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Title: The myth of the Jewish menace in world affairs
       or, The truth about the forged protocols of the elders of Zion

Author: Lucien Wolf

Release Date: March 30, 2011 [EBook #35711]

Language: English

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  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
  ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO

  MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
  LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
  TORONTO




  THE MYTH OF THE
  JEWISH MENACE
  IN WORLD AFFAIRS

  _or_

  THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FORGED
  PROTOCOLS OF
  THE ELDERS OF ZION

  _By_
  LUCIEN WOLF




  NEW YORK
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1921




  COPYRIGHT 1921
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

  Set up and Electrotyped. Published February, 1921




    "_It would not be easy to say how large a part of our troubles
    in the present troublous times is due to the general discredit
    that has overtaken the old British virtue of honesty._"

        The _Morning Post_ (in a lucid interval of subjectivity),
                    August 28, 1920.




PREFATORY NOTE


The substance of the following three essays was originally
contributed, in the form of independent articles to the _Manchester
Guardian_, the _Spectator_, and the _Daily Telegraph_ respectively.
They have been carefully revised, much amplified, and largely
rewritten in order to make a connected argument and avoid repetition.
Footnotes of authorities have been added. My grateful acknowledgments
are due to the Editors of the _Manchester Guardian_, the _Spectator_,
and the _Daily Telegraph_ for their kindness in permitting this
republication.

I confess to a feeling of shame at having to write this pamphlet at
all. That reputable newspapers in this country should be seeking to
transplant here the seeds of Prussian anti-Semitism, and that they
should employ for this purpose devices so questionable and a
literature so melodramatically silly, cannot but cause a sense of
humiliation to any self-respecting Englishman. It is for this reason
that I have strictly limited myself to an examination of the specific
charges formulated by these publications. I cannot bring myself to
believe that it is necessary to deal with them on a larger scale.

                                                             L.W.

  Gray's Inn, London, W.C.
    November, 1920.




THE MYTH OF THE JEWISH MENACE




I

THE DEMONOLOGY OF THE "MORNING POST"


The prodigious essay on "The Cause of World Unrest" which the _Morning
Post_ has lately published in seventeen articles and some sixty
columns of printed matter[1] is a document on which the student of
political thought in England will dwell sadly. Over a century ago, in
world circumstances of startling similarity and almost from the same
party standpoint, Burke gave us, in his "Causes of the Present
Discontents," his "Reflections," and his "Regicide Peace" a large and
stately piece of political philosophy. To-day the leading organ of
Conservative opinion in this country can only expound a sort of
political demonology, borrowed partly from the obscurantists of
Bourbon Clericalism and partly from the fanatics of Hohenzollern
Anti-Semitism. It would be merciful to pass by this strange effort in
silence, but unfortunately there is reason to believe that, with all
its grotesqueness, it is calculated to work a good deal of mischief.
Credulous and vicious people are still abundant, and they are not
confined to the crowd. Mr. Winston Churchill has darkly hinted that he
reads the signs of the times much in the same way as the _Morning
Post_, and a curious story is current that the translation of the
Russian forgery on which the theory of that journal mainly rests was
actually made in the Intelligence Department of the War Office. Then
there are Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc and quite a conventicle of
smaller fry who have been vainly preaching the same apocalypse for
years. The _Morning Post_ may bring them recruits, and that assuredly
is not desirable.

The theory of the _Morning Post_ may be briefly stated. Its
fundamental contention is that all political unrest is artificial. It
is a product of the Hidden Hand which is now revealed to us as a
"Formidable Sect" encompassing the world. This sect has been at its
present work for at least a hundred and fifty years. The French
Revolution was contrived by it, as well as all the subordinate
revolutions down to our own time. Trade Unionism, Socialism,
Syndicalism, Bolshevism, Sinn Fein, Indian Nationalism, and their
analogues in every part of the globe are outward and visible signs of
its sinister activity. That there are social grievances and even evils
at the root of this unrest is not denied, but they are as artificial
as the unrest itself. They have all been deliberately brought about by
the Hidden Hand in order to stir up revolt against the Throne and
Altar. The way in which it has been done is a little complicated.
Behind the restless and seditious movements which we all know there is
a secret revolutionary organisation in the shape of Freemasonry. But
this is only intermediate, for Freemasonry itself, through some
obscure transaction between the Templars and the Old Man of the
Mountain, was created by the "Formidable Sect," and is wholly, though
perhaps unconsciously, under its control. Freemasonry had a specially
"activist" wing in the Illuminati--also an invention of the
Formidablists--which was chiefly responsible for the French
Revolution.

Now, what is this "Formidable Sect"? It is no other than the Jews.
Those ancient enemies of the human race appear to have been even more
daring and dynamic in evil-doing than even Torquemada supposed.
Throughout their world-wide Dispersion they have secretly preserved
their old political organisation, and they have used it--and are still
using it--with deadly persistency to overturn the established
Christian order of things and to found in its place a universal Jewish
dominion under the sceptre of a Sovereign of the House of David. The
Jews are, in short, the "cause of the world unrest."

There is nothing new in this theory except the claim of its authors to
have produced documentary proof of its final development--that is, of
its Jewish aspect. _Qua_ international conspiracy, it was invented
over a century ago, as it has been resurrected to-day, to explain the
unfamiliar international character of the prevailing unrest. The
clergy and the nobility of the _ancien regime_ were as little capable
as the _Morning Post_ to-day of understanding the natural causes of
this phenomenon. And yet they were by no means obscure. The French
Revolution, as Burke pointed out, was not a mere uprising against
local oppression, but a "revolution of doctrine and theoretic
dogma"[2] which was bound to find echoes beyond the French frontiers.
In this respect it resembled the Reformation, and also that other
"armed doctrine" which we know as Bolshevism. Nevertheless it puzzled
the Bourbon apologists, and, confusing cause and effect, they became
convinced that they were in the presence of an international
conspiracy.

The theory was first propounded by a Superior of the Seminary of
Eudists at Caen in 1790,[3] but it was afterwards vastly developed by
the Abbe Barruel in his "Memoires sur le Jacobinisme," by Robison of
Edinburgh in his "Proofs of a Conspiracy," and by the Chevalier de
Malet in his tedious "Recherches Historiques." Their conclusion was
that there was a triple conspiracy of Philosophers, Freemasons, and
Illuminati, who formed an actual sect aiming deliberately and
methodically at the overthrow of the established religions and
governments throughout Europe. It is noteworthy that their researches
failed to discern any Jewish element in this conspiracy, though in
minuteness of investigation and in the gluttony of their credulity
they were by no means inferior to the _Morning Post_, while they had
the advantage over that journal of being in close touch with the
facts. The theory had a short shrift, though the industry of its
authors certainly did much to throw light on the organisation and
activities of the secret societies. So far as the Freemasons and
Illuminati were concerned, it was easily demolished by the Earl of
Moira, who at a meeting of the Grand Lodge of England in 1800 showed
convincingly that it was a mare's nest.[4] As for the Philosophers, no
one ever took the charge against them seriously. For half a century
scarcely anything more was heard of this aspect of the "Formidable
Sect," though meanwhile the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 took place.
The non-suit of Barruel was _chose jugee_.

