The prodigious essay on "The Cause of World Unrest" which the _Morning
Post_ has lately published in seventeen articles and some sixty
columns of printed matter[1] is a document on which the student of
political thought in England will dwell sadly. Over a century ago, in
world circumstances of startling similarity and almost from the same
party standpoint, Burke gave us, in his "Causes of the Present
Discontents," his "Reflections," and his "Regicide Peace" a large and
stately piece of political philosophy. To-day the leading organ of
Conservative opinion in this country can only expound a sort of
political demonology, borrowed partly from the obscurantists of
Bourbon Clericalism and partly from the fanatics of Hohenzollern
Anti-Semitism. It would be merciful to pass by this strange effort in
silence, but unfortunately there is reason to believe that, with all
its grotesqueness, it is calculated to work a good deal of mischief.
Credulous and vicious people are still abundant, and they are not
confined to the crowd. Mr. Winston Churchill has darkly hinted that he
reads the signs of the times much in the same way as the _Morning
Post_, and a curious story is current that the translation of the
Russian forgery on which the theory of that journal mainly rests was
actually made in the Intelligence Department of the War Office. Then
there are Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc and quite a conventicle of
smaller fry who have been vainly preaching the same apocalypse for
years. The _Morning Post_ may bring them recruits, and that assuredly
is not desirable.
The theory of the _Morning Post_ may be briefly stated. Its
fundamental contention is that all political unrest is artificial. It
is a product of the Hidden Hand which is now revealed to us as a
"Formidable Sect" encompassing the world. This sect has been at its
present work for at least a hundred and fifty years. The French
Revolution was contrived by it, as well as all the subordinate
revolutions down to our own time. Trade Unionism, Socialism,
Syndicalism, Bolshevism, Sinn Fein, Indian Nationalism, and their
analogues in every part of the globe are outward and visible signs of
its sinister activity. That there are social grievances and even evils
at the root of this unrest is not denied, but they are as artificial
as the unrest itself. They have all been deliberately brought about by
the Hidden Hand in order to stir up revolt against the Throne and
Altar. The way in which it has been done is a little complicated.
Behind the restless and seditious movements which we all know there is
a secret revolutionary organisation in the shape of Freemasonry. But
this is only intermediate, for Freemasonry itself, through some
obscure transaction between the Templars and the Old Man of the
Mountain, was created by the "Formidable Sect," and is wholly, though
perhaps unconsciously, under its control. Freemasonry had a specially
"activist" wing in the Illuminati--also an invention of the
Formidablists--which was chiefly responsible for the French
Revolution.
Now, what is this "Formidable Sect"? It is no other than the Jews.
Those ancient enemies of the human race appear to have been even more
daring and dynamic in evil-doing than even Torquemada supposed.
Throughout their world-wide Dispersion they have secretly preserved
their old political organisation, and they have used it--and are still
using it--with deadly persistency to overturn the established
Christian order of things and to found in its place a universal Jewish
dominion under the sceptre of a Sovereign of the House of David. The
Jews are, in short, the "cause of the world unrest."
There is nothing new in this theory except the claim of its authors to
have produced documentary proof of its final development--that is, of
its Jewish aspect. _Qua_ international conspiracy, it was invented
over a century ago, as it has been resurrected to-day, to explain the
unfamiliar international character of the prevailing unrest. The
clergy and the nobility of the _ancien regime_ were as little capable
as the _Morning Post_ to-day of understanding the natural causes of
this phenomenon. And yet they were by no means obscure. The French
Revolution, as Burke pointed out, was not a mere uprising against
local oppression, but a "revolution of doctrine and theoretic
dogma"[2] which was bound to find echoes beyond the French frontiers.
In this respect it resembled the Reformation, and also that other
"armed doctrine" which we know as Bolshevism. Nevertheless it puzzled
the Bourbon apologists, and, confusing cause and effect, they became
convinced that they were in the presence of an international
conspiracy.
The theory was first propounded by a Superior of the Seminary of
Eudists at Caen in 1790,[3] but it was afterwards vastly developed by
the Abbe Barruel in his "Memoires sur le Jacobinisme," by Robison of
Edinburgh in his "Proofs of a Conspiracy," and by the Chevalier de
Malet in his tedious "Recherches Historiques." Their conclusion was
that there was a triple conspiracy of Philosophers, Freemasons, and
Illuminati, who formed an actual sect aiming deliberately and
methodically at the overthrow of the established religions and
governments throughout Europe. It is noteworthy that their researches
failed to discern any Jewish element in this conspiracy, though in
minuteness of investigation and in the gluttony of their credulity
they were by no means inferior to the _Morning Post_, while they had
the advantage over that journal of being in close touch with the
facts. The theory had a short shrift, though the industry of its
authors certainly did much to throw light on the organisation and
activities of the secret societies. So far as the Freemasons and
Illuminati were concerned, it was easily demolished by the Earl of
Moira, who at a meeting of the Grand Lodge of England in 1800 showed
convincingly that it was a mare's nest.[4] As for the Philosophers, no
one ever took the charge against them seriously. For half a century
scarcely anything more was heard of this aspect of the "Formidable
Sect," though meanwhile the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 took place.
