But to return to the Golden Dawn. In 1903 a split occurred in the Order.

A.E. Waite, an early member of it, seceded from it with a number of

other members and carried off with him the name of "Golden Dawn," also

the vault and other property of the Order. The original Order then took

the name of "Stella Matutina," with Dr. Felkin as Chief.

In the preceding year the members of the London Lodge had again believed

that they were in touch with the _Hidden Third Order_ and revived their

efforts to communicate with the Secret Chiefs in Germany. This state of

uncertainty continued till about 1910, when Felkin and Meakin set forth

for Germany, where they succeeded in meeting several members of the

Third Order, who professed to be "true and genuine Rosicrucians" and to

know of Anna Sprengel and the starting of the Order in England. They

were not, it was believed, the Secret and Hidden Chiefs, but more

probably Esoteric Masons of the Grand Orient. These Fratres, however,

told them that in order to form a definite etheric link between

themselves and the Order in Great Britain, it would be necessary for a

British Frater to be under their instruction for a year. Accordingly

Meakin remained in Germany for special training, so that he might act as

the "etheric link" between the two countries. After a pilgrimage to the

Near East, closely following the itinerary of Christian Rosenkreutz,

Meakin returned to Germany, and it appears to have been now that he was

able to get into touch with a certain high adept of occult science.

This remarkable personage, Rudolf Steiner, had earlier belonged to the

Theosophical Society, and it has been suggested that at some period he

may have been connected with the revived Illuminati of Leopold Engel.

There is certainly some reason to believe that at one point in his

career he came into touch with men who were carrying on the teachings of

Weishaupt, the chief of whom was the President of a group of Pan-German

secret societies, and it seems not improbable that the mysterious

S.D.A., under whose directions the Golden Dawn was founded, might be

located in this circle.

A few years before the war, Steiner, whilst still a Theosophist, started

a society of his own, the Anthroposophical Society, a name borrowed from

the work of the XVIIth century Rosicrucian, Thomas Vaughan,

"Anthroposophica Magica." The ostensible leader of Rosicrucianism in

Germany was Dr. Franz Hartmann, founder of the "Order of the Esoteric

Rose Croix." Although in some way connected with Engel's Illuminati and

more definitely with the Theosophical Society, Hartmann was believed to

be a genuine Christian mystic. Steiner also made the same profession,

and it seems probable that he formed one of the group of mysterious

personages, including besides Grand Orient Masons, Baron von Knigge,

great grandson of Weishaupt's coadjutor "Philo," who met together in

secret conference at Ingoldstadt where the first Lodge of the Illuminati

had been founded in 1776, and decided to revive Illuminism on Christian

mystic lines used in a very elastic sense amongst occultists. At the

same time Steiner introduces into his teaching a strong vein of

Gnosticism, Luciferianism, Johannism, and Grand Orient Masonry, whilst

reserving Rosicrucianism for his higher initiates. On this last point he

is extremely reticent, preferring to call his teaching "occult science,"

since he recognizes that "real Rosicrucians never proclaim themselves as

such"; it is therefore only in the inner circle of his society, on which

no information is given to the public and into which members are

admitted by much the same forms of initiation as those used by the Grand

Orient, that Rosicrucianism is mentioned. Some of Steiner's imitators in

The Rosicrucian Fellowship at Oceanside, California, however, openly

profess what they call Rosicrucianism and at the same time claim

superior knowledge on the subject of Masonry. Thus in a book by the

leader of this group we find it solemnly stated that according to Max

Heindl, Eve cohabited with serpents in the garden of Eden, that Cain was

the offspring of her union with "the Lucifer Spirit Samael," and that

from this "divine progenitor" the most virile portion of the human race

descended, the rest being merely the "progeny of human parents." Readers

of the present work will recognize this as not the legend of Masonry but

of the Jewish Cabala which has been already quoted in this context.[724]

Whether this also forms part of Steiner's teaching it is impossible to

say, since his real doctrines are known only to his inner circle; even

some of his admirers amongst the Steiner Matutina, whilst consulting him

as an oracle, are not admitted to the secrets of his grades of

initiation and have been unable to succeed in obtaining from him a

charter. Meanwhile they themselves do not disclose to the neophytes whom

they seek to win over that they are members of any secret association.

This is quite in accordance with the methods of Weishaupt's "Insinuating

Brothers."

The result of what Steiner calls "occult science" is thus described in a

striking passage of one of his own works:

"This is the change which the occult student observes coming over

himself--that there is no longer a connection between a thought and a

feeling or a feeling and a volition, except when he creates the

connection himself. No impulse drives him from thought to action if he

does not voluntarily harbour it. He can now stand completely without

feeling before an object which, before his training, would have filled

him with glowing love or violent hatred; he can likewise remain

actionless before a thought which heretofore would have spurred him to

action as if by itself," etc.

I can imagine no clearer exposé of the dangers of occultism than this.

Weishaupt had said: "I cannot use men as I find them; I must form them."

Dr. Steiner shows how this transformation can be accomplished. Under the

influence of so-called occult training, which is in reality simply

powerful suggestion, all a man's native impulses and inhibitive springs

of action may be broken; the pupil of the occultist will no longer react

to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, of right or wrong, which,

unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not only his

conscious deeds but his sub-conscious processes pass under the control

of another. If this is indeed the method employed by Dr. Steiner and his

adepts there would certainly seem to be some justification for the

verdict of M. Robert Kuentz that "Steiner has devised occult exercises

which render the mind incapable (rendent l'esprit anéanti), that he

attacks the individual by deranging his faculties (il détraque les

facultés)."[725]

What is the real motive power behind such societies as the Stella

Matutina and again behind Steiner? This remains a mystery, not only to

the outside world but to the "initiates" themselves. The quest of the

Hidden Chiefs, undertaken by one intrepid pilgrim after another, seems

to have ended only in further meetings with Steiner. Yet hope springs

eternal in the breast of the aspirant after occult knowledge, and astral

messages spurred the Fratres to further efforts. One of these contained

the exhortation: "Go on with Steiner, which is not the ultimate end of

search, and we will come into contact with many serious students who

will lead us to the real master of the Order, who will be so

overpoweringly impressive as to leave no room for doubt."

A curious analogy with Co-Masonry will here be observed. For whilst the

veiled picture of the Co-Masonic lodges is said to represent "the

Master" in the person of Ragocsky or some other personage in Austria or

Hungary, so it is likewise in Austria and Germany that the members of

Stella Matutina seek their Hidden Chiefs and the "real Master" of their

Order. Moreover, whilst the Co-Masons await the coming of the great

"World Teacher," King, or Messiah in 1926, it is also in 1926 that the

Stella Matutina expect Christian Rosenkreutz to appear again.[726] There

are many other points of resemblance between the phraseology of the two

Orders, as, for example, the idea of the "Astral Light," "the Great

White Lodge," and also "the GREAT WORK" by which both Orders denote the

supreme object of their aspirations--"the union of the East and the

West." It is therefore impossible not to suspect that, although the

members of Co-Masonry and of the Stella Matutina imagine their

respective Orders to be entirely unconnected and indeed appear to be

hardly aware of each other's existence, there may be nevertheless some

point of junction in the background and even a common centre of

direction.

In this connexion it is interesting to notice the political tendencies

of the societies in question. Although the outcome of the _Maçonnerie

Mixte_, and nominally under the jurisdiction of headquarters in Paris,

Co-Masonry does not appear to be pro-French in its sympathies. On the

contrary, the Co-masonic lodges in this country, as also the head lodge

in the Rue Jules-Breton, seem to have adopted that form of universal

brotherhood which principally redounds to the benefit of Germany.

The Stella Matutina, whilst professing to be solely concerned in occult

science and warning its members against Co-Masonry on account of the

political tendencies of the latter, is nevertheless still more imbued

with German influence, since, as we have seen, it has ever since it

first came into existence been secretly under Germany direction. Indeed,

during the war this influence became so apparent that certain patriotic

members, who had entered the society in all good faith with the idea of

studying occult science, raised an energetic protest and a schism took

place. Thus, just as in the case of Co-Masonry, the more clear-sighted

recognized the imprudence of placing themselves under foreign control.

That this was no imaginary danger is shown by a correspondence which had

taken place some years earlier and has recently been brought to light.

It will be remembered that the great aim of Weishaupt and the Illuminati

of the eighteenth century was to obtain control over all existing

masonic and occult Orders, This also became the dream of Rudolf Steiner

and his allies in other countries, whose plan was to form what they

called an "International Bund." The idea of an International Bureau for

Masonic Affairs had already, as we have seen, been started in

Switzerland; this was the same idea applied to occult groups, so that

all such societies as Rosicrucianism, Theosophy with its various

ramifications of Co-Masonry, etc., Hermetic Orders, isolated occultists,

and so on, were to be placed under German control. The audacity of the

proposal seems to have been too much even for some of the most

internationally minded members of the Stella Matutina, and in the

discussion that took place it was pointed out that admirable as the

scheme might be, there was nevertheless some British spirit amongst

these Orders to be reckoned with. Even Mrs. Besant's followers, headed

by the Co-Masons, described as a group which "attracts a large number of

idle women who have leisure to take a little occultism with their

afternoon tea," might be liable to ask, "Who are these Germans to

interfere?" But the real obstacle to success was held to be British

Freemasonry, to which a certain number of students of occult science,

including all the members of the S.R.I.A., belonged. "English Masonry,"

it was remarked, "boasts the Grand Lodge of 1717, the Mother Lodge of

the World. They are a proud, jealous, autocratic body. Co-Masonry

derives from the Grand Orient of France, an illegitimate body according

to English ruling. No English Mason can work with Co-Masons.... If the

English Grand Lodge hears of anything called 'Esoteric Masonry' derived

from such sources, under chiefs once T.S. [Theosophical Society]

members, under a head in Berlin, it will not enquire who Dr. Steiner is

or what is the nature of his work, it will simply say, 'No English

Masons of the Free and Accepted Masons may join any Society working

pseudo-Masonic rites, i.e. no one of ordinary accepted Freemasonry can

attend any meetings or attend any grades in this illegitimate body.'