It was revived in the sixties under the influence of the religious
passions kindled by the war for Italian unity. The struggle for Jewish
emancipation had triumphed all over Western Europe, largely as a
consequence of the Revolutions of 1848, and the new citizens thus
enfranchised had everywhere cast in their lot with the Liberal
parties. This was swiftly and angrily noted by the Ultramontane
polemists, and the old bogey of a "Formidable Sect" began to haunt
them in a revised and enlarged form. In the new conspiracy there was
no longer any talk of Philosophers and Illuminati. Their place was
taken by Jews and Protestants. The "Formidable Sect" thus became a
triple alliance of Freemasons, Jews, and Protestants, which was said
to be directed by the "Grand Master Palmerston," and supported by the
whole British people, not only as Protestants, but as descendants of
the Lost Tribes of Israel. The chief protagonist of this stupendous
hallucination was M. Gougenot des Mousseaux, who in 1869 embodied it
in a volume entitled "Le Juif, le Judaisme, et la Judaisation des
Peuples Chretiens." From his own admissions, however, it appears that
he was largely indebted to German Catholic inspiration. Once again the
theory failed to find support, and Gougenot's book, like the books of
Barruel and Robison, became relegated to the literature of forgotten
crazes.

Later on attempts to revive it were made by M. de Saint-Andre, the
Abbe Chabauty, M. Drumont, M. Martin, and M. Copin-Albancelli, in the
full flood of the Anti-Semitic agitation which had been imported into
France from Germany. The only notable addition made to the theory by
these writers was the hypothesis of a secret Jewish Government,
transported from Jerusalem into the Diaspora, which, throughout the
ages, has never ceased to command the allegiance of an imaginary
international Jewry, to keep it disloyal to all other Governments, and
to direct it in an insidious campaign against the established order of
Christian Society. Since 1909 the agitation has become retransferred
to the headquarters of Clerical Anti-Semitism in Vienna and Munich,
and the most recent works on the subject--with which the _Morning
Post_ appears to have mainly worked, although for obvious reasons it
does not acknowledge them--are Wichtl's "Weltfreimaurerei,
Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik," Meister's "Judas Schuldbuch," and
Rosenberg's "Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten," all published
in 1919. All this literature, while expounding exactly the same theory
of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy as the _Morning Post_, is as violently
anti-English as it is anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish. A great deal of it
is published under the auspices of the _Deutschland's Erneuerung_
Committee, of which Mr. Houston Chamberlain is a leading spirit.

This, then, is the very dubious raw material of the theory hashed up
by the _Morning Post_ as a serious contribution to the grave political
preoccupations of British statesmanship at this moment. It will be
noted that in the forms so far reviewed it is confessedly a theory,
resting at the best on evidence of a highly conjectural and
circumstantial character. The novelty in its latest presentation is
that an effort is made to bolster it up with what is claimed to be
direct evidence. This takes the form of a document entitled "The
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which was opportunely
published in an anonymous pamphlet a few months ago by Messrs. Eyre
and Spottiswoode. These protocols are alleged to be the minutes of
certain meetings of the Secret Directory of the Jewish people held in
Paris towards the end of the last century, and they pretend to record
avowals by the "Elders" of the very conspiracy set forth
hypothetically by MM. Gougenot des Mousseaux and Copin-Albancelli. The
joy of the _Morning Post_ at the discovery of this evidence is not
difficult to understand. Its theory threatened to collapse under the
weight of its inherent grotesqueness, and here, in the nick of time,
was documentary proof, complete and apparently irrefutable. "In this
book," says the _Post_ triumphantly, "for the first time we find an
open declaration of the terrible conspiracy of the 'Formidable
Sect.'"[5]

Unhappily for the _Morning Post_, this document is a forgery, and one
which has already been used for even more disreputable purposes than
the bolstering up of the malicious hypothesis in support of which it
is cited. The story of this forgery will be told presently.[6] For
the moment I content myself with noting that it is a forgery, and
proceed to examine briefly the main historical propositions which it
is invoked to corroborate and co-ordinate. This is necessary not
because they are in themselves worth taking seriously, but because
they are held to react on the forged protocols and to supply
presumptive evidence of their genuineness.

I take the propositions in the logical order of the argument they are
put forward to illustrate:--


1. THE SECRET JEWISH GOVERNMENT

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


2. THE OCCULT POWER BEHIND FREEMASONRY

It follows that if there is no "Secret Government of the Jewish
Nation," such a Government cannot well be "the occult power which
works behind Freemasonry."[8] The _Morning Post_, however, is very
careful to hedge on this, as on many other points. Its alternative
theory is that Freemasonry is Judaical because it is descended from
the Templars, who received their Jewish traditions from the
Assassins.[9] The only foundation for the suggestion that the
Assassins could act as intermediaries between the Jews and the
Templars is, on the one hand, that they were Ishmaelites, and
consequently "first cousins" to the Jews, and, on the other, a much
disputed hypothesis of Von Hammer, that certain Templars were
initiated into the mysteries of the Assassins.[10] The truth is that
the Assassins were not Ishmaelites, except in the figurative sense
that all Mohammedans claim to be descended from Ishmael, and even if
they were, they had no contact with Jews, and their tenets bear no
trace of Jewish influence. Consequently, whatever else the Templars
may have learnt from them, they certainly did not learn Judaism. The
nearest approach to a tradition of Hebrew influence on Templarism is
found in a very dubious legend of Swedish Masonry which alleges that
certain Templars of Jerusalem received the secrets of the Essenes from
seven Syrian Christians whom they rescued from the Saracens.[11] But
if this story were true, the secrets thus taught would assuredly have
been more Christian than Jewish. To anyone, however, who knows
anything of mediaeval history, and the relations of Moslems and Jews at
this period, the whole of this conjecture is the crudest buffoonery.
No section of the Crusaders dealt with the Jews except by way of
massacre. Moreover, had there been the slightest ground for believing
that the Templars had Judaised it would have been seized upon as the
most damning of all crimes alleged against them when the Order was
suppressed. But throughout the comprehensive indictment, which ranges
from the Gnostic heresy to gross licentiousness, there is no hint of
the deadly sin of Judaism.


3. THE JUDAISATION OF FREEMASONRY

This, however, is not the end of the matter. Yet other historical
testimonies are alleged--the Temple cultus in Freemasonry, the "Jewish
Ritual" of the Order, and the direct activities of Jews in its
anti-monarchical and anti-Christian machinations.

