheeks, which glow with agitation. But she, as she feels my hand, nestles close to me and holds it fast, as though seeking help. Then something flashes from eye to eye, from heart to heart. One need not speak to understand one another. That which thinks and speaks there is, after all, I myself; a part of me, carefully watched and guarded, taught the best and deepest of which my soul is capable. But the highest thing I could give my child is my love for our people, faithfulness to one's own self.

We are both in Kishineff now. — — A savage horde now bursts into our sunny little garden-room. — — We fight for our lives. — — I shield wife and child from the uttermost! — — — — It lasts but seconds, yet I live through the hours-long death-agony of my brothers and sisters in Kishineff. Their child is my child, my life is theirs. I quickly collected myself to finish our breakfast. Strangely enough, I could eat nothing. The sardines especially repelled me. They are dead creatures. — and the smell — — how dreadful, I smelt blood — drying blood — dead flesh. I knew, of course, that they were sardines, but I saw — — the corpses of children. Small — white bodies — without heads.

I went into the garden.

When my spirit is too heavily burdened, when the baseness of human creatures and the incomprehensibility of their deeds trouble me too sorely, I take refuge with my flowers. Their tranquil beauty, the noble fragrance of their breath, the harmony of their colours — all this draws my soul under the spell of the Great, the Sublime, the Eternal in Nature — it smooths the agitation of my outraged spirit.

To-day I bend doubly eager over the fragrant clusters of the hyacinths — but the smell of the blood of Kishineff still clings to my nerves. Beside the hyacinths blooms the tulip, tall-stemmed, bright yellow, with red stripes and dots, that deep, glowing red which — which resembles blood. I start hastily back. Strange! I had never known it, never suspected it. Hyacinths smell of sardines — and tulips glow like blood. I smell murder and I see death. I know, of course, that it is an illusion. Might not some of the oil still be clinging to me? I wash myself