Finis!... If a lodge of the Continental Order is to be established in

England, Dr. Steiner will be faced with the Masonic difficulty. This is

really serious...."[727]

Here then is one of the finest tributes ever paid to British Masonry,

for it shows that as at present constituted and controlled it provides

the most formidable barrier against the infiltration of this country by

alien or subversive secret societies. Thus the Freemasons and the Roman

Catholics are recognized as the principal obstacles to success. The

Freemasons, however, would do well to realize the attempts that are made

to break down this resistance by traitors in the Masonic camp, who,

after violating their obligations by belonging to an irregular secret

society, act as recruiting agents in the lodges. For the author of these

remarks was a British Freemason who, in collusion with a foreign adept,

proposed to penetrate Freemasonry by the process known in revolutionary

language as "boring from within." To quote his own words, "_They must be

got at from within, not from without_." This was to be accomplished in

various ways--by adepts of the Continental Order getting themselves

initiated into orthodox Masonry and then spreading their own doctrines

in the lodges, or by enlisting recruits amongst orthodox Masons and

using them as propagandists among their brother-Masons. It was also

suggested that in order not to rouse suspicion it would be better to

avoid the name "Esoteric Masonry," to adopt one of the rituals used in

England, and to employ as "officers" a "mixed group" drawn from various

secret societies. This plan has been carried out with considerable

success, and at a recent conference held by a high Continental adept

under the most distinguished patronage, it was interesting to notice the

various secret societies represented by certain of the promoters, who of

course to the general public appeared to be merely isolated individuals

interested in philosophical speculation. But it is time to pass on to

the question of yet another secret association, for amongst those

present at the Conference referred to were members of the group Clarté.

This society, of which the name as well as its avowed aims are

singularly reminiscent of Illuminism, was first heard of in France and

was led by men who carried on active anti-patriotic propaganda

throughout the war. Amongst these was Henri Barbusse, author of _Le

Feu_, a defeatest novel which was received with acclamations from

"illuminated" reviewers in the press of this country. Yet although

outwardly a French organization, the real inspiration and teaching of

_Clarté_ is essentially German-Jewish and a great number of Jews are to

be found amongst its members, particularly in Central Europe. At the

inaugural meeting of the Austrian group it was stated that 80 per cent.

of those present were of the Jewish race. The keynote of _Clarté_ is

Internationalism--abolition of nationality, destruction of frontiers,

and pacifism or rather the substitution of class warfare for war

between nations. For this purpose it is willing to make use of all

subversive doctrines, to whatever school of thought they may belong.

Hence, although the creed of the leaders is professedly Socialism, they

readily co-operate with Syndicalists, Anarchists, or revolutionaries of

any brand, carrying on propaganda in Trade Unions and various workers'

organizations; some are secretly in the ranks of the Communists. In fact

members of _Charté_ have succeeded in penetrating into almost every

subversive group, even as far afield as New Zealand, where the society

has an agency in Wellington and disseminates the most violent

revolutionary teaching and literature.

But whilst thus making use of the "proletariat" to further its ends, the

point of view of _Clarté_ is fundamentally undemocratic--for the real

grievances of the workers it has no use at all. The plan of this

group--who were recently described in the French press as "the finest

specimens of cannibals smeared with humanitarianism (les plus beaux

spécimens de cannibales barbouillés d'humanitairerie)"--is to constitute

a sort of International Hierarchy of Intellectual Socialists, whose

influence is to make itself invisibly felt in literary, educational, and

artistic circles all over the world. For the members of _Clarté_ are as

careful as were the adepts of Weishaupt to preserve their incognito and

not to be known as "Illuminati." Thus the public in our own country and

elsewhere, reading the diatribes of certain well-known authors against

the existing order of society, may vaguely wonder why men living amidst

all the amenities of civilization should desire its destruction, but do

not dream that all this is not the outcome of an individual brain but

propaganda put out by a company which, having largely primed such

writers with ideas, is able, owing to the high position of many of its

leading members and its influence with the literary world, to ensure the

success of any publication that will further its ends.

The organization of _Clarté_ thus approximates more nearly, to the

system of Weishaupt than that of the other societies described in this

chapter. Although in the strictest sense a secret society, it is in no

sense occult and therefore possesses no ritual of its own, but, like the

earlier Illuminati, recognizes the utility of working through

Freemasonry. _Clarté_, in fact, forms an adjunct of the Grand Orient and

owns a lodge under its jurisdiction in Paris. It would be interesting,

however, to know whether the idea of the alliance with the Grand Orient

occurred as an afterthought to the _Clarté_ group or whether the

original inspiration of _Clarté_ emanated from an inner circle of the

Grand Orient. We shall return to the question of this inner circle in a

later chapter.

Such, then, are the principal secret societies at work in Great Britain,

but amongst minor secret or semi-secret movements may be mentioned the

strange sect the Faithists, said to have some affinity with the Druses,

inhabiting a singularly unromantic London suburb, whose "Ancient

Founder" is the author of a series of tracts urging man not to be misled

by false Gods, but to worship "Jehovih the Creator only," and at the

same time advocating nationalization as a cure for all social ills; or

again The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at

Fontainebleau, led by Gurdjieff and Uspenski which combines esoteric

meditation with an extremely meagre diet and strenuous manual labour. It

is interesting, by the way, to notice that the art of movement known as

Eurhythmy--not to be confounded with the system of M. Dalcroze which is

known in England only as Eurhythmics--forms an important part of the

curriculum of the last society, as also of Herr Steiner's Order, of the

Stella Matutina, and of the Russian Bolsheviks.[728]

The one question that presents itself to the judicial mind after

examining all these movements, is inevitably: Are they of any real

importance? Can a few hundreds, or even thousands, of men and women,

drawn largely by curiosity or want of occupation into societies of which

the very names are hardly known to the general public, exercise any

influence on the world at large? It would certainly be an error to

overestimate the power that each of these societies individually can

wield; to do so would be, in fact, to play into the hands of the

leaders, whose plan, from Weishaupt onwards, has always been to

represent themselves as directing the destinies of the universe. This

claim to power is the bait laid for neophytes, who are made to believe

that "the Order will one day rule the world." But, whilst recognizing

the folly of this pretension, we should be mistaken in underrating their

importance, for the reason that they provide evidence of a larger

organization in the background. The Stella Matutina may be only an

obscure Fraternity, even the Theosophical Society with all its

ramifications[729] may not be of great importance in itself, but will

anyone with a knowledge of European affairs seriously maintain that the

Grand Orient is a small or unimportant organization? And have we not

seen that investigations into the smaller secret societies frequently

lead back to this greater masonic power? Secret societies are of

importance, because they are, moreover, symptomatic, and also because,

although the work actually carried out in their lodges or councils may

be of a trivial character, they are able by the power of association and

the collective force they generate to influence public opinion and to

float ideas in the outside world which may have far-reaching

consequences.

At any rate, the fact that they exist finally disposes of the contention

that secret societies of a subversive and even of an abominable kind are

things of the past. These amazing cults, these strange perverted rites

which we associate with the dark ages, are going on around us to-day.

Illuminism, Cabalism, and even Satanism are still realities. In 1908

Monsieur Copin Albancelli stated that circumstances had afforded him the

proof that--

certain Masonic societies exist which are Satanic, not in the sense

that the devil comes to preside at their meetings, as that romancer

of a Leo Taxil pretended, but in that their initiates profess the

cult of Lucifer. They adore him as the true God, and they are

animated by an implacable hatred against the Christian God, whom

they declare to be an impostor. They have a formula which sums up

their state of mind; it is no longer: "To the glory of the Great

Architect of the Universe," as in the two lower Masonries; it is G∴

E∴ A∴ A∴ L∴ H∴ H∴ H∴ A∴ D∴ M∴ M∴ M∴, which means "Gloire et Amour à

Lucifer! Haine! haine! haine! an Dieu maudit! maudit! maudit!"

(Glory and Love for Lucifer! Hatred! hatred! hatred! to God,

accursed, accursed, accursed!)

It is professed in these societies that all that the Christian God

commands is disagreeable to Lucifer; that all that He forbids is,

on the contrary, agreeable to Lucifer; that in consequence one must

do all that the Christian God forbids and that one must shun like

fire all that He commands. I repeat that with regard to all that, I

have the proofs under my hand. I have read and studied hundreds of

documents relating to one of these societies, documents that I have

not permission to publish and which emanate from the members, men

and women, of the group in question.[730]

I do not say that any society in England consciously practices this cult

of Satan, but I too have seen dozens of documents relating to occult

groups in this country which practise rites and evocations that lead to

illness, moral perversion, mental derangement, and even in some cases to

death. I have heard from the lips of initiates themselves accounts of

the terrible experiences through which they have passed; some have even

urged me to bring the matter before the attention of the authorities.

But unfortunately no department exists for the investigation of

subversive movements. Yet since all these movements are intimately

connected with revolutionary agitation they are well worth the attention

of Governments that desire to protect law, order, and public morality.

The fact is that the very extravagance of their doctrines and practices

seems to ensure their immunity. Nevertheless, whether the power at work

behind them is of the kind we are accustomed to call "supernatural," or

whether it is merely the outcome of the human mind, there can be no

doubt of its potency for evil and of its very definite effects in the

obliteration of all sense of truth and in sexual perversion.

In the opinion of an initiate who belonged for years to the Stella

Matutina, the dynamic force employed known as "Kundalini" is simply an

electro-magnetic force, of which the sex-force is a part, on which the

adepts know how to play, and "the unseen hand behind all the seeming

Spiritism of these Orders is a system of very subtle and cunning

hypnotism and suggestion." Further, the aim of this group like that of

all subversive Esoteric Orders, is, by means of such processes as

eurhythmics, meditations, symbols, ceremonies, and formulas, to awaken

this force and produce false "Illumination" for the purpose of obtaining

"Spiritual Seership," which is at most clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc.

The ceremonies of the Order are hypnotic, and by suggestion create the

necessary mental and astral atmosphere, hypnotize and prepare the

members to be the willing tools in the hands of the controlling adepts.

The same initiate has communicated to me the following conclusions

concerning the group in question, with the permission to quote them

verbatim:

I have been convinced that we, as an Order, have come under the

power of some very evil occult Order, profoundly versed in science

both occult and otherwise, though not infallible, their methods

being Black Magic, that is to say, electro-magnetic power,

hypnotism, and powerful suggestion.

We are convinced that the Order is being controlled by some SUN

Order after the nature of the Illuminati, if not by that Order

itself.