    (_a_) The first of these arguments may best be judged by the
    _Morning Post's_ own witnesses. Whether Freemasonry was or was
    not derived from the Templars and whether or not the Templars
    became infected with Jewish ideas transmitted through the
    Assassins, nothing is more certain than that the founders of
    Templarism established their Order on the Temple cultus long
    before they could have known anything of the Assassins, and
    while they were still impeccable Knights of the Cross. Hence, if
    the Freemasons took the Temple from them, it was innocent of
    Jewishness. But Robison--one of the main authorities of the
    _Morning Post_--will not even have it that the Freemasons were
    indebted to the Templars, much less to the Jews. He states that
    the theory, and even the Temple cultus, were unknown to
    Freemasonry before 1743, when they were introduced to them for
    the first time by the Jacobite, Andrew Ramsay.[12]

    (_b_) The so-called "Jewish Ritual" of Masonry is equally a
    delusion, as the _Morning Post_ could have found out for itself,
    had it taken the trouble to consult somebody who knows Hebrew
    and Hebrew literature. The grammatical forms and the
    transliteration of the limited number of Hebrew words found in
    the Masonic rituals prove conclusively their non-Jewish origin.
    The legendary matter, too, has but few traces of Jewish
    _provenance_, and is clearly not due to Jewish redaction. If the
    rituals were Jewish, one might expect to find parallel passages
    in the Hebrew Prayer-Book and similar literature, but nothing of
    the kind is discoverable. It is really remarkable that Jews had
    nothing to do--and indeed, I believe, never have had anything to
    do--with the composition of the Masonic rituals, seeing that the
    lodges, in this country, at least, have always been open to
    them, and at an early date learned Jews were interested in them
    and possibly joined them; but so it is. The true explanation of
    the Hebrew elements in Freemasonry, as in Templarism, is that
    both borrowed from the Old Testament, as a Christian document.

    (_c_) As for the activities of Jews in the anti-monarchical and
    anti-Christian machinations of Masonry, the answer is that
    orthodox Masonry has never been anti-monarchical or
    anti-Christian, and if there have been spurious lodges open to
    this reproach, and if orthodox lodges have been improperly used
    for this purpose, they were, at any rate, free of the added
    reproach of Jewish control or inspiration. The only evidence on
    this head cited by the _Morning Post_--or, rather, by Mrs.
    Webster on its behalf--is that a Jew known by the nickname of
    Piccolo Tigre issued a scandalously anti-social manifesto to the
    Piedmontese Alta Vendita in 1822, and that he was abetted by
    "others of his race."[13] We are not told who these "others"
    were, nor even what Piccolo Tigre's real name was. If Mrs.
    Webster does not know his name, how can she know that he was a
    Jew? The answer is that she got the story from Gougenot des
    Mousseaux, but even he naively admits that he never knew who
    Piccolo Tigre was.[14] And yet he is positive he was a Jew. This
    is typical of all the _Morning Post's_ evidence.


4. FREEMASONRY AND REVOLUTION

If the Freemasons think it worth while, they will, no doubt, reply to
the _Morning Post_ through a better-qualified member of the Craft than
myself,[15] but, unlike the Jews, they can afford to treat the
superstitions with which they are assailed with contempt. It will
suffice here to quote what Lord Moira said on the subject in 1800:--

    "Certain modern publications have been holding forth to the
    world the society of Masons as a league against constitutional
    authorities--an imputation the more secure because the known
    constitutions of our fellowship make it certain that no answer
    can be published. It is not to be disputed that in countries
    where impolitic prohibitions restrict the communication of
    sentiment, the activity of the human mind may, among other means
    of baffling the control, have resorted to the artifice of
    borrowing the denomination of Freemasons, to cover meetings for
    seditious purposes, just as any other description might be
    assumed for the same object. But, in the first place, it is the
    invaluable distinction of this free country that such a just
    intercourse of opinions exists without restraint as cannot leave
    to any number of men the desire of forming or frequenting those
    disguised societies where dangerous dispositions may be imbibed.
    And, secondly, the profligate doctrines which may have been
    nurtured in any such self-established assemblies could never
    have been tolerated for a moment in any lodge meeting under
    regular authority. We aver, therefore, that not only such laxity
    of opinion has no sort of connection with the tenets of Masonry,
    but is diametrically opposite to the injunction which we regard
    as the foundation-stone of the lodge, namely, Fear God and
    honour the King."[16]

To this it should be added that Masonic lodges--more or less
spurious--have not only been used by Atheists and Revolutionists for
their own sinister purposes, but also by their enemies. We learn from
Robison that even the Roman Catholic Church at one time tried to
capture them--possibly for ends not over-friendly to the Established
Church in this country--and that the Jacobites, who can scarcely be
called enemies of the Throne and Altar, were extremely active in the
Masonic Order during the eighteenth century.[17]


5. THE JEWISH AUTHORSHIP OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

This is a pet theory of Mrs. Webster, and is very largely based on the
untenable propositions noticed above. It is, however, also sought to
show that the Illuminati and the Martinezists were active artisans of
the Revolution, and that they were abetted by Jews. On this the only
concrete evidence adduced is that Martinez Pasqualis, who figured
prominently in both movements, was "generally reputed to be a
Portuguese Jew." As a matter of fact, there were scarcely any
Portuguese Jews at the time, and even the distinction between Old and
New Christians in Portugal had been recognised as obsolete and
abolished by decree in 1768.[18] Pasqualis was probably as little--or
as much--a Jew as Pombal or Dom Joseph in the popular anecdote.[19] As
for his alleged Jewish abettors, it is noteworthy that neither Barruel
nor Robison--both contemporaries of the Revolution--knew anything of
them. Barruel, indeed, ignored the theory when it was actually
suggested to him, and for good reason. No one knew better than he how
ludicrous it was. The Jews in Paris at the time were few and
relatively insignificant; they did their duty by the new Government,
but were sturdily on the side of moderation, and so far from having
had any hand in making the Revolution they were actually the last to
benefit by it. They were, in fact, the only class of the population
whose disabilities were continued by the new regime, and it was not
until September, 1791, that, after many appeals from them and in face
of a strong opposition, the National Assembly consented to their
emancipation.[20] As for their political opinions, they are
sufficiently illustrated by the fact that one of the first acts of the
Terror was to arrest forty-six of them as suspect of "delits
contre-revolutionnaires"--the charge is itself a vindication--and nine
of them were executed.[21] None of these good people were of any
political prominence. Indeed, whether for good or evil, not a single
Jewish name figures conspicuously in the history of the Revolution.
With the subsequent Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 the case was
different, but these were essentially bourgeois movements, and the
Jewish activity in them was characteristically middle-class and
moderate.