The non-suit of Barruel was _chose jugee_.
It was revived in the sixties under the influence of the religious
passions kindled by the war for Italian unity. The struggle for Jewish
emancipation had triumphed all over Western Europe, largely as a
consequence of the Revolutions of 1848, and the new citizens thus
enfranchised had everywhere cast in their lot with the Liberal
parties. This was swiftly and angrily noted by the Ultramontane
polemists, and the old bogey of a "Formidable Sect" began to haunt
them in a revised and enlarged form. In the new conspiracy there was
no longer any talk of Philosophers and Illuminati. Their place was
taken by Jews and Protestants. The "Formidable Sect" thus became a
triple alliance of Freemasons, Jews, and Protestants, which was said
to be directed by the "Grand Master Palmerston," and supported by the
whole British people, not only as Protestants, but as descendants of
the Lost Tribes of Israel. The chief protagonist of this stupendous
hallucination was M. Gougenot des Mousseaux, who in 1869 embodied it
in a volume entitled "Le Juif, le Judaisme, et la Judaisation des
Peuples Chretiens." From his own admissions, however, it appears that
he was largely indebted to German Catholic inspiration. Once again the
theory failed to find support, and Gougenot's book, like the books of
Barruel and Robison, became relegated to the literature of forgotten
crazes.
Later on attempts to revive it were made by M. de Saint-Andre, the
Abbe Chabauty, M. Drumont, M. Martin, and M. Copin-Albancelli, in the
full flood of the Anti-Semitic agitation which had been imported into
France from Germany. The only notable addition made to the theory by
these writers was the hypothesis of a secret Jewish Government,
transported from Jerusalem into the Diaspora, which, throughout the
ages, has never ceased to command the allegiance of an imaginary
international Jewry, to keep it disloyal to all other Governments, and
to direct it in an insidious campaign against the established order of
Christian Society. Since 1909 the agitation has become retransferred
to the headquarters of Clerical Anti-Semitism in Vienna and Munich,
and the most recent works on the subject--with which the _Morning
Post_ appears to have mainly worked, although for obvious reasons it
does not acknowledge them--are Wichtl's "Weltfreimaurerei,
Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik," Meister's "Judas Schuldbuch," and
Rosenberg's "Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten," all published
in 1919. All this literature, while expounding exactly the same theory
of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy as the _Morning Post_, is as violently
anti-English as it is anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish. A great deal of it
is published under the auspices of the _Deutschland's Erneuerung_
Committee, of which Mr. Houston Chamberlain is a leading spirit.
This, then, is the very dubious raw material of the theory hashed up
by the _Morning Post_ as a serious contribution to the grave political
preoccupations of British statesmanship at this moment. It will be
noted that in the forms so far reviewed it is confessedly a theory,
resting at the best on evidence of a highly conjectural and
circumstantial character. The novelty in its latest presentation is
that an effort is made to bolster it up with what is claimed to be
direct evidence. This takes the form of a document entitled "The
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which was opportunely
published in an anonymous pamphlet a few months ago by Messrs. Eyre
and Spottiswoode. These protocols are alleged to be the minutes of
certain meetings of the Secret Directory of the Jewish people held in
Paris towards the end of the last century, and they pretend to record
avowals by the "Elders" of the very conspiracy set forth
hypothetically by MM. Gougenot des Mousseaux and Copin-Albancelli. The
joy of the _Morning Post_ at the discovery of this evidence is not
difficult to understand. Its theory threatened to collapse under the
weight of its inherent grotesqueness, and here, in the nick of time,
was documentary proof, complete and apparently irrefutable. "In this
book," says the _Post_ triumphantly, "for the first time we find an
open declaration of the terrible conspiracy of the 'Formidable
Sect.'"[5]
Unhappily for the _Morning Post_, this document is a forgery, and one
which has already been used for even more disreputable purposes than
the bolstering up of the malicious hypothesis in support of which it
is cited. The story of this forgery will be told presently.[6] For
the moment I content myself with noting that it is a forgery, and
proceed to examine briefly the main historical propositions which it
is invoked to corroborate and co-ordinate. This is necessary not
because they are in themselves worth taking seriously, but because
they are held to react on the forged protocols and to supply
presumptive evidence of their genuineness.
I take the propositions in the logical order of the argument they are
put forward to illustrate:--