The reason why they (the leaders of all such Orders) insisted so

much upon the Church and Sacrament, especially before the

initiation, is, I think, for the same reason as the use of the

consecrated Host in Black Magic. The Christian consecration and the

use of the sacraments renders the building or person more powerful

as a material basis for black magic even as in white magic--"for

the Great Good or the Great Evil." When the initiation is

accomplished and the domination of the person complete, there is no

further need for Church or Sacrament.

We are told at the Initiation: "There is nothing incompatible with

your civil, moral, or religious duties in this obligation." We now

are convinced that this Order is contrary absolutely to our civil,

moral, and religious duties; which being so, our obligations are

null and void.

We are told that all that has taken place in Russia and elsewhere

is due to these International Occult Forces set in motion by

Subversive Esoteric Lodges. Yet it is known that we have several

branches of these same Esoteric Masonic Lodges carrying on their

deadly work in our midst. England, as well as Europe, seems to be

drifting along in a hypnotic sleep, and even our soundest

politicians seem paralysed and all that they attempt is turned to

foolishness. Is there no one in authority who understands these

things and realizes the danger both to the country and to

individuals from these forces working for disruption and world

revolution?

How in the face of these declarations, coming from those inside the

movement, can anyone maintain that Illuminism is dead and that secret

societies present no danger to Christian civilization?

13

OPEN SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS

Although the sceptical reader who has reached this stage of the present

work will perhaps be willing to admit that some connexion may be traced

between hidden forces and open subversive movements, the objection he

will still raise against the general thesis here set forth will probably

be expressed somewhat in the following manner:

"It is quite possible that secret societies and other unseen agencies

may have played a part in revolutions, but to attribute the continued

revolt against the existing social order to these causes is absurd.

Poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, and above all the

inequalities of human life are quite sufficient to produce a

revolutionary spirit without the aid of secret instigators. Social

revolution is simply a rising of the 'have-nots' against the 'haves,'

and requires no further cause to explain it."

Let it be at once admitted that the injustices here enumerated are real.

The working classes throughout the nineteenth century had very genuine

reasons for complaints. Wages were far too low, the rich sometimes

showed themselves indifferent to the sufferings of the poor, employers

of labour often made profits out of all proportion to the remuneration

paid to the workers. Nor, in spite of the immense reforms introduced

during the last hundred years, have all these grievances been redressed.

The slums of our great cities still constitute a blot upon our

civilization. Profiteering since the beginning of the war has been more

flagrant than ever. "Rings" and combines provide fabulous wealth for

individuals or groups at the expense of vast numbers of consumers. And

in all classes of the community, just as before the French Revolution,

people feast and dance whilst others live on the border-line of

starvation.

But let us see how far the Socialist movement can be regarded as the

spontaneous revolt of the "people" against this condition of things.

Dividing the people after the manner of Marx into the non-revolutionary

and the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find that the former

category, by far the larger, combines with a strong respect for

tradition a perfectly reasonable desire for social reform. Briefly it

asks for adequate wages, decent housing, and a fair share of the good

things of life. For State interference in the affairs of everyday life

it feels nothing but abhorrence. The ideal of Communism as formulated by

Lenin, wherein "the getting of food and clothing shall be no longer a

private affair,"[731] would meet with stronger opposition from working

men--and still more from working women, to whom "shopping" is as the

breath of life--than from any other section of the population. Even such

apparently benign Socialist schemes as "communal dining-rooms" or

"communal kitchens" appeal less to the working-class mentality than to

the upper-class mind that devises them.

Turning to the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find this

individualistic instinct quite as strongly developed. It is not the

Socialist idea of placing all wealth and property in the hands of the

State, but the Anarchist plan of "expropriation," of plunder on a

gigantic scale for the benefit of the revolutionary masses, which really

appeals to the disgruntled portion of the proletariat. The Socialist

intellectual may write of the beauties of nationalization, of the joy of

working for the common good without hope of personal gain; the

revolutinary working man sees nothing to attract him in all this.

Question him on his ideas of social transformation, and he will

generally express himself in favour of some method by which he will

acquire something he has not got; he does not want to see the rich man's

motor-car socialized by the State--he wants to drive about in it

himself. The revolutionary working man is thus in reality not a

Socialist but an Anarchist at heart. Nor in some cases is this

unnatural. That the man who enjoys none of the good things of life

should wish to snatch his share must at least appear comprehensible.

What is not comprehensible is that he should wish to renounce all hope

of ever possessing anything. Modern Socialist propagandists are very

well aware of this attitude of the working classes towards their

schemes, and therefore that as long as they explain the real programme

they mean to put into operation, which is nothing but the workhouse

system on a gigantic scale, they can meet with no success. As a

life-long Socialist has frequently observed to me, "Socialism has never

been a working-class movement; it was always we of the middle or upper

classes who sought to instil the principles of Socialism into the minds

of working men." Mr. Hyndman's candid confessions of the failures to

enlist the sympathies even of slum-dwellers in his schemes of social

regeneration bear out this testimony.

Less honest Socialist orators as the result of long experience have

therefore adopted the more effectual policy of appealing to the

predatory instincts of the crowd. From Babeuf onwards, Socialism has

only been able to make headway by borrowing the language of Anarchy in

order to blast its way to power.

Socialism is thus essentially a system of deception devised by

middle-class theorists and in no sense a popular creed. Had the

revolutionary movement of the past 150 years really proceeded from the

people, it would inevitably have followed the line laid down by one of

the two sections of the proletariat indicated above, that is to say, it

would either have taken the form of a continuous and increasing

agitation for social reforms which would have enlisted the sympathy of

all right-thinking men and must therefore in the end have proved

irresistible, or it would have followed the line of Anarchy, organizing

brigandage on a larger and yet larger scale, until, all owners of wealth

having been exterminated and their expropriators in their turn

exterminated by their fellows, the world would have been reduced to a

depopulated desert.

But the world revolution has followed neither of these lines. Always the

opponent of sane social reforms which Socialists deride as "melioration"

or as futile attempts to shore up an obsolete system, it has

consistently disassociated itself from such men as Lord Shaftesbury, who

did more to better the conditions of the working classes than anyone who

has ever lived. Anarchy, on the other hand, has been used by them merely

as a means to an end; for genuine revolutionary sentiment they have no

use at all. In Russia the Anarchists became the first objects of Soviet

vengeance. The cynical attitude of Socialists towards the revolutionary

proletariat was illustrated by Mr. Bernard Shaw, who in December 1919

openly boasted that he had helped to organize the railway strike,[732]

and two years later wrote about the miners' strike in the following

terms:

A Socialist State would not tolerate such an attack on the

community as a strike for a moment. If a Trade Union attempted such

a thing, the old Capitalist law against Trade Unions as

conspiracies would be re-enacted within twenty-four hours and put

ruthlessly into execution. Such a monstrosity as the recent coal

strike, during which the coal-miners spent all their savings in

damaging their neighbours and wrecking the national industries,

would be impossible under Socialism. It was miserably defeated, as

it deserved to be.[733]

Now, if this had been written by the Duke of Northumberland in the

_National Review_ instead of by Mr. Bernard Shaw in the _Labour

Monthly_, one can imagine the outcry there would have been in the

Socialist press. But the leaders of what is called democracy may always

use what language they please in speaking of the people. "Our peasants,"

Maxim Gorky openly declared, "are brutal and debased, hardly human. I

hate them."[734] It will be noticed that in descriptions of the French

Revolution references to the savageries of the people are never resented

by the Liberal or Socialist press; the persons of the leaders alone are

sacred. It is clearly not the cause of democracy but of demagogy that

these champions of "liberty" are out to defend.

The world-revolution is therefore not a popular movement but a

conspiracy to impose on the people a system directly opposed to their

real demands and aspirations, a system which, moreover, has proved

disastrous every time an attempt has been made to put it into practice.

Russia has provided a further example of its futility. The fact that the

more responsible leaders in this country do not advocate violence, does

not affect the ultimate issue. Whilst Bolshevism sets out to destroy

Capitalism at a blow, Socialism prefers a more gradual process. It is

the difference between clubbing a man on the head and bleeding him to

death--that is all.

The fact is that all Socialism leads to Communism in the long run[735]

and therefore to disaster. The Bolshevist régime brought ruin and misery

to Russia not because of the brutality of its methods, but because it

was founded on the gigantic economic fallacy that industry can be

carried on without private enterprise and personal initiative. The same

theory applied by constitutional methods would produce precisely the

same results. If the Socialists are ever allowed to carry out their full

programme, England may be reduced to the state of Russia without the

shedding of a drop of blood.

But how are we to explain the fact that in spite of the failure of

Socialism in the past, in spite of the gigantic fiasco presented by

Russia, in spite, moreover, of the declaration by the Bolsheviks

themselves that Communism had failed and must be replaced by "a new

economic policy," that is to say by a return to "Capitalism,"[736]

there should still be a large and increasing body of people to proclaim

the efficacy of Socialism as the remedy for all social ills? In any

other field of human experiment, in medicine or mechanical invention,

failure spells oblivion; the prophylactic that does not cure, the

machine that cannot be made to work, is speedily relegated to the

scrap-heap. What indeed should we say of the bacteriologist, who, after

killing innumerable patients with a particular serum, were to advertise

it as an unqualified success? Should we not brand such a man as an

unscrupulous charlatan or at best as a dangerous visionary? If,

moreover, we were to find that large bands of agents backed by unlimited

funds, were engaged in pressing his remedy upon the public and carefully

avoiding all reference to the fatalities it had caused, should we not

further conclude that there was "something behind all this"--some

powerful company "running" the concern with a view to advancing its own

private interests?

Why should not the same reasoning be applied to Socialism? For not only

has Socialism never been known to succeed, but all its past failures are

carefully kept dark by its exponents. Who, then, stands to gain by

advocating it? And further, who provides the vast sums spent on

propaganda? If in reality Socialism is a rising of the "have-nots"

against the "haves," how is it that most of the money seems to be on

the side of the "have-nots"? For whilst organizations working for law

and order are hampered at every turn for funds, no financial

considerations ever seem to interfere with the activities of the

so-called "Labour movement." Socialism, in fact, appears to be a

thoroughly "paying concern," into which a young man enters as he might

go into the City, with the reasonable expectation of "doing well." It is

only necessary to glance at the history of the past hundred years to

realize that "agitation" has provided a pleasant and remunerative career

for hundreds of middle-class authors, journalists, speakers, organizers,

and dilettantes of all kinds who would otherwise have been condemned to

pass their lives on office-stools or at schoolmasters' desks. And when

we read the accounts of the delightful treats provided for these

"devoted workers" in the cause of the proletariat as given in the

records of the First Internationale or the pages of Mrs. Snowden, we

begin to understand the attractions of Socialism as a profession.[737]

But again I repeat: _Who provides the funds for this vast campaign_? Do

they come out of the pockets of the workers or from some other

mysterious reservoir of wealth? We shall return to this point in a later

chapter.