6. MARX, THE JEWISH REVOLUTIONARY ARCHETYPE.

The general suggestion of the _Morning Post_ that the Jewish Community
is, for the most part, composed of dangerous Revolutionists is a
little difficult to deal with, because, at the same time, it is
admitted that they are not sincere. While preaching their subversive
doctrines they are said to be really anti-democratic, and to simulate
a zeal for Atheism and Anarchy only in order to bring about the social
and political Armageddon out of which their own Davidic Autocracy is
to emerge and triumph. Everything, then, hinges on this motive, and it
has already been shown that it is nothing more than a millennial hope
which has no place in the field of practical politics. The appeal to
Karl Marx as the Archetype of the Jewish Revolutionist is, in this
connection, particularly unfortunate. In the first place, Marx was not
even remotely a Jew by religion, and therefore the Messianic motive is
scarcely likely to have weighed with him. He was probably a sincere
Revolutionist, and, in that case, he was just as little a Jew, seeing
that his philosophy has no relation to any recognised school of Jewish
thought. Marx, indeed, was an intellectual product of the essentially
Gentile teachings of Hegel and Feuerbach. Perhaps the best test of the
Gentilism of his outlook is that, while his Jewish disciples were
comparatively few, his Christian converts are numbered in millions. In
the second place, if Marx was the chief instrument of a Jewish plot to
subvert Christian society, he must have proved something of a
disappointment to his secret employers. Among the forces which are
making for World Unrest to-day he is a relatively conservative
element. The _Morning Post_ itself supplies the proof of this. In its
anxiety to convict Marx of adding the sin of Germanism to the
criminality of anti-Christian Thuggee--a little difficult to
reconcile--it recalls his life-long quarrel with Bakounine, and
explains it as exclusively a struggle between Judeo-Germanism and
Slavism.[22] There is, however, no reason to believe that it was at
bottom anything but a conflict between Socialism and Anarchism--that
is, between those who, however revolutionary they may be in a social
sense, would still maintain the structure of the State, and those who
would destroy it root and branch. Here we see that it is not the Jew
Socialist who works to destroy the established political order of
things, but the Gentile Anarchist. This point may be still further
illustrated by Syndicalism and Bolshevism, which are both far more
destructive than Socialism and are both revolts against Marx. It is
true that Lenin pretends to be a strict Marxist, but his orthodoxy is
vehemently contested by all the leading Marxists in England, France,
and Germany, and by the whole body of Russian Mensheviks, among whom
are many Jews.[23]

It is impossible, within the restricted scope of this essay, to deal
with all the incidental accusations against Jews contained in the
_Morning Post_ indictment; but most of them will be found covered by
the above classification. The charge of Bolshevism, which is the only
conspicuous exception, will be examined in a later chapter.

The upshot of the matter is that the "Formidable Sect" is a German
Anti-Semitic and Anglophobe myth, founded in malice and hysteria,
built up of garbled history, and synthetised by impudent forgery. How
it came to impose itself on the plethoric patriotism of the _Morning
Post_ is a mystery which may be worth investigating. Whatever the
explanation, it must be counted a triumph for German junkerdom and a
consoling token to that eminent traitor Herr Houston Chamberlain that
he is not altogether without spiritual affinities in the land of his
birth.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Morning Post_, July 12-30, 1920.

[2] "Thoughts on French Affairs" (Burke's Works, Vol. III., p. 350).

[3] _Gentleman's Magazine_, June, 1794.

[4] _Infra_ p. 14.

[5] _Morning Post_, July 16, 1920.

[6] _Infra_ pp. 19 _et seq._

[7] See Wichtl and Meister _op. cit._ A peculiarly crazy statement of
this theory, illustrated by an obscene chart pedigree of Queen
Victoria, will be found in _Semi-Imperator_ (Munich, 1919). _Cf._
Proceedings of the British Israel World Federation Congress, July 5-10,
1920.

[8] _Morning Post_, July 14, 1920.

[9] _Ibid._

[10] Quoted by Frost, "Secret Societies of the European Revolution,"
Vol. I., p. 6.

[11] Frost, _op. cit._, pp. 12-13.

[12] Robison: "Proofs of a Conspiracy Against all the Religions and
Governments of Europe" (Lond., 1797), pp. 38-39.

[13] _Morning Post_, July 15, 1920. See also _Spectator_, June 19 and
26, 1920.

[14] Gougenot des Mousseaux, _op. cit._, p. 343.

[15] Since this was written a learned and comprehensive reply has been
published, demolishing the whole Masonic side of the _Morning Post's_
argument. (See A.W. Waite: "Occult Freemasonry and the Jewish Peril" in
the _Occult Review_, Sept., 1920.)

[16] Oliver: "History of Masonic Persecution," pp. 298-300.

[17] Robison, _op. cit._, pp. 30, 38-39, 62.

[18] Smith: "Memoirs of Pombal," Vol. II., p. 248.

[19] _Ibid._, pp. 249-250. As a matter of fact Pasqualis was a
Christian born at Grenoble (Waite: _Occult Rev._, Sept., 1920).

[20] Kahn: _Les Juifs a Paris_, pp. 64-71.

[21] _Ibid._, pp. 72-85.

[22] _Morning Post_, July 16, 1920.

[23] _Infra_ pp. 45-46.




II

THE FORGED PROTOCOLS


Chief among the _pieces justificatives_ relied upon by the
demonologists of the _Morning Post_ is an anonymous pamphlet which
calls itself "The Jewish Peril."[24] As has been stated in the
previous chapter, this pamphlet is a forgery, or, rather, a garbled
translation of a clumsy Russian forgery by a certain Sergyei Nilus,
intended to pander to the superstition of the "Hidden Hand." There is
reason to believe that it has itself been engineered by a more
substantial hand reaching out stealthily from the arcanum of German
Militarist Reaction.

The literary and political history of this pamphlet is quite easy to
trace, though it has been a little obscured by its author's
infirmities of memory. Fundamentally it belongs to a type of forgery
which was common enough in the 17th and 18th centuries, when party
passions ran high and the reckless scurrilities of political warfare
could not be made effective without the concoction of bogus
documents.[25] In our own time this fraudulent traffic has become
relatively rare, though the notorious Pigott and Dreyfus forgeries are
there to show how easily it may be tempted into life when malicious
controversialists venture on accusations which they cannot otherwise
substantiate. This is precisely the case of "Professor Sergyei Nilus,"
the alleged author of the Russian original of "The Jewish Peril."

His documented "discovery" that the Jews, in conspiracy with certain
secret brotherhoods, are at the bottom of all the political and
religious convulsions and all the social instabilities throughout the
world, has been devised to bolster up a theory which has long failed
to convince. The theory itself, of which the _Morning Post's_
"Formidable Sect" is the latest product, is at least three centuries
old. It was the staple of the pseudo-Apocalyptic literature of
Antichrist and the Wandering Jew which assailed the early years of the
Reformation and filled the literary armoury of the League during the
Thirty Years' War. It took more definite political shape in the tracts
and broadsheets, afterwards collected by the German Evangelical
Clericals under the title of _Anabaptisticum et Enthusiasticum
Pantheon_, which, among other fearsome things, explained the Puritan
Revolution in England--the Bolshevism of its day--as a plot against
Christianity and Monarchy contrived by the _Quaecker, Frey-Geister und
Heil- und Gottlosen Juden_.[26] In the early eighteenth century its
specifically anti-Jewish aspects were emphasised by the misapplied
learning of Eisenmenger, whose anti-Semitic classic, "Entdecktes
Judenthum," was published at the cost of King Frederick of
Prussia.[27] After the French Revolution and the upheavals of 1830 and
1848, a fresh impulse was given to the agitation. Meanwhile, the
Illuminati had come into existence, and Freemasonry had become known,
and they were promptly annexed by the scaremongers and substituted for
the Quakers and Freethinkers in their new redaction of the "Hidden
Hand." A number of blood-curdling works dealing in minute detail with
their supposed activities as authors of the Revolutions were published
by such writers as Father Barruel (1797, etc.), the Chevalier de Malet
(1817), Eckert (1854), Gougenot des Mousseaux (1860), Cretineau-Joly
(1863), Saint-Andre (1880), and Chabauty (1883). These books all fell
flat. The blood of the public refused to be curdled, and to-day they
are only found in second-hand bookshops or in the libraries of
collectors of Masonic and Occult ana.

