"Forever extending its base, "It suffices to give the
the new Democracy now aspires populace self-government for a
to universal suffrage. By this short period for this populace
means, _the political power to become a disorganised
would be shattered into a rabble.... Is it possible for
number of infinitesimal bits, the mass to discriminate
of which each citizen acquires quietly and without jealousies
a single one_. What will he do to administer the affairs of
with it then; how will he State? Can they be a defence
employ it?... _Each vote against a foreign foe? This is
representing an inconsiderable impossible, _as a plan broken
fragment of power, by itself up into as many parts as there
signifies nothing_.... The are minds in the mass loses
extension of the right to its value, and therefore
participate in elections is becomes unintelligible and
regarded as progress, and as unworkable_. Alone an autocrat
the conquest of freedom by can conceive vast plans
democratic theorists who hold clearly, assigning its proper
that the more numerous the part to everything in the
participants in political mechanism of the machine of
rights, the greater is the State. Hence we conclude that
probability that all will it is expedient for the
employ this right in the welfare of the country that
interests of the public the Government of the same
welfare. Experience proves a should be in the hands of one
very different thing. The responsible person. Without
history of mankind bears absolute despotism
witness that the most civilisation cannot exist, for
necessary and fruitful reforms civilisation is capable of
emanated from the supreme will being promoted only under the
of statesmen or from a protection of the ruler,
minority enlightened by lofty whoever he may be, and not at
ideas and deep knowledge, and the hands of the masses".[45]
that, on the contrary, the
extension of the
representative principle is
accompanied by an abasement of
political ideas".[44]
In the second part of "The Jewish Peril," where the Elders of Zion are
made to expound their State Bolshevism, the sources are not quite so
clear. It is practically certain, however, that they are not Jewish.
Had Nilus waited a few years he would, perhaps, have been able to
quote convinced Bolshevist writers of Jewish birth like Radek and
Zinovieff, but when he wrote in 1905 there were no such exponents of
pure Leninism. The great split of 1903 found all the leading
Russo-Jewish Socialists, such as Martoff, Axelrod, Trotsky, Martinoff,
Liber, Dahn, and the whole of the Bund, ranged with the Mensheviks
against Lenin.[46] The result was that, in reproducing Bolshevist
ideas, Nilus must have been dependent on Gentile pamphleteers. It is
not easy to identify these ephemeral writings with certainty, but many
interesting parallels of this section of the Protocols may be found in
Bucharin's "Programme of the Communists," which codifies all the early
Bolshevist literature.[47] And Bucharin, be it noted, is just as
little a Jew as was Pobyedonoszeff. This, of course, explains the
alleged prophetic character of the Protocols which the _Morning Post_
and its friends hold to be convincing evidence of their genuineness.
If the Bolsheviks have acted on some of the principles attributed the
Elders of Zion, they have done so not because they were of Jewish
origin, but because they were exclusively the work of Lenin and his
bodyguard of Gentile proletarians.
So much for the literary history of the Protocols. Their political
history is not less discreditable. They were not published because
they were discovered--whether in the pages of Goedsche or
elsewhere--but they were discovered because they were wanted for the
ignoble purpose of a pogrom-weapon. In the first edition of his book,
published in 1901, Nilus knew nothing of them, but was absorbed by the
more abstract aspects of the problem of Antichrist. In 1905 occurred
the Russian Revolution, and this was followed by the incendiary
conspiracy of the Okhrana to stir up pogroms all over Russia and drown
the new Constitution in a welter of Jewish blood.[48] Nilus appears
to have been employed by the Okhrana in this wicked campaign. At any
rate, the Protocols first appeared at this date in the shape of small
pamphlets or broadsheets and they were only afterwards collected and
incorporated in a second edition of Nilus's work as a _denouement_ of
his theory of the Judeo-Masonic nature of Antichrist. Nor has their
_role_ as a pogrom-weapon been confined to the year 1905. Quite
recently abstracts of them were widely circulated in Denikin's and
Koltchak's armies. They were printed in the Eparchial Library at
Rostoff, and were distributed by the remnants of the organisation of
Black Hundreds known as the Union of the Russian People. How effective
they were for their murderous purpose we know from the horrible
massacres of inoffensive Jews and Jewesses which dogged the foot-steps
of Denikin's armies throughout South Russia.