How is it possible at any rate to believe in the sincerity of the

exponents of equality who themselves adopt a style of living so

different from that of the proletariat whose cause they profess to

represent? If the doctrinaires of Socialism formed a band of ascetics

who had voluntarily renounced luxury and amusement in order to lead

lives of poverty and self-sacrifice--as countless really devoted men and

women _not_ calling themselves Socialists have done--we should still

doubt the soundness of their economic theories as applied to society in

general, but we should respect their disinterestedness. But with very

few exceptions Socialist Intellectuals dine and sup, feast and amuse

themselves with as few scruples of conscience as any unregenerate

Tories.

With people such as these it is obviously as futile to reason, as it

would be to attempt to convince the agent of a quack medicine company

that the nostrums he presses on the public will not effect a cure. He is

very well aware of that already. Hence the efforts of well-meaning

people to set forth in long, well-reasoned arguments the "fallacies of

Socialism" produce little or no result. All these so-called "fallacies"

have been exposed repeatedly by able writers and disproved by all

experience, so that if based merely on ignorance or error they would

long since have ceased to obtain credence. The truth is that they are

not fallacies but lies, deliberately devised and circulated by men who

do not believe in them for a moment and who can therefore only be

described as unscrupulous charlatans exploiting the credulity of the

public.

But if this description may be legitimately applied to the brains behind

Socialism and to certain of its leading doctrinaires, there are

doubtless thousands of honest visionaries to be found in the movement. A

system that professes to cure all the ills of life inevitably appeals to

generous minds that feel but do not reason. In reality many of these

people, did they but know it, are simply social reformers at heart and

not Socialists at all, and their ignorance of what Socialism really

means leads them to range themselves under the banner of a party that

claims a monopoly of ideals. Others again, particularly amongst the

young intelligentsia, take up Socialism in the same spirit as they would

adopt a fashion in ties or waistcoats, for fear of being regarded as

"reactionaries." That in reality, far from being "advanced," the

profession of Socialism is as retrogressive as would be a return to the

side-whiskers and plaid trousers of the last century, does not occur to

them. The great triumph of Mussolini was to make the youth of Italy

realize that to be a Communist was to be a "back number," and that

progress consisted in marching forward to new ideas and aspirations. The

young men of Cabet's settlement discovered this sixty years ago when

they formed themselves into a band of "Progressives" in opposition to

the old men who still clung to the obsolete doctrine of Communism.

Socialism at the present moment is in reality less a creed than a cult,

founded not on practical experience but on unreal theory. It is here we

find a connexion with secret societies. M. Augustin Cochin in his

brilliant essays on the French Revolution[738] has described that "World

of the Clouds" of which the Grand Orient was the capital, peopled by the

precursors of the French Revolution. "Whilst in the real world the

criterion of all thought lies in putting it to the test," there in the

World of the Clouds the criterion is opinion. "They are there to talk,

not to do; all this intellectual agitation, this immense traffic in

speeches, writings, correspondence, leads not to the slightest beginning

of work, of real effort." We should be wrong to judge them harshly;

their theories on the perfectibility of human nature, on the advantages

of savagery, which appear to us "dangerous chimeras," were never

intended to apply to real life, only to the World of the Clouds, where

they present no danger but become, on the contrary, "the most fecund

truths."

The revolutionary explosion might well have finally shattered these

illusions but for the Grand Orient. We have already seen the identity of

theory between French Masonry and French Socialism in the nineteenth

century. It was thus that, although in France one experiment after

another demonstrated the unreality of Socialist Utopias, the lodges were

always there to reconstruct the mirage and lead humanity on again across

the burning desert sands towards the same phantom palm-trees and

illusory pools of water.

Whatever the manner in which these ideas penetrated to this

country--whether through the Radicals of the last century, adorers of

the Encyclopædist Masons of France, or through the British disciples of

German Social Democrats from the time of the First Internationale

onwards--it is impossible to ignore the resemblance between the theories

not only of French but of modern British Socialism and the doctrines of

illuminized Freemasonry. Thus the idea running through Freemasonry of a

Golden Age before the Fall, when man was free and happy, and which

through the application of masonic principles is to return once more,

finds an exact counterpart in the Socialist conception of a past halcyon

era of Liberty and Equality, which is to return not merely in the form

of a regenerated social order, but as a complete Millennium from which

all the ills of human life have been eliminated. This idea has always

haunted the imagination of Socialist writers from Rousseau to William

Morris, and leads directly up to the further theory--the necessity for

destroying civilization.

I cannot find in Mr. Lothrop Stoddart's conception of the revolutionary

movement as the revolt of the "Under Man" against civilization, the

origin of this campaign. In reality the leaders of world-revolution have

not been "Under Men," victims of oppression or of adverse fate, nor

could they be ranged in this category on account of physical or mental

inferiority. It is true that most revolutionary agitators have been in

some way abnormal and that the revolutionary army has largely been

recruited from the unfit, but the real inspirers of the movement have

frequently been men in prosperous circumstances and of brilliant

intellect who might have distinguished themselves on other lines had

they not chosen to devote their talents to subversion. To call

Weishaupt, for example, an "Under Man" would be absurd. But let us see

what is the idea on which the plan of destroying civilization is

ostensibly founded.

It will be remembered that Rousseau like Weishaupt held that the Golden

Age of felicity did not end in the garden of Eden, as is popularly

supposed, but was prolonged into tribal and nomadic life. Up to this

moment Communism was the happy disposition under which the human race

existed and which vanished with the introduction of civilization.

Civilization is therefore the _fons et origo mali_ and should be done

away with. Let no one exclaim that this theory died out either with

Rousseau or with Weishaupt; the idea that "civilization is all wrong"

runs all through the writings and speeches of our Intellectual

Socialists to-day. I have referred elsewhere to Mr. H.G. Wells's

prediction that mankind will more and more revert to the nomadic life,

and Mr. Snowden has recently referred in tones of evident nostalgia to

that productive era when man "lived under a system of tribal

Communism."[739] The children who attend the Socialist Schools are also

taught in the "Red Catechism" the advantages of savagery, thus:

Question. Do savages starve in the midst of plenty?

Answer. No; when there is plenty of food they all rejoice, feast, and

make merry.[740]

That when there is not plenty of food they occasionally eat each other

is not mentioned.

Here, then, is the theory on which this yearning for a return to nature

is based. For it is quite probable that if a Golden Age ever existed it

was Communistic; it is also true that certain primitive tribes have

found it possible to continue the same system, for the simple reason

that when and where the earth was very thinly populated it brought

forth, without the artificial aid of agriculture, more than enough to

supply each man's needs. There was therefore no need for laws to protect

property, since every man could help himself freely to all that he

required. If at the present time a dozen people were shipwrecked on a

fertile island some miles in area, the institution of property would be

equally superfluous; if, however, several hundred were to share the same

fate, it would at once become necessary to institute some system of

cultivation which in its turn would necessitate either the institution

of property, by which each man would depend on his own plot of land for

his existence, or a communal system, by which all would be obliged to

work for the common good and force applied to those who refused to do

their allotted share.

Peaceful Communism is thus simply a matter of population; the conditions

under which men can sit in the sun and enjoy the fruits of the earth

with little effort must be transformed with the multiplication of the

human species into a system which recognizes private property, or a

communal State which enforces compulsory labour by means of overseers

with whips. It was perhaps an appreciation of this truth that impelled

the practical exponents of Rousseau's doctrines, the Terrorists of 1793,

to embark on their "plan of depopulation" by way of establishing

Communism on a peaceful basis.

But our Intellectual Socialists deny this necessity on the ground that

under the benign régime of Socialism all men would be good and happy and

would work joyfully for the welfare of the community. The fact that this

has not proved the case even in voluntary Communist settlements does not

daunt them, because, as has been said, their creed is founded not on

practical experiment, but on theory, and it is here that we again find

the inspiration of Grand Orient Freemasonry. The assumption that under

an ideal social order all human failings would vanish derives directly

from the two masonic doctrines which the Grand Orient, under the

influence of Illuminism, has brought to a _reductio ad absurdum_--the

perfectibility of human nature and universal brotherhood. The whole

philosophy of Socialism is built upon these false premises.

Indeed the actual phraseology of illuminized Freemasonry has now passed

into the language of Socialism; thus the old formulæ of "the United

States of Europe" and "the Universal Republic" have been adopted not

only by Mrs. Besant and her followers[741] as the last word in modern

thought, but have also reappeared as a brilliant inspiration under the

pen of Mr. H.G. Wells in the slightly varied form of the "World State."

It would be amusing, for anyone who had the time, to discover how many

of the ideas of our so-called advanced thinkers might be found almost

verbatim in the writings of Weishaupt, the _République Universelle_ of

Anacharsis Clootz, and in the speeches of Grand Orient orators during

the last century.

Moreover, the world-revolution is not only founded on the doctrines of

illuminized Freemasonry, but has adopted the same method of

organization. Thus, after the plan of the secret societies, from the

Batinis onward, we shall find the forces of revolution divided into

successive grades--the lowest consisting of the revolutionary

proletariat, the _chair a révolution_ as Marx expressed it, knowing

nothing of the theory of Socialism, still less of the real aims of the

leaders; above this the semi-initiates, the doctrinaires of Socialism,

comprising doubtless many sincere enthusiasts; but above these again

further grades leading up to the real initiates, who alone know whither

the whole movement is tending.

For the final goal of world-revolution is not Socialism or even

Communism, it is not a change in the existing economic system, it is not

the destruction of civilization in a material sense; the revolution

desired by the leaders is a moral and spiritual revolution, an anarchy

of ideas by which all standards set up throughout nineteen centuries

shall be reversed, all honoured traditions trampled under foot, and

above all the Christian ideal finally obliterated.