In 1868 an ingenious German named Hermann Goedsche conceived the idea
of galvanising the agitation into effective life by giving a dramatic
form to all its theoretical extravagances.[28] Formerly in the
Prussian postal service, where he also acted as a spy for the Secret
Police and the _Kreuz Zeitung_ party, he had been dismissed from his
office for subornation of forgery in connection with the prosecution
of the famous Democratic leader Benedict Waldeck.[29] He was now
engaged in palming off on the German public a series of apocryphal
works, half memoirs and half historical romances, which he alleged
were written by an Englishman named "Sir John Retcliffe." They dealt
with all the palpitating international political problems and events
of the middle of the nineteenth century, from the Crimean War to the
War of the Danish Duchies. In one of these romances, entitled
"Biarritz,"[30] he touched on the economic question which had been
opened in its most formidable shape by the foundation of Lassalle's
Workingmen's Union and the publication, in the previous year, of
Marx's "Das Kapital." This led him to a melodramatic Jewish interlude.

Two of his characters, a Jewish Social Democrat named Lasali and a
scientific dreamer named Faust, overhear the proceedings of a secret
assembly of the "Elect of Israel," held once in every century round
the tomb of a mythical "Holy Rabbi" named Simeon ben Jehudah in the
ancient Jewish cemetery at Prague. The conclave is pictured as engaged
in the worship of the Golden Calf,[31] which, we are told, has been
preserved as the profoundest mystery of the Jewish Cabala by which the
Jews may eventually secure their domination over all the nations of
the earth. The practical application of the principles of this cultus
is discussed in a long series of cynical speeches, which are in close
agreement with the hypotheses of Gougenot des Mousseaux and similar
writers. The Jews are to work with gold and the Press for the
subversion of Christianity, and they are to act as a universal
disturbing and demoralising instrument, so that in the fulness of time
they may establish the Jewish Universal Dominion on the ruins of
Christian society. When on the stroke of midnight this uncanny
conventicle breaks up, Lasali solemnly pledges himself to his friend
Faust to fight the hideous materialism of his co-religionists with the
ideals of Social Democracy.[32]

This was the _editio princeps_ of a number of forged anti-Semitic
documents, of which the Nilus Protocols are the latest redaction. They
differ among themselves in detail, according to the varying stages of
the evolution of the political and economic struggle, but in their
broad lines they are constant to the original presentation of their
case by Goedsche.

The first forgeries, in which Goedsche's avowed fiction was
transformed into protocols or reports of alleged Jewish confessions,
were produced early in the eighties by the more irresponsible elements
of the German anti-Semitic movement then in process of formation by
Treitschke and Stoecker in Germany, and were widely circulated as
broadsheets. In 1893 the same material was worked up simultaneously by
two German anti-Semitic papers, the _Deutsch-soziale Blaetter_ and the
_Antisemitische Korrespondenz_, and published as an authentic speech
delivered by a Jewish Rabbi at a secret meeting of his disciples held
in the Jewish cemetery at Prague.[33] The source of this fabrication
was placed beyond doubt by a thoughtless editorial statement that it
was extracted from a work written by an eminent Englishman named "Sir
John Retcliffe," and entitled "Memoirs of the Politico-Historical
Events of the Last Ten Years." Needless to say, this book is as
apocryphal as Retcliffe himself, the alleged speech being chiefly a
condensed paraphrase of Goedsche's avowed fiction. There is, however,
one important deviation from the original which brings it nearer to
the Nilus text, the Jews being pictured not as divided into
anti-Christian Materialists and Socialists, but as being all
simulators of Socialism and Anarchism for their own revolutionary
purposes while still remaining, among themselves, devotees of the
Golden Calf, with all its moral, or rather immoral, implications. In
1901 a literal Czech translation of this precious protocol, but
without the acknowledgment of indebtedness to "Retcliffe," was
published in Prague under the title "A Rabbi on the Goyim."[34] It was
immediately confiscated by the police on the ground that it was
calculated to disturb the peace, but the anti-Semites revenged
themselves by incorporating the whole text in an interpellation to
the Minister of Justice, which was brought forward by the deputy
Brzenovsky in the Austrian Reichsrath on March 13, 1901, and gave rise
to a lively debate.[35] It was not heard of again until 1911, when it
was translated into French--this time with the "Retcliffe"
acknowledgment--by M. Kalixt de Wolski, and published together with a
_rechauffe_ of the more notorious forgeries of Braafmann and
Lutostansky.[36] Finally, in 1912 the anti-Semitic Press in Germany
republished it in a new form. Instead of an alleged historical
document, it now appeared as a piece of news--a stenographic report of
a speech delivered by a "Jewish Rabbi" at a Jewish Congress held at
Lemberg.[37] Anyone who takes the trouble, however, to make the
comparison will find that it is a textual _precis_ of the speeches
made by the Golden Calf worshippers in Goedsche's "Biarritz."

It is consoling to note that none of these scandalous fabrications
made any durable appeal to the relatively sober mentality of those
happy pre-war days. No reputable newspaper noticed them. Even M.
Drumont, while appropriating all the theories of Gougenot des
Mousseaux in his "France Juive"--without acknowledgment, by the
way--does not mention Goedsche or any of his malicious plunderers.

Now it needs but a very cursory glance at these forgeries and their
raw material in the treatises of the literary scaremongers to perceive
at once the fraud which has been practised on the public by Nilus's
book. But before I press this point home, let us see whether Nilus
himself has any reasonable explanation to offer of the _provenance_ of
his documents. It should be borne in mind that these documents consist
of a number of so-called "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," in
which, as in the Goedsche romance, certain Jewish teachers are made to
avow to their disciples the dark designs of Jewry for the corruption
and subjugation of Christendom. Nilus does not refuse to say how he
came by these Protocols. On the contrary he gives us no fewer than
three explanations. Unfortunately for him, they are not only elusive
and incredibly melodramatic, but they are also hopelessly
contradictory. Two of them will be found in the English edition.
According to one, the Protocols came from a deceased friend unnamed,
who received them from a woman, also unnamed, who stole them from "one
of the most influential and most highly initiated leaders of
Freemasonry ... at the close of a secret meeting of the initiated in
France."[38] According to the other, there was no woman intermediary
and no despoiled French Freemason, but the whole business was done by
the deceased friend himself, who rifled the safes of "the Headquarter
Offices of the Society of Zion in France."[39] The inconsistency of
these two stories may conceivably be explained, but it is not so easy
to account for the third story, which Nilus relates in a third and
enlarged edition of his work published in 1911. Here he tells us that
the documents came not from France, but from Switzerland, that they
were not Judeo-Masonic, but Zionist, and that they were the secret
Protocols of the Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897.[40] From
these conflicting statements it is perfectly clear that Nilus is not a
witness of truth, and the damaging conclusion suggested by a
comparison of his Protocols with the Goedsche fiction and its progeny
of forgeries becomes irresistible.