But this was not the only sinister movement with which the Protocols
seem to have been associated. The year in which they were first
published in Russia was also the year of a very serious Russo-German
intrigue against the Triple Entente; and here again these
Protocols--or, rather, their argument--appear as one of the main
weapons of the plotters.
It will be remembered that in July, 1905, the basis of an anti-British
Alliance was secretly agreed upon by the Tsar and the Kaiser at
Bjoerkoe.[49] A few months later, while the Treaty was still
incomplete, Count Lamsdorf proposed to the Tsar that advantage should
be taken of "the new friendly relations" with Germany to conclude an
agreement between the two countries for combating the alleged Jewish
and Masonic peril.[50] Now, the secret Memorandum in which this
precious scheme was set forth, and which the Tsar formally approved in
January, 1906, is virtually a reproduction of the anti-Semitic
argument which the alleged "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are
designed to prove. It is true that the Protocols themselves are not
mentioned, but Count Lamsdorf is none the less positive, with the
fabricators of those documents, that the Jews are the soul of the
Revolutionary movement in Europe, that their "principal aim is the
all-around triumph of anti-Christian and anti-Monarchist Jewry," that
their millionaires subvention this movement with "gigantic pecuniary
means," and that they are abetted in this enterprise by the
Freemasons. The Protocols are, indeed, little more than a dramatic
version of Count Lamsdorf's Memorandum. It is difficult to resist the
conclusion that in some occult way--perhaps not so very
occult--Nilus's book was intended to serve the sinister ends of the
pro-German foreign policy of Count Lamsdorf in the same way as it
served the bloody purposes of the pogrom-mongers. It should be
especially noted in this connection that the book is as anti-British
as it is anti-Jewish, and that it was published in December, 1905,
that is to say, at the very time that the Tsar had the Lamsdorf scheme
under consideration.
The more recent history of the Protocols is even more unsavoury. It is
incredible, but it is nevertheless a fact, that these crazy forgeries
have played a part behind the scenes in the international combinations
for assisting the anti-Bolshevist reaction in Russia, which have
filled so much of the public mind during the last two years, and which
have cost this country close on L100,000,000. There was a moment when
the Great Powers were disposed to leave the Russians to fight out
their quarrels among themselves. Various objections to this policy
were urged by the friends of Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin, and
among them was the argument that there was, in fact, no civil war in
Russia, that Bolshevism was not Russian, but exclusively alien, the
work of international Jews who were themselves the instruments of a
world-wide and deep-laid Jewish conspiracy against Christendom and the
political order of Europe. Bolshevism was, in short, a European
menace. Russia was pictured as the first instalment of the Jewish
conquest of Europe, which had already sent its _eclaireurs_ to Berlin,
Dresden, Vienna, and Budapest, whence they were advancing to the Rhine
and the Alps. In support of this argument, Russian Intelligence
Officers, armed with doctored typewritten translations of the Nilus
Protocols, with the anti-British passages carefully expunged, were
sent to London, Paris, Rome, and Washington, where they circulated
this precious literature confidentially among Cabinet Ministers, heads
of public departments, and persons of influence in society and
journalism. That this campaign was not fruitless is attested by many
curious facts, which, unfortunately, cannot be more particularly
referred to at this moment without a breach of confidence. Overt
evidence of the mischief that was wrought is, however, not wanting. It
may be found, for example, in certain oracular utterances of Mr.