It is true that a certain section of the Socialist movement proclaims

itself Christian. The Illuminati made the same profession, so have the

modern Theosophists and Rosicrucians. But, as in the case of these

secret societies, we should ask of so-called Christian Socialists: What

do they means by Christ? What do they mean by Christianity? On

examination it will be found that their Christ is a being of their own

inventing, that their Christianity is a perversion of Christ's real

teaching.

The Christ of Socialism invoked in the interests of Pacifism as the

opponent of force and in the interests of class warfare as a Socialist,

a revolutionary, or even an "agitator," bears no resemblance to the real

Christ. Christ was not a Pacifist when He told His disciples to arm

themselves with swords, when He made a scourge of cords and drove the

money-changers from the Temple. He did not tell men to forgive the

enemies of their country or of their religion, but only their private

enemies. Christ was not a Socialist when He declared that "a man's life

consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth."

Socialism teaches that a man must never rest content as long as another

man possesses that which he has not. Christ did not believe in equality

of payment when He told the parable of the ten talents and the

unprofitable servant. Socialism would reduce all labour to the pace of

the slowest. Above all, Christ was not a Socialist when He bade the

young man who had great possessions sell all that he had and give it to

the poor. _What School of Socialism has ever issued such a command?_ On

the contrary, Socialists are enjoined by their leaders not to give their

money away in charity lest they should help by this means to prolong the

existence of the present social system. The truth is that, as I showed

in connexion with the fallacy of representing Christ as an Essene, there

is no evidence to show that He or His disciples practised even the

purest form of Communism. Christ did not advocate any economic or

political system; He preached a spirit which if applied to any system

would lead to peace among men. It is true that He enjoined His disciples

to despise riches and that He denounced many of the rich men with whom

He came into contact, but it must not be forgotten that His immediate

mission was to a race that had always glorified riches, that had

worshipped the golden calf, and by which wealth was regarded as the

natural reward of godliness.[742] Christ came to teach men not to look

for present reward in the form of increased material welfare, but to do

good out of love to God and one's neighbour.

I do not doubt that in the past such men as Kingsley and J.F.D. Maurice

sincerely imagined that they were following in the footsteps of the

Master by describing themselves as Christian Socialists, but that the

present leaders of Socialism in England are Christians at heart is

impossible to believe in view of their attitude towards the campaign

against Christianity in Russia. Never once have they or their allies,

the Quakers, officially denounced the persecution not only of the

priests but of all who profess the Christian faith in Russia.[743] Listen

to this voice from the abyss of Russia:

We very much ask for prayer for the Church of Russia; it is passing

through great tribulation and it is a question whether spiritual or

earthly power will triumph. Many are being executed for not denying

God.... Those placed by God at the helm need all the prayer and

help of Christians all over the earth, because their fate is partly

theirs too, for it is a question of faith triumphing over atheism,

and it is a tug-of-war between those two principles.[744]

And again:

I look upon the persecution of the Russian Church as an effort to

overthrow Christianity in general, for we are governed just now by

the power of darkness, and all that we consider sinful seems to get

the upper hand and to prosper.[744]

Yet it is for this power that the Socialist Party of Great Britain have

for years been demanding recognition. Even the appeals for help from

their fellow-Socialists in Russia have left them cold. "We would

suggest," ran one such appeal--

1. That the British Labour Party issue an official protest against

the Soviet Government's inhuman treatment of its political

opponents in general and the political prisoners in particular.

2. That meetings of protest should be organized in the industrial

towns of Great Britain.

3. That the British Labour Party make an official representation to

the Soviet Government directly, urging the latter to put a stop to

the persecutions of the Socialists in Russia.[745]

And it was of this régime that Mr. Lansbury wrote:

Whatever their faults, the Communist leaders of Russia have hitched

their wagon to a star--the star of love, brotherhood,

comradeship.[746]

The callous indifference displayed by British Socialists, with the

honourable exception of the Social Democratic Federation,[747] towards

the crimes of the Bolsheviks offers indeed a painful contrast to the

attitude of the other Socialists of Europe. At the conference of the

Labour and Socialist International at Hamburg in May 1923, a resolution

was passed condemning the persecution by the Soviet Government. When the

resolution was put to the congress, 196 voted for, 2 against it, and 39,

including the 30 British delegates, abstained.

I ask, then: Why should the Socialists of Great Britain be

differentiated from the Bolsheviks of Russia? In every question of

importance they have always lent them their support. In the great war on

Christianity they have acted as the advance guard by the institution of

Socialist Sunday-schools, from which all religious teaching is excluded.

Socialists are very anxious to disassociate these from the "Proletarian"

Sunday-schools which teach atheism. But from ignoring the existence of

God to denying it is but a step; moreover, it will be noticed that the

Socialists have never issued any protests against the blasphemies of the

Proletarian schools. The real attitude of the Socialist Party towards

religion may perhaps be gauged by the notice, reproduced on page 341,

which once appeared in its official organ the _Daily Herald_, of which

Mr. Lansbury, widely advertised as a fervent Christian, was once editor

and is now managing director.

It was to the party controlling this organ that 700 clergymen of the

Church of England and the Episcopal Church of Scotland saw fit to offer

their congratulations by means of a memorial presented to Mr. Ramsay

MacDonald in March 1923. Shall we yet see the scene of Brumaire 1793

repeated and a procession of prelates presenting themselves at

Westminster to lay down their rings and crosses and declare that

"henceforth there shall be no other worship than that of liberty and

holy equality"?

Already the desecration of the churches has begun. The red flag was

recently carried into the City Temple by a band of unemployed, although

several of their number objected to its presence in the church. An

attempt to sing "The Red Flag" was also suppressed by a section of the

unemployed

[Illustration:

<b>Books We All Pretend to have Read</b>

The Bible is a real book, although during the whole of the nineteenth

century the Churches turned a blind eye to the fact that it was a free

translation by Jacobean clergymen of a Greek text of doubtful

authenticity and of multiple authorship. The Bible is as divinely

inspired as Shakespeare, or Milton, or Anatole France. But it is not as

"pure" as the texts of these authors, for it is:--

(1) A miscellaneous collection of folk and traditional history bound to

and described as the "Old Testament," and

(2) "The New Testament," a collection of Eastern theological doctrines

centralized in the figure of a great Syrian mystic religious teacher,

Jesus.

Those who will go to the Bible with an unprejudiced mind will discover

that it is one of the great books of the world, full of beauty, humour,

and aspiration, and disfigured, as great books often are, by occasional

brutalities and crudities. --_Daily Herald_, February 7. 1923.

]

themselves, who had apparently retained some sense ot decency.[748]

Weishaupt's design of enlisting the clergy in the work of

world-revolution has been carried out according to plan. Those Catholic

priests in Ireland who inflamed popular passions acted as the tools of

the International Atheist conspiracy and found at last the movement

turning against themselves. The Protestant clergymen who profess

"Christian Socialism" are playing the same part. Doubtless without

knowing it, they act as the agents of the Continental Illuminati and

pave the way, as did the emissaries of Weishaupt, for the open attack on

all forms of religion. It is not a mere accident that the blasphemous

masquerades of the French Revolution have recently been repeated in

Russia. The horrible incidents described in the press[749] were simply

the outward manifestation of a continuous conspiracy of which evidence

was seen some years ago in Portugal under the influence of the

Carbonarios, led by Alfonso Costa, whose utterances at times bore a

striking resemblance to those of Anacharsis Clootz. The late Duchess of

Bedford thus described the war on religion which inaugurated the new

Republic:

One of the most zealous enterprises of this great society [the

Carbonarios] is, in their own words, to exterminate "the Christian myth"

in the minds of the nation of Portugal. The little children in the

schools have badges pinned into their clothes with the words "No God! No

religion!" and a British tourist who made a journey throughout the

country of Portugal met bands of innocent babes carrying banners, on

which the inscription was "We have no need of God."[750]

Is it only a coincidence that last year a Socialist and Communist

meeting in Trafalgar Square displayed a red banner bearing the motto:

"No King, no God, no Law"?[751]

I repeat: It is not an economic revolution which forms the plan of the

real directors of the movement, it is neither the "dictatorship of the

proletariat" nor the reorganization of society by the Intelligentsia of

"Labour"; it is the destruction of the Christian idea. Socialist orators

may inveigh against corrupt aristocracy or "bloated Capitalists," but

these are not in reality the people who will suffer most if the aim of

the conspiracy is achieved. The world-revolution has always shown itself

indulgent towards selfish and corrupt aristocrats, from the Marquis de

Sade and the Duc d'Orléans onwards; it is the gentle, the upright, the

benevolent, who have fallen victims to revolutionary fury.

Socialism with its hatred of all superiority, of noble virtues--loyalty

and patriotism--with its passion for dragging down instead of building

up, serves the purpose of the deeper conspiracy. If the Christian

Intelligentsia can be destroyed or won over and the nation deprived of

all its natural leaders, the world-revolutionaries reckon that they will

be able to mould the proletariat according to their desires. This being

so, the thing we now call Bolshevism forms only one phase of the

movement which is carried on by countless different methods, apparently

disconnected but all tending towards the same end. We have only to look

around us in the world to-day to see everywhere the same disintegrating

power at work--in art, literature, the drama, the daily press--in every

sphere that can influence the mind of the public. Just as in the French

Revolution a play on the massacre of St. Bartholomew was staged in order

to rouse the passions of the people against the monarchy, so our modern

cinemas perpetually endeavour to stir up class hatred by scenes and

phrases showing "the injustice of kings," "the sufferings of the

people," the selfishness of "aristocrats," regardles of whether these

enter into the theme of the narrative or not.[752] And in the realms of

literature, not merely in works of fiction but in manuals for schools,

in histories and books professing to be of serious educative value and

receiving a skilfully organized boom throughout the press, everything is

done to weaken patriotism, to shake belief in all existing institutions

by the systematic perversion of both contemporary and historical facts,

whilst novels and plays calculated to undermine all ideas of morality

are pressed upon the public as works of genius which, in order to

maintain a reputation for intellect, it is essential to admire. I do not

believe that all this is accidental; I do not believe that the public

asks for the anti-patriotic or demoralizing books and plays placed

before it; on the contrary, it invariably responds to an appeal to

patriotism and simple healthy emotions. The heart of the people is still

sound, but ceaseless efforts are made to corrupt it.

