This proposition, borrowed, for the most part, from the wild
conjectures of Copin-Albancelli, has a queer flavour of the
anti-Catholic bogey which was at one time so fiercely exploited by
Hot-gospellers, and in which even Mr. Gladstone believed as late as
1874--the Pope standing for the Prince of the Captivity and the
Syllabus for the Protocols of Nilus. What, however, is very remarkable
is that the protagonists of this fantastic calumny are, for the most
part, Roman Catholics who have themselves suffered from it in a form
much more difficult to grapple with. The short answer to it in the
case of the Jews is that it is an invention, and that not only is
there no trace of it in the history of the Dispersion, but that, on
the contrary, the Jews, even as a Church, and still more in their
secular relations, have suffered more from the want of international
organisation and uniformity than any other Church or religious
community. The Princes of the Captivity, for example, were confined to
the Babylonian Exile, and were little more than the local Presbyters
_omnium Judaeorum Angliae_ of Angevin England or the Presidents of the
Jewish Consistory of modern France. The allegation that the final aim
of this Secret Government is the establishment of a universal Jewish
dominion under a Prince of the House of David is a curious muddle of
eschatology and politics. With much better reason the early
Anabaptists said virtually the same thing of the Roman Catholic
Church, and, indeed, on the _Morning Post_ plan of campaign, it might
be retorted on all the great Churches. With the Jews it has no more to
do with practical politics than the analogous hopes of pious
Christendom. The _Morning Post_, however, does not stand alone in its
error. A curious variant of it is found in recent German Antisemitica.
The World Unrest is there pictured as due to a conspiracy of Jewry and
the British Empire, based on the Anglo-Israelitish theory that the
British people are the Lost Tribes and the Royal House of Windsor the
authentic seed of David. Accordingly, Britons and Jews together are
accused of having plotted the late war in order to fulfil the
Messianic prophecies in the person of King George.[7] _Les grands
esprits se rencontrent!_