A manifestation of this frame of mind may be found in the words of the Tzar which he penned on the margin of a report submitted to him in 1890 by a high official, describing the sufferings of the Jews and pleading for the necessity of stopping the policy of oppression: "_But we must not forget that it was the Jews who crucified our Lord and spilled his priceless blood_." Representatives of the court clergy publicly preached that a Christian ought not to cultivate friendly relations with a Jew, since it was the command of the gospel "to hate the murderers of the Savior." The Ministry of the Interior, under the direction of two fanatic reactionaries, Durnovo and Plehve, [3] set on foot all the inquisitorial contrivances of the Police Department, of which both these officials had formerly been the chiefs.
[Footnote 1: Borki is a village in the government of Kherson.

Of the fifteen cars of the imperial train only five remained intact.
Fifty-eight persons were injured, twenty-one fatally.

The members of the imperial family were saved, although their car had been completely wrecked.
The following quotation from Harold Frederic, _The New Exodus_, p.

168 et seq., is of interest in this connection: "It was reported about that the Tzar regarded the escape alive of himself and family from the terrible railway accident at Borki as the direct and miraculous intervention of Providence.

The facts were that the imperial train was being driven at the rate of ninety versts an hour over a road calculated to withstand at the utmost a speed of thirty-five versts; that the engineer humbly warned the Tzar of the danger, and was gruffly ordered to go still faster if possible, and that the miracle would have been the avoidance of calamity."] [Footnote 2: On the Zemstvos compare p.