The Protocols are, in short, an amplified imitation of Goedsche's
handiwork adapted to the circumstances of the Russian Revolution of
1905. Whether it was made direct from the melodramatic text of
"Biarritz" is doubtful. Had Nilus worked with that document his
credulous mysticism would assuredly not have resisted its Golden Calf
theory, of which he is refreshingly innocent. On the other hand, he
does adopt the blending of the Materialist and Social Democratic
elements which are separate and conflicting in Goedsche, but which,
with the exclusion of the Golden Calf, were the chief points of
difference between the Czech forgery of 1901 and its Goedsche
original. It therefore seems probable that it was with the Czech text
that Nilus operated, and this is confirmed by his own avowal that the
"manuscript" which first made him acquainted with the alleged
Protocols was given to him in 1901, the year in which the Czech
pamphlet was published.[41]

In his main ideas Nilus followed this pamphlet very closely, but
borrows, or, rather, purloins, additional matter, especially in regard
to the Freemasons, from Gougenot des Mousseaux. He also annexes
political and economic ideas on a large scale from modern Russian
reactionary writers and from certain early Bolshevist programme-mongers.
How closely his main thesis follows that of the Czech-Goedsche
pamphlet is shown by the following parallel, in which both explain how
the Jews hope to accomplish their fell purpose by simulating sympathy
with the proletariat and leading it into destructive, and eventually
suicidal, political revolution:--

  THE CZECH GOEDSCHE.                NILUS.

  "Our people are conservative,      "We intend to appear as though
  faithful to the religious          we were the liberators of the
  ceremonies and customs which       labouring man come to free him
  have been bequeathed to us by      from his oppression, when we
  our ancestors, but our             shall suggest to him to join
  interest exacts that we should     the ranks of our armies of
  simulate a zeal for the social     socialists, anarchists, and
  questions which are the order      communists.... We govern the
  of the day, especially those       masses by making use of
  which deal with the                feelings of jealousy and
  amelioration of the condition      hatred kindled by oppression
  of workmen. In reality our         and need.... When the time
  efforts should be directed to      comes for our Worldly Ruler to
  capturing this movement of         be crowned we will see to it
  public opinion. The blindness      that by the same means--that
  of the masses, their               is to say, by making use of
  propensity to yield themselves     the mob--we will destroy
  to oratory as empty as it is       everything that may prove to
  sonorous, makes of them an         be an obstacle in our way....
  easy prey and a docile             The populace in its ignorance
  instrument of popularity and       blindly believes in printed
  credit. We shall find without      words and in erroneous
  difficulty among our own           delusions which have been duly
  people the expression of such      inspired by us.... The mob is
  factitious sentiments and as       used to listen to us who pay
  much eloquence as sincere          it for its attention and
  Christians find in their           obedience. By these means we
  enthusiasm. We must as much as     shall create such a blind
  possible sustain the               force that it will never be
  proletariat and bring it           capable of taking any decision
  within the reach of those who      without the guidance of our
  have money at their disposal.      agents placed by us for the
  By this means we shall be able     purpose of leading them".[42]
  to rouse the masses whenever
  we please, to lead them into
  upheavals and revolutions.
  Each of these catastrophes
  will advance by a long stride
  our own racial interests and
  will rapidly bring us nearer
  to our one great end--that of
  reigning over all the earth as
  it has been promised to us by
  our Father Abraham."

It would be easy to quote many other equally deadly parallels, but
this one will assuredly suffice to show that, in their main argument,
at any rate, the Protocols are not what they pretend to be--that is an
actual statement of secret Jewish teaching by a Jew--but that they are
not even an echo of Jewish ideas, seeing that they are derived from a
Gentile forgery based on a work of confessedly Gentile imagination.

When we examine Nilus's added matter the revelation of fraud becomes
still more remarkable. The main difference between Nilus and his
German and Czech fore-runners is that he works out in detail the
alleged Autocratic and Bolshevist philosophy of his Elders of Zion. He
pictures these fabulous personages as genuine believers in Autocracy,
but more intent on Jewish political domination than on merely
mercenary exploitation. Accordingly, he attributes to them the design
of practising a sort of State Bolshevism when their domination shall
have been accomplished--that is to say, the creation of a paternal
Jewish autocracy basing itself on a carefully controlled communistic
system. It is by this ingenious device that he endeavours to show that
the Jews are the arch-enemy at both extremes of the social organism.

Now, whence comes the autocratic philosophy he puts into the mouths of
his Jewish Elders? It is exclusively a Russian doctrine. Nilus knows
this very well, and he does not waste time in the hopeless task of
finding counterblasts to democracy in Jewish political literature. He
goes straight to the fountain-head of Russian obscurantism in the
person of the late Procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantine Petrovich
Pobyedonoszeff! This expedient has the appearance almost of a
practical joke, for Pobyedonoszeff was not only a pure Muscovite and a
fanatical Greek Christian, but so conspicuous an anti-Semite and
oppressor of Jews, Stundists, and other Russian allogenes that he
earned for himself the sobriquet of "the modern Torquemada." Nilus's
Jewish Antichrist is, in short, nothing more than the austere
super-Christian Procurator masquerading, like Edward Alleyn's
Barabas, in a false nose and a prodigious property beard.

The evidence of this jumps to the eyes if we take the trouble to
compare the first part of "The Jewish Peril" with Mr. Robert Crozier
Long's translation of Pobyedonoszeff's "Reflections of a Russian
Statesman,"[43] especially the chapters on "The New Democracy" and
"The Great Falsehood of our Time." Many parallel passages might be
quoted, but it will, perhaps, suffice if I extract one, fundamental to
both writers, in which Nilus makes the Jewish Elder plagiarise the
argument of the Christian Procurator, in part almost textually:--

  POBYEDONOSZEFF.                        NILUS.