This conspiracy has long been apparent to Continental observers. Some

years before the war, Monsieur de Lannoy, a member of an anti-masonic

association in France, at a conference on "the influence of

judaeo-masonic sects in the theatre, in literature, in the fashions,"

showed how "orders of things which appear to have no connexion with

each other are skilfully bound up together and directed by a single

methodical movement towards a common end. This common end is the

paganization of the universe, the destruction of all Christianity, the

return to the loosest morals of antiquity."[753] Robison saw in the

indecent dress of the period of the Directory the result of Weishaupt's

teaching, and traces to the same cause the ceremony which took place in

Notre Dame when a woman of loose morals was held up to the admiration of

the public.[754] The same glorification of vice has found exponents

amongst the modern Illuminati in this country. In _The Equinox--the

Journal of Scientific Illuminism_, it is proposed that prostitutes

should be placed on the same level as soldiers who have served their

country and be honoured and pensioned by the State.[755] The community

of women was not an idea that originated with the Russian Bolsheviks,

but one that has run through all the revolutionary movements of the

past.

The attempt to pervert all conceptions of beauty in the sphere of art

serves to pave the way for moral perversion. In the _New York Herald_

two years ago there appeared a circular protesting against the so-called

Modernistic cult in art as "world-wide Bolshevist propaganda." The

circular went on to declare:

This aims to overthrow and destroy all existing social systems,

including that of the arts. This modernistic degenerate cult is simply

the Bolshevist philosophy applied in art. The triumph of Bolshevism

therefore means the destruction of the present æsthetic system, the

transportation of all æsthetic values, and the deification of ugliness.

The whole propaganda of the movement was said to be organized by "a

coterie of European art-dealers"--elsewhere described as German--who had

flooded the market with the works of artists who began as "a small group

of neurotic egomaniacs in Paris styling themselves worshippers of Satan,

the God of Ugliness." Some of these men were suffering from the "visual

derangement" of the insane, whilst "many of the pictures exhibited

another form of mania. The system of this is an incontrollable desire to

mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in

both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in

all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these

abominations, but what the circular describes as the "Machiavellian

campaign organized for the unloading of these works. Editions de luxe

... were published and sold by the picture dealers; ...every crafty

device known to the picture trade was resorted to in order to discredit

and destroy the heretofore universally accepted standards of

aesthetics."[756]

This process of reversing all accepted standards may also be brought

about by subtler methods. We have already seen that occult practices may

lead to the obliteration of all sense of truth and of normal sexual

instincts. Under the influence of so-called occult science, which is, in

reality, simply powerful suggestion or self-hypnotism, all a man's

natural impulses and inhibitive springs of action may be broken; he will

no longer react to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, or right or

wrong, which, unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not

only his conscious deeds but his subconscious mental processes may pass

under the control of another, or become entirely deranged.

Much the same consequences may result from the Freud system of

Psycho-Analysis, which, particularly by its insistence on sex, tends to

subordinate the will to impulses of a harmful kind. An eminent American

neuro-psychiatrist of New York has expressed his opinion on this subject

in the following words:

The Freud theory is anti-Christian and subversive of organized society.

Christianity teaches that the individual can resist temptation and

Freudism teaches that the matter of yielding to or resisting temptation

is one for which the individual is not wilfully responsible. Freudism

makes of the individual a machine, absolutely controlled by subconscious

reflexes.... It would of course be difficult to prove that

psycho-analysis has been evolved as a destructive propaganda measure,

but in one sense the point is immaterial. Whether conscious or

unconscious, it makes for destructive effect.[757]

In general, the art of the conspiracy is not so much to create movements

as to capture existing movements, often innocuous and even admirable in

themselves, and turn them to a subversive purpose. Thus birth control,

which--if combined with the restriction of alien immigration and carried

out under proper direction--would provide a solution to the frightful

problem of over-population, can without these provisos become a source

of national weakness and demoralization. It is easy to see how a

limitation of the native population would serve the cause of England's

enemies by reducing her fighting forces and by making room for

undesirable aliens. That the birth-control campaign may also be used for

evil purposes is suggested by the fact that it has not been confined to

our own overcrowded island, but has been carried on in France, where

under-population has long constituted a tragedy. In 1903 and 1904 the

"Ligue de la Régéneration Humaine," founded by Monsieur Paul Robin, in

its organ _L'Émancipateur_ issued not only instructions on "the means

how to avoid large families," but also pamphlets on "free love and free

maternity."[758] The campaign of race-suicide was thus combined with

the undermining of morality; legal families were to be limited and

illegal births encouraged. This was quite in accord with the doctrines

of the Grand Orient, in whose Temples, Monsieur Copin Albancelli points

out, the principle of "la libre maternité"--known in this country as

"the right to motherhood"--was advocated.

It is curious to notice that the apparently innocent invention of

Esperanto receives support from the same quarter. This is not surprising

since we know that the idea of a universal language has long haunted the

minds of Freemasons. I have myself seen a document emanating from a body

of French Masons stating that Esperanto is directly under the control of

the three masonic powers of France--the Grand Orient, the Grande Loge

Nationale, and the Droit Humain.

That it is largely used for promoting Bolshevism has been frequently

stated. In July 1922, M. Bérard, Minister of Education, issued a

circular "to the heads of all French Universities, academies, and

colleges, calling on them not to help in any way in the teaching of

Esperanto on the ground that Bolsheviks use it as one of their dangerous

forms of propaganda."[759] A correspondent points out to me that

another universal language, Ido, is used for propaganda by the

Anarchists, and that several journals distributed by revolutionary

societies, written in Ido, are "frankly and baldly Anarchical." The

writer adds:

Last week I received a copy of _Libereso_ (Liberty), monthly organ of

the Anarchist Section of the "Emancipating Star"--"Cosmopolitan Union of

Labour-class Idists." It commands carrying out Anarchistic principles

to their extreme limits; commends "La Ruzo" (ruse); is sarcastic

regarding Socialism and Democracy.... It contains an appeal for help (in

money) for the Anarchists imprisoned in Russia ... written by Alexander

Berkmann and signed by him with Emma Goldmann and A. Schapiro.

Here, then, we have a revolutionary movement which is anti-Socialist and

even anti-Bolshevist, which tends to prove the opinion I have already

expressed, that Bolshevism is only one phase of the world-conspiracy.

But if we explain this by the old antagonism between the opposing

revolutionary camps of Anarchy and Socialism, how are we to account for

the fact that the same destructive purpose animates people who are

neither Anarchist nor Socialist, but can only be ranged in the category

of extreme reaction? Of this phase of the movement Nietzsche provides

the supreme example. In his imprecations against "the Crucified," the

advocate of autocracy and militarism rivals the most infuriated of

revolutionary Socialists. The whole spirit of perversion is contained in

the description of Nietzsche by his friend Georges Brandes: "His

thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: 'This thing passes

for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This is regarded as good.

Is it not rather evil?'" What is this but Satanism? The case of

Nietzsche is not to be explained away by the fact that he died raving

mad, since a number of apparently sane people still profess for him

unbounded admiration, and whilst deriding Socialism and even attacking

Bolshevism join in the war against Christian civilization. The

conspiracy therefore exists apart from so-called democratic circles.

Not long ago I picked up an Italian novel by an anti-Socialist

containing precisely the same diatribes against "Christian-bourgeois

society" that are to be found in Anarchist and Bolshevist literature.

"The family," says the author, "is the kernel of contemporary society

and its base. Whoever would really reform or subvert must begin by

reforming and subverting the family.... The family ... is the principal

path of all unhappiness, of all vice, of all hypocrisy, of all moral

ugliness, ..." and he goes on to show that the two countries which have

proved themselves the sanest and the strongest are Germany and America,

because they have advanced by long strides towards free love.[760]

The writer of these words may be of no importance, but they should be

noted because they are symptomatic and help us to locate certain centres

of infection.

It is impossible to observe all these miscellaneous movements going on

all around us without being struck by the similarity of aim between

them; each seems to form part of a common plan, which, like the separate

pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, convey no meaning, but when fitted together

make up a perfectly clear design. That there is somewhere in the

background a point of contact is suggested by the fact that we find

members of the different groups playing a double and a treble rôle, the

same name occurring in the list of patrons in a Birth Control paper and

in a revolutionary secret society, amongst the exponents of

Psycho-Analysis and the members of an Irish Republican Committee.

With the open as with the secret forces the great method of warfare is

the capture of public opinion. A hidden influence behind the press

contributes powerfully to this end. Some of the subtlest disintegrating

propaganda during the last seven years has emanated from the so-called

"Capitalist press." The _Daily Herald_ is only the brass band of the

Revolution. It is to the journals inspired and patronized by the

Intelligentsia that we must turn to find the doctrines of Illuminism set

forth with the most persuasive eloquence.[761]

More than eighty years ago a Frenchman endowed with extraordinary

prophetic instinct foretold not only the danger that would one day come

from Russia, but that the press would facilitate the destruction of

civilization:

When our cosmopolitan democracy, bearing its last fruits, shall

have made of war a thing odious to whole populations, when the

nations calling themselves the most civilized on earth shall have

finished enervating themselves in their political debaucheries, ...

the floodgates of the North will open on us once again, then we

shall undergo a last invasion not of ignorant barbarians but of

cunning and enlightened masters, more enlightened than ourselves,

for they will have learnt from our own excesses how we can and must

be governed.

It is not for nothing that Providence piles up so many inactive

forces in the East of Europe. One day the sleeping giant will arise

and force will put an end to the reign of words. In vain, then,

distracted equality will call the old aristocracy to the help of

liberty; the weapon grasped again too late and wielded by hands too

long inactive will have become powerless. Society will perish for

having trusted to words void of sense or contradictory; then the

deceitful echoes of public opinion, the newspapers, wishing at all

costs to keep their readers, will push [the world] to ruin if only

to have something to relate for a month longer. They will kill

society to live upon its corpse.[762]

To-day the newspapers, no longer the echoes of public opinion but its

supreme directors, throw open their columns to every form of

disintegrating doctrine and close them to arguments that could

effectually arrest the forces of destruction.

What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the subversive

movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is

there one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest--the circle

of the _real Initiates_?

14

PAN-GERMANISM

We have seen in the course of this book that the idea of a secret power

working for world-revolution through both open movements and secret

societies, is not a new one, but dates from the eighteenth century. In

order to appreciate the continuity of this idea, let us recapitulate the

testimonies of contemporaries, some of which have been already quoted in

their context, but which when collected together and placed in

chronological order make up a very remarkable chain of evidence.

