Let us win over those Jews through the public schools, instead of allowing them to persist in their narrow Hebrew learning, which teaches them no love for their monarch.

Force has failed with them; the unwilling converts return to their old ways whenever they dare.

Let us try education." Perhaps peaceable conversion of the Jews was not the Czar's only motive when he opened public schools everywhere and compelled parents to send their boys for instruction.

Perhaps he just wanted to be good, and really hoped to benefit the country.

But to the Jews the public schools appeared as a trap door to the abyss of apostasy.