Ten years ago much interest was excited by the publication in London of documents purporting to show that a secret organization of Jewish character had existed for a long period on the Continent of Europe, and that its object unceasingly pursued from generation to generation was by degrees to enslave and dominate the non-Jewish peoples of the world. According to the documents published the engineers of the movement were wholly indifferent as to the moral character of the means adopted to attain the end.
The publication of this matter led to expressions of strong indignation by leading Jews that reputable journals should print such allegations. The documents were declared to be gross forgeries, long known and exploded on the Continent of Europe and various sources were given as their origin.
The extraordinary thing about these "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," as they are called, is the accuracy with which they are being fulfilled. Their origin may be wrapped in mystery, but of the fulfilment of the programme set out in them there can be no question.
The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were published by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, in 1920, and were reviewed at length in the London "Times" of May 8, and the London "Spectator" of May 15.
In its notice of the pamphlet the "Times explained that it was a reprint of matter published in Russia in 1905 by Professor Sergius Nilus, a minor official in the Russian Foreign Office. In view of the course of world events between 1905 and 1920, the "Times" thought it important to explain that there could be no question of the issue in 1905, as the British Museum Library held a copy of the original Russian pamphlet with the Museum date stamp of August 10, 1906, on it, showing its date of receipt.
According to the explanation given by Professor Nilus in his preface, the matter he published came into his hands in the following manner:
"A manuscript has been handed to me by a personal friend now deceased . . . with the positive assurance that it was a true copy in translation of original documents stolen by a woman from one of the most influential and highly initiated leaders of freemasonry. The theft was accomplished at the close of a secret meeting of the initiated in France, that nest of Jewish Masonic conspiracy."
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A correspondent writing to the "Times" on May 11, 1920, pointed out that in the original Russian pamphlet there appeared in the preface the following statement by the author, which had been omitted from the English edition.
"It will satisfy our feeling of responsibility if only by the grace of God we have achieved the, to us, so important aim - to forewarn, and yet did not arouse in the heart of any one person a feeling of animosity towards the until now blind Jewish people, the masses of whom, keenly believing though in a lie, are not guilty of the satanic sin of their leaders - the scribes and Pharisees, who have once already ruined Israel."
In 1917 Professor Nilus, at the time of the Bolshevik descent on Russia, produced a second edition of his pamphlet bearing the title "It is Here at Our Doors!"
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We have next to recognize that the origin of the Protocols is shrouded in mystery. The statement of Professor Nilus as to how the document came into his possession has been given above. In the second edition of his pamphlet he gave a slightly different explanation. In the first statement the matter was stolen by a woman from an influential Jewish Freemason. In the second statement it appeared the matter was abstracted from a safe. Both statements would be substantially accurate if a woman had taken from a safe a document belonging to an influential Jewish Freemason.
The British Jews' Association thought the publication of sufficient importance to warrant notice by them. In its issue of June 2, 1920, the London "Times" published the text of a lengthy resolution by this association. After pointing our that the author of the pamphlet had received it "through a friend now deceased," and of the variations in his accounts of its original acquisition, it was stated:
"In view of the suspicious character of the statement, and of the further avowal of the author that he is unable to produce evidence of the genuineness of his documents, the committee resolved that it is unnecessary for the Jewish community to take any action.
On June 12, 1920, Mr. Lucien Wolf, the well-known Jewish journalist, and the author of the article on "Anti-Semitism" in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, contributed a lengthy letter to the "Spectator" pointing out that the bogy of a Jewish secret society was at least three centuries old.
Mr. Wolf declared that after the existence of the Illuminati, a Bavarian Masonic organization with a revolutionary plan, had become known at the end of the eighteenth century it was promptly annexed by a succession of scare-moners and writers of sensational books. After giving a list of these writers, Mr. Wolf declared that the Protocols from an examination of their text were pretty obviously a plagiarism from a novel "Gaeta Duppel Warsaw," published by Hermann Goedsche in 1868, Goedsche being, Mr. Wolf stated, an ex-official of the Prussian postal service dismissed for forgery.