Winston Churchill in a Sunday paper, in the anti-Semitic outbursts of
the _Morning Post_, and the itching of the _Times_ and the _Spectator_
to do likewise, and, finally, in the discreditable propaganda leaflets
distributed in the interior of Russia by the air service of the
British armies at Archangel and Murmansk.[51]
Why the Protocols were circulated thus secretly is clear. Their
political purpose had nothing to gain, and, indeed, everything to lose
from public criticism and discussion. Nevertheless, they leaked out. A
copy got into the hands of an official of the United States Department
of Justice, and he, anxious for further information, and following
some tactless office rule, sent it to the President of an important
Jewish organisation in New York for his observations. The President
promptly replied that it was a forgery of a very familiar type, and
took no further notice of it. In June, 1919, the present writer, while
in Paris, heard of the circulation of the Protocols as a pogrom
pamphlet in Denikin's country, but he also attached no special
importance to it. Later on came the first intimation of the proposed
publication of the Protocols in Western Europe. It came in very
characteristic shape. One day the members of a certain Jewish
Delegation in Paris received a visit from a mysterious Lithuanian who
had been connected with the Russian Secret Police. He professed
himself anxious to serve the Jewish community, and said that he was in
a position to prevent the publication of an exceedingly dangerous
book, which, if it saw the light, would probably involve the whole
house of Israel in ruin. Quite naturally, he wished to be paid for
this service, but the sum was a mere trifle, a matter of L10,000. He
was asked for a sight of the volume, and he produced it. It was, of
course, "the Protocols." Needless to say, no business was done. It was
possibly only a coincidence that in the following December a German
edition was published under the title "Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von
Zion," and two months later the English edition saw the light under
the title "The Jewish Peril: Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."
The German and English publication would have been simultaneous but
for the fact that difficulty was experienced in finding a reputable
London publishing house to take the Protocols seriously.
One further word about the English edition. Its history and aims are
much less clear than those of its Russian original, owing partly to
the circumspect anonymity in which its sponsors have elected to veil
themselves. It is inconceivable that it is intended to stir up pogroms
in this country, though the suggestion is not obscurely made in recent
articles in the _Times_ and the _Spectator_. More probably--as has
already been hinted--it is part of a German intrigue to prejudice the
recent German general elections in favour of the Militarist
Reactionaries and perhaps even to justify the forcible upsetting of
the German Government by means of another Kapp _Putsch_. Here is the
evidence for this startling conjecture.
The German Reactionaries have lately been putting all their money on
anti-Semitism. Their publicity agencies in Charlottenburg and Munich
have flooded the country with pamphlets denouncing the Republican
Government as a Judaized Junta, the instrument of a far-reaching
Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to ruin Germany and to involve the whole of
Christian and Monarchical Europe in her fate. This campaign has lately
become official, and a paragraph was inserted in the Electoral
Manifesto of the German Nationalists--the party of Kapp and
Lutzow--formally adopting anti-Semitism as a plank in their platform.
One of the aims of the party is to secure foreign sympathy and help,
and they hope to do this by finding a common ground in anti-Semitism.
In these circumstances the publication of "The Jewish Peril" in
England wears a disturbing significance, but it becomes much more
disturbing when we find that the German edition was published almost
simultaneously with it, with a dedication appealing not only to the
German people, but also to "The Princes of Europe." The object was
clearly to get English support, and unfortunately the response was not
long in coming. On May 8th the _Times_ was inveigled into publishing
an article expressing alarm at the revelations of the Protocols and
calling for an investigation. The delight of the German Reactionaries
knew no bounds. It was voiced by Count Reventlow in a long article in
the _Deutsche Tageszeitung_ of May 17 welcoming the _Times's_
acceptance of the Jewish peril as an indication that English public
opinion was beginning to recognise the righteousness of Kapp and Co.
in their resistance to the Ebert _regime_ and what the Count called
the "pax Judaeica."[52]
Whether the translators and editors of "The Jewish Peril" have
consciously lent themselves to this intrigue, which is part of the
German Reactionary plot to upset the Treaty of Versailles and perhaps
plunge Europe into another war, cannot be said. But assuredly the
worst suspicions are permissible so long as these gentlemen elect to
skulk in the _coulisses_ and shrink from responsibility for their
scrubby handiwork. Even Titus Oates had the courage of his forgeries.