  "Forever extending its base,           "It suffices to give the
  the new Democracy now aspires          populace self-government for a
  to universal suffrage. By this         short period for this populace
  means, _the political power            to become a disorganised
  would be shattered into a              rabble.... Is it possible for
  number of infinitesimal bits,          the mass to discriminate
  of which each citizen acquires         quietly and without jealousies
  a single one_. What will he do         to administer the affairs of
  with it then; how will he              State? Can they be a defence
  employ it?... _Each vote               against a foreign foe? This is
  representing an inconsiderable         impossible, _as a plan broken
  fragment of power, by itself           up into as many parts as there
  signifies nothing_.... The             are minds in the mass loses
  extension of the right to              its value, and therefore
  participate in elections is            becomes unintelligible and
  regarded as progress, and as           unworkable_. Alone an autocrat
  the conquest of freedom by             can conceive vast plans
  democratic theorists who hold          clearly, assigning its proper
  that the more numerous the             part to everything in the
  participants in political              mechanism of the machine of
  rights, the greater is the             State. Hence we conclude that
  probability that all will              it is expedient for the
  employ this right in the               welfare of the country that
  interests of the public                the Government of the same
  welfare. Experience proves a           should be in the hands of one
  very different thing. The              responsible person. Without
  history of mankind bears               absolute despotism
  witness that the most                  civilisation cannot exist, for
  necessary and fruitful reforms         civilisation is capable of
  emanated from the supreme will         being promoted only under the
  of statesmen or from a                 protection of the ruler,
  minority enlightened by lofty          whoever he may be, and not at
  ideas and deep knowledge, and          the hands of the masses".[45]
  that, on the contrary, the
  extension of the
  representative principle is
  accompanied by an abasement of
  political ideas".[44]

In the second part of "The Jewish Peril," where the Elders of Zion are
made to expound their State Bolshevism, the sources are not quite so
clear. It is practically certain, however, that they are not Jewish.
Had Nilus waited a few years he would, perhaps, have been able to
quote convinced Bolshevist writers of Jewish birth like Radek and
Zinovieff, but when he wrote in 1905 there were no such exponents of
pure Leninism. The great split of 1903 found all the leading
Russo-Jewish Socialists, such as Martoff, Axelrod, Trotsky, Martinoff,
Liber, Dahn, and the whole of the Bund, ranged with the Mensheviks
against Lenin.[46] The result was that, in reproducing Bolshevist
ideas, Nilus must have been dependent on Gentile pamphleteers. It is
not easy to identify these ephemeral writings with certainty, but many
interesting parallels of this section of the Protocols may be found in
Bucharin's "Programme of the Communists," which codifies all the early
Bolshevist literature.[47] And Bucharin, be it noted, is just as
little a Jew as was Pobyedonoszeff. This, of course, explains the
alleged prophetic character of the Protocols which the _Morning Post_
and its friends hold to be convincing evidence of their genuineness.
If the Bolsheviks have acted on some of the principles attributed the
Elders of Zion, they have done so not because they were of Jewish
origin, but because they were exclusively the work of Lenin and his
bodyguard of Gentile proletarians.

So much for the literary history of the Protocols. Their political
history is not less discreditable. They were not published because
they were discovered--whether in the pages of Goedsche or
elsewhere--but they were discovered because they were wanted for the
ignoble purpose of a pogrom-weapon. In the first edition of his book,
published in 1901, Nilus knew nothing of them, but was absorbed by the
more abstract aspects of the problem of Antichrist. In 1905 occurred
the Russian Revolution, and this was followed by the incendiary
conspiracy of the Okhrana to stir up pogroms all over Russia and drown
the new Constitution in a welter of Jewish blood.[48] Nilus appears
to have been employed by the Okhrana in this wicked campaign. At any
rate, the Protocols first appeared at this date in the shape of small
pamphlets or broadsheets and they were only afterwards collected and
incorporated in a second edition of Nilus's work as a _denouement_ of
his theory of the Judeo-Masonic nature of Antichrist. Nor has their
_role_ as a pogrom-weapon been confined to the year 1905. Quite
recently abstracts of them were widely circulated in Denikin's and
Koltchak's armies. They were printed in the Eparchial Library at
Rostoff, and were distributed by the remnants of the organisation of
Black Hundreds known as the Union of the Russian People. How effective
they were for their murderous purpose we know from the horrible
massacres of inoffensive Jews and Jewesses which dogged the foot-steps
of Denikin's armies throughout South Russia.

But this was not the only sinister movement with which the Protocols
seem to have been associated. The year in which they were first
published in Russia was also the year of a very serious Russo-German
intrigue against the Triple Entente; and here again these
Protocols--or, rather, their argument--appear as one of the main
weapons of the plotters.

It will be remembered that in July, 1905, the basis of an anti-British
Alliance was secretly agreed upon by the Tsar and the Kaiser at
Bjoerkoe.[49] A few months later, while the Treaty was still
incomplete, Count Lamsdorf proposed to the Tsar that advantage should
be taken of "the new friendly relations" with Germany to conclude an
agreement between the two countries for combating the alleged Jewish
and Masonic peril.[50] Now, the secret Memorandum in which this
precious scheme was set forth, and which the Tsar formally approved in
January, 1906, is virtually a reproduction of the anti-Semitic
argument which the alleged "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are
designed to prove. It is true that the Protocols themselves are not
mentioned, but Count Lamsdorf is none the less positive, with the
fabricators of those documents, that the Jews are the soul of the
Revolutionary movement in Europe, that their "principal aim is the
all-around triumph of anti-Christian and anti-Monarchist Jewry," that
their millionaires subvention this movement with "gigantic pecuniary
means," and that they are abetted in this enterprise by the
Freemasons. The Protocols are, indeed, little more than a dramatic
version of Count Lamsdorf's Memorandum. It is difficult to resist the
conclusion that in some occult way--perhaps not so very
occult--Nilus's book was intended to serve the sinister ends of the
pro-German foreign policy of Count Lamsdorf in the same way as it
served the bloody purposes of the pogrom-mongers. It should be
especially noted in this connection that the book is as anti-British
as it is anti-Jewish, and that it was published in December, 1905,
that is to say, at the very time that the Tsar had the Lamsdorf scheme
under consideration.

The more recent history of the Protocols is even more unsavoury. It is
incredible, but it is nevertheless a fact, that these crazy forgeries
have played a part behind the scenes in the international combinations
for assisting the anti-Bolshevist reaction in Russia, which have
filled so much of the public mind during the last two years, and which
have cost this country close on L100,000,000. There was a moment when
the Great Powers were disposed to leave the Russians to fight out
their quarrels among themselves. Various objections to this policy
were urged by the friends of Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin, and
among them was the argument that there was, in fact, no civil war in
Russia, that Bolshevism was not Russian, but exclusively alien, the
work of international Jews who were themselves the instruments of a
world-wide and deep-laid Jewish conspiracy against Christendom and the
political order of Europe. Bolshevism was, in short, a European
menace. Russia was pictured as the first instalment of the Jewish
conquest of Europe, which had already sent its _eclaireurs_ to Berlin,
Dresden, Vienna, and Budapest, whence they were advancing to the Rhine
and the Alps. In support of this argument, Russian Intelligence
Officers, armed with doctored typewritten translations of the Nilus
Protocols, with the anti-British passages carefully expunged, were
sent to London, Paris, Rome, and Washington, where they circulated
this precious literature confidentially among Cabinet Ministers, heads
of public departments, and persons of influence in society and
journalism. That this campaign was not fruitless is attested by many
curious facts, which, unfortunately, cannot be more particularly
referred to at this moment without a breach of confidence. Overt
evidence of the mischief that was wrought is, however, not wanting. It
may be found, for example, in certain oracular utterances of Mr.
Winston Churchill in a Sunday paper, in the anti-Semitic outbursts of
the _Morning Post_, and the itching of the _Times_ and the _Spectator_
to do likewise, and, finally, in the discreditable propaganda leaflets
distributed in the interior of Russia by the air service of the
British armies at Archangel and Murmansk.[51]