In his novel Goedsche describes, we are told, an assembly of the Elect of Israel held once in every century at which is expounded the plan of Simeon, handed down from generation to generation, by which the Jews may secure their domination over all the nations of the earth. The Jews are to work with gold and the Press for the subversion of Monarchy and Christianity. They are to act as a universal disturbing and demoralizing instrument, and in particular they are to seduce and stir up the proletariat to political revolution, so that eventually they may establish a universal Jewish Monarchy on the ruins of Christian society.
As noted in the chapter on Russia, Mr. Wolf in his letter asserted that the Nilus pamphlet was produced in Russia in 1905 as part of the propaganda against the Jews, who were blamed for the revolution of that year, and was in particular used by the Russian Foreign Minister, Count Lamsdorff, in connection with a secret memorandum which the Tsar submitted to the Kaiser urging joint action by Russia and Germany against Jewish and Masonic peril. Such peril we are assured by Mr. Wolf is a pure myth. Nevertheless we shall look in vain to find on the thrones of Russia and Germany the two illustrious personages who in 1905 put their heads together to combat a supposed Jewish peril.
So far Mr. Wolf. On August 16, 1920, the London "Times" published in a most prominent position, in the outside column of its leader page, a long message from its Constantinople correspondent headed "Jewish World Plot: An Exposure." In this was set out how a mysterious Mr. X had bought a second-hand book, "Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu," written by M. Maurice Joly and published in Brussels in 1865. It was a political squib directed against the Emperor Napoleon III. Parallel column extracts showed many passages almost identical with the Protocols. There was some evidence that this particular copy of the book had been in the possession of the Russian secret police.
The "Times Correspondent incidentally mentioned that Professor Nilus in his second edition of 1917 had stated that he had received the Protocols from Alexis Nicolaevich Sukholin, a noble afterwards Governor of Stavropol. In this edition it was also alleged that the Protocols were notes of a plan submitted by Theodor Hertzl to the first Zionist Congress Council of Elders held at Basle, in Switzerland, in 1897.
It will thus be seen that two totally different sources were supplied with equal satisfaction as being the origin of the Protocols.
An equally feasible explanation would be that the matter in the Protocols and in the two books, the Goedsche novel and the "Dialogues in Hell," had been derived from some common source.
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This explanation fits the facts just as well as an explanation that the Protocols began merely as a fanciful invention in a novel, and were stolen and dressed up in Russia to injure the Jews. The deadly accuracy of the Protocols puts the fiction-plagiarism theory at a heavy discount.
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Any book on philosophy will tell us that absolute truth is unknowable by human beings. Truth, for us, is merely the explanation that most completely fits the known facts. If the Protocols supply an explanation which fits the facts, is it not sheer folly to dismiss them as insignificant? Would not the writer in putting together this book to make his fellow-countrymen aware of the nature of the influences by which they are surrounded - would not he have failed in his full duty if knowing of the Protocols he had suppressed mention of them?
Such a conspiracy, if it exists, would appear to have its origin in Germany, and it would not seem that even there any more than a small section of the Jews need by parties to it.
Our concern is not with Jews as Jews, but with conspirators as conspirators, whether they be Jews, Christians, Mahomedans, or anything else. Our business is to discover the facts and to put ourselves in a position of security. If hatred has sprung from hatred, matters will not be mended by sowing further hatred. Nor will they be mended by closing our eyes and leaving policies conceived in hatred to run to some tremendous cataclysm. Furthermore, we must not forget that prominent in exposing and resisting the monopolistic and dangerous activities to which attention has been directed in these pages have been many public-spirited Jews themselves. If there is conspiracy, the conspirators are as regardless of Jew as of Christian, for in order to gratify their ambition they imperil their race. The frustration of any such design of world enslavement is thus the common interest of Jew and Christian alike.