In 1789 the Marquis de Luchet warned France of the danger of the

Illuminati, whose object was world-domination.[763] In consequence of

this "gigantic project" de Luchet foresees "a series of calamities of

which the end is lost in the darkness of time, like unto those

subterranean fires of which the insatiable activity devours the bowels

of the earth and which escape into the air by violent and devastating

explosions."[764]

In 1794 the Duke of Brunswick in his manifesto to the German lodges

said:

A great sect arose, which, taking for its motto "the good and

happiness of man," worked in the darkness of the conspiracy to make

the happiness of humanity a prey for itself. This sect is known to

everyone: its brothers are known no less than its name.... The plan

they had formed for breaking all social ties and of destroying all

order was revealed in their speeches and acts.... Indomitable

pride, thirst of power, such were the only motives of this sect:

their masters had nothing less in view than the thrones of the

earth, and the government of the nations was to be directed by

their nocturnal clubs.[765]

In 1797 Montjoie, writing of the Orléaniste conspiracy, to which in an

earlier work he had attributed the whole organization of the French

Revolution in its first stages, observed:

I will not examine whether this wicked prince, thinking he was

acting in his personal interests, was not moved by that _invisible

hand_[766] which seems to have created all the events of our

revolution in order to lead us towards a goal that we do not see at

present, but which I think we shall see before long.[767]

In 1801 Monsignor de Savine "made allusions in prudent and almost

terrified terms to some international sect ...a power superior to all

others ...which has arms and eyes everywhere and which governs Europe

to-day."[768]

In 1817 the Chevalier de Malet declared that "the authors of the

Revolution are not more French than German, Italian, English, etc. They

form a particular nation which took birth and has increased in the dark

amidst all civilized nations with the object of subjecting them all to

its domination."[769]

In 1835 the Carbonaro, Malegari, wrote to another member of the

Carbonari:

We form an association of brothers in all points of the globe, we

have desires and interests in common, we aim at the emancipation of

humanity, we wish to break every kind of yoke, yet there is one

that is unseen, that can hardly be felt, yet that weighs on us.

Whence comes it? Where is it? No one knows, or at least no one

tells. The association is secret, even for us, the veterans of

secret societies.[770]

In 1852 Disraeli wrote:

It was neither parliaments nor populations, nor the course of

nature, nor the course of events, that overthrew the throne of

Louis Philippe ...the throne was surprised by the Secret Societies,

ever prepared to ravage Europe.... Acting in unison with a great

popular movement they may destroy society, as they did at the end

of the last century.[771]

In 1874 Père Deschamps, after his exhaustive study of secret societies,

thus propounded the question:

We have now to ask ourselves whether there is anything but an

identity of doctrines and personal communications between the

members of the different sects, whether there is really a unity of

direction which binds together all the secret societies, including

Free Masonry. Here we touch on the most mysterious point of the

action of secret societies, on that which these national Grand

Orients who declare themselves independent of each other and

sometimes even excommunicate each other conceal most carefully

beneath a veil.[772]

Finally Deschamps is led to the conclusion that there is "a secret

council which directs all masonic societies,"[773] that there are

secret lairs where the chiefs of the sects agree together on their work

of destruction.[774]

It would be easy to multiply quotations of this kind taken from many

different sources. Whether the men who expressed these opinions were, as

we are frequently told, suffering from delusions or not, the fact

remains that the idea of a hidden hand behind world-revolution has

existed for at least 135 years. And when we compare these utterances

with Monsieur Copin Albancelli's description of an inner circle secretly

directing the activities of the Grand Orient, and with the conclusions

reached by members of other secret societies, that such a circle exists

behind all occult and masonic societies of a subversive kind, we are

necessarily led to enquire: is there one circle or rather one Power

behind both open and secret organizations working for the overthrow of

the existing social order and Christian civilization? If so, what is

this power?

Now, to leave speculation for the moment and come to known facts,

everyone who has seriously studied these matters is aware that there are

at the present moment five principal organized movements at work in the

world with which ordered government has to contend, that may be

summarized as follows:

1. Grand Orient Freemasonry.

2. Theosophy with its innumerable ramifications.

3. Nationalism of an aggressive kind, now represented by Pan-Germanism.

4. International Finance.

5. Social Revolution.

It will be seen that, with the exception of the fourth, these movements

are those of which I have endeavoured to trace the course throughout the

earlier part of this book. It is a highly significant fact that it was

only when I had reached this stage of my work I discovered there were

independent investigators who had arrived at precisely the same

conclusions as myself.

The problem that now confronts us is therefore this: if there is indeed

one power directing all subversive movements, is it one of the five

movements here enumerated or is it yet another power more potent and

more invisible? In order to discover this, it is necessary to consider

whether these movements, although apparently divergent in their ultimate

purpose, have nevertheless any ideas or any aims in common. One

fundamental point of similarity will certainly be found between them.

All desire to dominate the world and to direct it along lines and

according to rules of their own devising; more than this, each desires

to direct it solely for the benefit of one class of people--social,

intellectual, or national as the case may be--to the entire exclusion of

every human being outside that class. Thus in reality each aspires to

the dictatorship of the world.

Besides this, it will be noticed that not only these principal

movements, but also the minor subversive movements described in the last

chapter, have in the main (1) a pro-German tendency--none, at any rate,

are pro-French nor do they encourage British patriotism, (2) all contain

a Jewish element--none, at least, are "anti-Semite," and (3) all have a

more or less decided antagonism to Christianity. If then, there is a

single power behind them, is it the Pan-Germanic Power? Is it the Jewish

Power? Or is it the Anti-Christian Power? Let us examine each of these

possibilities in turn.

Viewed under the aspect of exaggerated Nationalism, the spirit of

Pan-Germanism is nothing new. The dream of world-domination has haunted

the imagination of many races from the time of Alexander the Great to

Napoleon I, but nowhere has the plan been carried out by the

Machiavellian methods which have characterized Prussian foreign policy

and diplomacy from the days of Frederick the Great onwards. It is not

Prussian militarism that constitutes the crime of modern Germany.

Militarism in the sense of courage, patriotism, discipline, and devotion

to duty is a splendid thing. But the spirit of Pan-Germanism differs

from the British conception of patriotism in that it overrides the

rights of all other peoples and seeks to establish its domination over

the whole world. Under German domination every German would be free and

every other human being a slave. England, whilst seeking conquests, has,

on the other hand, always allowed the inhabitants of conquered

territories to develop along their own lines and has made use of

legislation largely to protect them from each other. The preference of

the native of India for an English judge to one of his own race is

evidence of this fact. But it is further the abandonment of all

principle, the acceptance of the doctrine that everything is

allowable--lying, treachery, calumny, and bad faith--in order to achieve

its end, that has placed Germany outside the comity of nations. Robison

describes the system of the Illuminati as leading to the conclusion that

"nothing would be scrupled at, if it could be made appear that the Order

would derive advantage from it, because the great object of the Order

was held as superior to every consideration."[775] Change the word

Order to State, and one has the whole principle of modern German

Imperialism.

Now, it is interesting to notice that the founders of German Illuminism

and of German Imperialism drew certain of their ideas from the same

source. Both Weishaupt and Frederick the Great were earnest students of

Machiavelli--and both out-did their master. This form of Machiavellism,

carried to a point probably never dreamt of by the Italian philosopher,

has run through the whole struggle of Prussia for supremacy and at the

same time through each outbreak of world revolution in which Prussian

influence has played a part. Thus the Ems telegram in 1870, the false

report that tricked Russia into mobilization in 1914,[776] the violation

of treaties and of all the laws of civilised warfare during the recent

war, were the direct outcome of doctrines that may be found in embryo in

_The Prince_. So also the most striking characteristic of the French

Revolution under the inspiration of Weishaupt's emissaries and the

agents of Prussia, and of the present revolutionary movement inaugurated

by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is not so much its violence as its

Machiavellian cunning. The art popularly known to-day as

_camouflage_--of dressing-up one design under the guise of something

quite different, of making black appear white by glorifying the most

ignoble actions, of making white appear black by holding up all

honourable traditions to contempt and ridicule, in a word

_perversion_--has been reduced to a system by the secret directors of

world revolution. It is here that we can detect the non-proletarian

character of the movement. The working-man of all countries is the least

Machiavellian of beings; his weakness lies in the fact that he is too

inarticulate, that he does not know how to put his case even when he has

a good one, still less to make a bad one appear plausible. It was not

until world revolution was taken over by the faction described by

Bakunin as "the German-Jew Company" that it reassumed its Machiavellian

character and gradually became the formidable organization it is to-day.

A few extracts from _The Prince_ will show how closely both the

Prussians and the Terrorists of France and Russia have followed

Machiavelli's manual for despots:

"He who usurps the government of any State is to execute and put in

practice all the cruelties which he thinks material at once, that he may

have no occasion to renew them often," etc.[777] (Vide the German

principle of "frightfulness" to be exercised against the inhabitants of

invaded territory and the plan of the French and Russian Terrorists in

suppressing "counter-revolutionaries.")

"It is of such importance to a prince to take upon him the nature and

disposition of a beast; of all the whole flock he ought to imitate the

lion and the fox."[778](Vide Frederick the Great and the demagogues of

France and Russia.)

"A prince ... who is wise and prudent, cannot or ought not to keep his

parole, when the keeping of it is to his prejudice, and the causes for

which he promised removed."[779] (Vide Germany's doctrine of the scrap

of paper and the promises of the Bolshevist Trade Delegation in London

to refrain from propaganda.)

"Because the whole multitude which submits to your government is not

capable of being armed, if you be beneficial and obliging to those you

do arm, you may make the bolder with the rest, for the difference of

your behaviour to the soldier binds him more firmly to your service,"

etc.[780](Vide the insolent behaviour permitted to officers of the

German Imperial Army and the feeding of the Red Army in Russia at the

expense of the rest of the population.)

"The prince ... is obliged ... at convenient times in the year to

entertain the people by feastings and plays and spectacles of recreation

... and give them some instance of his humanity and magnificence."[781]

(Vide the important part played by "spectacles" in the French Revolution

and by the theatre and opera in Soviet Russia. Always the same plan of

"_panem ei circenses_!")

Just after the fall of Napoleon I a French writer published a book

describing the "methodic perversity" of the revolutionary leaders and

the Revolution as the beginning of a Machiavellian régime.[782] How did

this system come to be established in France unless under the guidance

of Weishaupt's emissaries and the agents of Frederick the Great and of

the Illuminatus Frederick William II?

Germany was well able, however, to defend herself against the

devastating doctrines of Illuminism. Always the home of secret

societies, she became by the end of the nineteenth century the spiritual

home of Socialism. Yet although this might appear to present a danger to

German Imperialism, no country has remained so free as Germany from

serious agitation. It has been well said that the Germans are

theoretically more Socialistic than other nations, but they are far less

revolutionary.

The truth is that the rulers of Germany have always known that they

could count not merely on the servility of the people but on their

ardent national spirit. A strong vein of patriotism ran through all the

secret societies even of the most subversive variety, and it was the

German Student Orders, whence the Illuminati drew their disciples, that

became also the recruiting-ground for the German Imperialist idea.

Instead of combating subversive forces, German Imperialism adopted the

far more skilful expedient of enlisting them in its service.

It was thus that in Germany Freemasonry became a powerful aid to

Prussian aggrandizement. From 1840 onwards the word of command to all

the lodges went out from Berlin,[783] and in the revolution of 1848 the

Freemasons of Germany showed themselves the most ardent supporters of

German unity under the ægis of Prussia. Later, Bismarck with superb

ingenuity enlisted not only Freemasons and members of secret societies

but Socialists and democrats in the same cause. Lassalle and Marx

contributed powerfully to the cause of pan-Germanism. Dammer, who

succeeded Lassalle as head of the Socialist party, instructed his

successor Fritsche that "in the meetings which took place in Saxony,

whilst putting forward Socialist claims, they must not fail to demand

the unity of Germany under the domination of Prussia. Fritsche was

personally to render an account to Bismarck of the results obtained at

these meetings."[784]

Even as far afield as Italy, Bismarck succeeded in imposing the policy

of German autocracy on men who were ostensibly marching in the vanguard

of "liberty." "I believe in the unity of Germany," Mazzini wrote to

Bismarck in 1867, "and I desire it as I desire that of my own country. I

abhor the empire and supremacy that France arrogates to herself over

Europe."[785]

Before 1870 Freemasonry everywhere on the Continent helped the cause of

Germany. "The Occult Power preached pacifism and humanitarianism in

France by means of French Freemasonry whilst it preached patriotism in

Germany by means of German Freemasonry."[786] So although throughout

the nineteenth century the rulers of Germany permitted the dissemination

of ideas antagonistic to religion, until by the dawn of the following

century the very idea of God was rooted out of the minds of many German

children, the Imperial Government was careful that nothing should be

allowed to weaken patriotism. Indeed, the Pan-German obsession into

which German patriotism became transformed under the influence of such

men as Treitschke and Bernhardi was, no less than revolutionary

Socialism, fortified by irreligion because founded on the law of force

and the absence of all moral scruple. It is thus not "militarism" in the

accepted sense that has rendered Germany a menace to the world, but the

Machiavellian plan of using for export doctrines sternly repressed

within her own borders.

I shall not enlarge here on the crime of the German Imperial Staff in

sending Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks to Russia, because I have

already dealt at length with this question in a controversy that

appeared in the _Morning Post_ two years ago.[787] But whilst

acknowledging the fair and courteous line of argument adopted by my

German opponent, with which on certain points I found myself completely

in agreement. I was obliged to recognize that the bar to any real

understanding between us lay in the impossibility of persuading him to

recognize the principle that all means are not justifiable in order to

obtain one's ends. This is how he expresses himself on the subject:

If Mrs. Webster ... reproaches Germany for having employed seditious

propaganda in the countries of the Allies, it may simply be brought to

mind that all is fair in love and war. In a war, in a fight concerning

life and death, one does not look at the weapons which one takes, nor at

the values which are destroyed by using the arms. The only adviser [sic]

is, first of all, the success of the fight, the salvation of one's

independence.[788]

Until Germany abandons this Machiavellian doctrine it will be impossible

to treat her as a civilized Power.

But Herr Kerlen accuses England of pursuing the same Machiavellian

policy of encouraging sedition abroad. Undoubtedly England did propagate

Pacifism in Germany and other enemy countries and hoped to bring about a

political revolution, that is to say, a rising of the German people

against the rulers who had led them into war. (It should be remembered

that all the friends of Germany in this country always declared that the

German people did not want the war and were dragged into it unwillingly

by the military caste.) But is there any evidence to show that England

ever attempted to engineer a social revolution, to undermine morality

and all belief in ordered government, in a word to promote Bolshevism in

Germany or elsewhere? Herr Kerlen cites the sympathy accorded in this

country to the Kerensky revolution. But England, largely through the

influence of the Liberals, had always entertained an exaggerated idea of

"Tzarist tyranny," and honestly sympathized with all efforts, however

misguided, to "liberate" the Russian people. Further, throughout the war

the Tzar and Tzarina had been ceaselessly represented as faithless to

the Allies--a story that we now know to have been an infamous calumny

circulated doubtless by enemy agents. This idea even obtained credence

in Conservative circles, misled by false information on the situation in

Russia. One must have lived through the spring of 1917 in London to

realize how completely not only the public but the authorities were

deluded. What else could be expected when the opinion of Socialists was

accepted on the matter? I know from personal experience that two of the

most important Government departments were completely mistaken even on

the subject of Bolshevism, with the result that measures were not taken

which might have checked its spread into this country.

In a word, then, the essential difference between the attitude of

Germany and England to Russia was that whilst England imagined that the

Kerensky revolution would be for the good of Russia as well as for the

advantage of the Allies, Germany deliberately introduced into Russia

what she knew to be a poison.

Always faithful to the maxim of _divide et impera_, Germany, after

bringing Russia to ruin, has at last succeeded in causing dissensions

between the Allies. This policy she pursued unremittingly throughout the

war. Thus whilst on one hand she was assuring the French that "the

English would fight to the last breath of the last Frenchman," General

Ludendorff was instructing the Imperial Chancellor that: "We must again

and again rub in the sentence in Kuhlmann's speech to the effect that

the question of Alsace-Lorraine is the only one which stands in the way

of peace. And we must lay special emphasis on the fact that the English

people are shedding their blood for an Imperialistic war-aim."[789]

So skilfully was this propaganda carried on after the war had ended that

whilst English officers returning to England from the occupied areas

were declaring that the friendliness of the Germans convinced them that

Germany was really our friend and that we should have an "entente" with

her rather than with France, French officers returning to France said

that the Germans had assured them that they were their best friends,

that England was the real enemy, and that it would be better to break

the Entente and form an alliance with Germany. At the same time no less

than three lines of propaganda concerning the causes of the war were

going out from Germany, one laying all the blame on the English, one on

the French, and one on the Jews, and pamphlets embodying these

conflicting theories were despatched broadcast to likely subjects in the

countries of the Allies.[790]

The greatest triumph for Imperial Germany lay in her success in

enlisting the very elements amongst the Allies which might most be

expected to oppose her. Although there was no country in the world where

monarchy was so adored, militarism so universally admired, where rank

and birth played so important a part, and the working classes, though

cared for, so rigidly kept in subjection, Germany from the time of

Bismarck onwards has always been the "spiritual home" of British

Socialists, democrats, and pacifists, just as in France she has always

found her principal allies in the masonic lodges. And this although the

German Socialists and Freemasons have never attempted to use their

influence in favour of the masonic and Socialist ideal of universal

brotherhood and world-peace, but, on the contrary, at every crisis have

thrown in their lot with the military party. Thus before the

Franco-Prussian War, whilst French Freemasons of the Loge Concordia and

the Socialists of the First Internationale were urging their brothers to

rely on German Socialism to avert a conflict, the Prussian lodges were

shouting Hoch! to the national colours and chanting the praises of King

William and "the Prussian sword," and the German Social Democrats were

applauding the cause of German unity.[791]

Exactly the same thing happened before the recent war, when Jaurès

assured his fellow-Socialists that at the first sign of conflict he had

only to communicate with Berlin in order to enlist German Socialism in

the interests of peace; yet on the declaration of war the German

Socialists voted solidly for war credits, whilst the British Socialists

opposed participation in the war and even in some instances expressed

sympathy with Germany. And let it never be forgotten, it was not

Socialist Germany but Imperial Germany that won the allegiance of our

so-called democrats.

In spite of this betrayal by the Socialists of Germany, in spite of the

fact that they have contributed nothing to the cause of International

Socialism or of world-peace, the British "Labour" Party never until its

accession to office wavered in its policy of publicly advocating the

cause of Germany. With the exception of the Social Democratic

Federation, every Socialist body in this country has proclaimed

pro-German sentiments, and _Justice_ alone, of all Socialist organs, has

expressed its sympathy for the sufferings of France. In fact, any

Socialist who dared to champion the cause of France immediately lost his

influence and position in Socialist circles. As to the _Daily Herald_,

had it been edited in Berlin it could not more faithfully have supported

German interests. When Alsace Lorraine was restored to France, it

published an article showing how deeply the inhabitants of this province

resented being transferred from the German Empire to the French

Republic[792]; when a general strike threatened this country, it seized

the opportunity to come out with an appeal in enormous capitals to

revise the Versailles Treaty; in the matter of reparations its efforts

to let Germany off altogether have been, as it itself observed,

"unceasing." "The plain fact is," it declared on December 17, 1921,

"that these fantastic reparation demands cannot be met; and that every

payment by which Germany attempts to meet them will only work further

havoc to our own commerce and our own industry. We have urged that

ceaselessly for three years. To-day even the Premier begins to see that

we were right, that the interests of this country demand the scrapping

of _the whole bad business of 'making Germany pay_.'"[793]

Indeed, when the interests of Germany were concerned, this paper, which

Lenin has described as "our own organ," but which might still more truly

be claimed by Ludendorff and Stinnes, was quite ready to throw Socialism

to the winds and plead the cause of capital. At the very moment that it

was advocating the Labour policy of a capital levy on all fortunes

exceeding £5,000 in this country, the _Daily Herald_ waxed almost

tearful over the iniquity of France in attempting to touch the pockets

of German multi-millionaires whose profits, it went on to explain

elaborately, were not nearly as huge as might appear in view of the

decline in the purchasing power of the mark. The decline in the

purchasing power of the pound had, however, never been taken into

account when assessing the profits of British employers of labour.[794]