Why the Protocols were circulated thus secretly is clear. Their
political purpose had nothing to gain, and, indeed, everything to lose
from public criticism and discussion. Nevertheless, they leaked out. A
copy got into the hands of an official of the United States Department
of Justice, and he, anxious for further information, and following
some tactless office rule, sent it to the President of an important
Jewish organisation in New York for his observations. The President
promptly replied that it was a forgery of a very familiar type, and
took no further notice of it. In June, 1919, the present writer, while
in Paris, heard of the circulation of the Protocols as a pogrom
pamphlet in Denikin's country, but he also attached no special
importance to it. Later on came the first intimation of the proposed
publication of the Protocols in Western Europe. It came in very
characteristic shape. One day the members of a certain Jewish
Delegation in Paris received a visit from a mysterious Lithuanian who
had been connected with the Russian Secret Police. He professed
himself anxious to serve the Jewish community, and said that he was in
a position to prevent the publication of an exceedingly dangerous
book, which, if it saw the light, would probably involve the whole
house of Israel in ruin. Quite naturally, he wished to be paid for
this service, but the sum was a mere trifle, a matter of L10,000. He
was asked for a sight of the volume, and he produced it. It was, of
course, "the Protocols." Needless to say, no business was done. It was
possibly only a coincidence that in the following December a German
edition was published under the title "Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von
Zion," and two months later the English edition saw the light under
the title "The Jewish Peril: Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."
The German and English publication would have been simultaneous but
for the fact that difficulty was experienced in finding a reputable
London publishing house to take the Protocols seriously.

One further word about the English edition. Its history and aims are
much less clear than those of its Russian original, owing partly to
the circumspect anonymity in which its sponsors have elected to veil
themselves. It is inconceivable that it is intended to stir up pogroms
in this country, though the suggestion is not obscurely made in recent
articles in the _Times_ and the _Spectator_. More probably--as has
already been hinted--it is part of a German intrigue to prejudice the
recent German general elections in favour of the Militarist
Reactionaries and perhaps even to justify the forcible upsetting of
the German Government by means of another Kapp _Putsch_. Here is the
evidence for this startling conjecture.

The German Reactionaries have lately been putting all their money on
anti-Semitism. Their publicity agencies in Charlottenburg and Munich
have flooded the country with pamphlets denouncing the Republican
Government as a Judaized Junta, the instrument of a far-reaching
Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to ruin Germany and to involve the whole of
Christian and Monarchical Europe in her fate. This campaign has lately
become official, and a paragraph was inserted in the Electoral
Manifesto of the German Nationalists--the party of Kapp and
Lutzow--formally adopting anti-Semitism as a plank in their platform.
One of the aims of the party is to secure foreign sympathy and help,
and they hope to do this by finding a common ground in anti-Semitism.
In these circumstances the publication of "The Jewish Peril" in
England wears a disturbing significance, but it becomes much more
disturbing when we find that the German edition was published almost
simultaneously with it, with a dedication appealing not only to the
German people, but also to "The Princes of Europe." The object was
clearly to get English support, and unfortunately the response was not
long in coming. On May 8th the _Times_ was inveigled into publishing
an article expressing alarm at the revelations of the Protocols and
calling for an investigation. The delight of the German Reactionaries
knew no bounds. It was voiced by Count Reventlow in a long article in
the _Deutsche Tageszeitung_ of May 17 welcoming the _Times's_
acceptance of the Jewish peril as an indication that English public
opinion was beginning to recognise the righteousness of Kapp and Co.
in their resistance to the Ebert _regime_ and what the Count called
the "pax Judaeica."[52]

Whether the translators and editors of "The Jewish Peril" have
consciously lent themselves to this intrigue, which is part of the
German Reactionary plot to upset the Treaty of Versailles and perhaps
plunge Europe into another war, cannot be said. But assuredly the
worst suspicions are permissible so long as these gentlemen elect to
skulk in the _coulisses_ and shrink from responsibility for their
scrubby handiwork. Even Titus Oates had the courage of his forgeries.


FOOTNOTES:

[24] Lond., Eyre and Spottiswoode, Ltd., 1920. _Morning Post_, July 16
and 17, 1920.

[25] See Isaac D'Israeli, "Curiosities of Literature," Vol. III., pp.
143-150.

[26] _Anabaptisticum_, etc. (1702). See particularly the tract entitled
_Erschroeckliche Bruderschafft der Alten und Neuen_.

[27] Preface to Schieferl's edition (Dresden, 1893).

[28] As a matter of fact, he was not the first worker in this field,
though he was the first literary ancestor of Nilus. The idea of the
dramatic treatment of a Jewish conspiracy against Christian Society was
worked out by the Polish poet Krassinsky in his _Nie-Boska Komedya_
("The Undivine Comedy"), published in 1834. It differs in scope and
detail from Goedsche. Its attack on the Jews was strongly censured by
Adam Mickiewicz.

[29] _Meyer's Konversations-Lexikon_ (1897), Vol. VII., _sub. voc._
Goedsche and Waldeck. _Stenographischer Bericht ueber die Verhandlungen
in der Anklage gegen Dr. Waldeck_ (Berlin, 1849).

[30] In four volumes, Berlin, 1868.

[31] It was a custom of some mediaeval German Jews to place the "first
fruits" of their cattle to grass in the cemeteries. This gave rise to a
popular belief that the idolatrous cultus of the Golden Calf still
lingered among them. (Schudt: _Juedische Merckwuerdigkeiten_ (1714), Vol.
II., p. 376.)

[32] _Biarritz_, Vol. I., pp. 130-180. Further characteristic
references to the Jewish question will be found in a later novel of the
Retcliffe series entitled _Um die Weltherrschaft_, Vol. I., pp.
309-310, 338, 360, 415; Vol. II., pp. 55, 56, 63; Vol. III., pp. 127,
130; Vol. IV., pp. 190-191, 467; Vol. V., pp. 22, 83-84, 206.

[33] _Berichte ueber die 3 Generalversammlung des Vereins zur Abwehr des
Antisemitismus_ (Vienna, 1893), pp. 8, 9.

[34] Hebrew for "Gentiles."

[35] _Stenographische Protokolle des Hauses der Abgeordneten des
Oesterreichischen Reichsrathes_ (1901), pp. 1282-1284.

[36] Wolski: _La Russie Juive_ (Paris, 1911), pp. 7-19.

[37] The text is quoted by Meister: _Judas Schuldbuch_, p. 155.

[38] "The Jewish Peril," p. III.

[39] _Ibid._, p. 88.

[40] _Berliner Tageblatt_, May 18, 1920. The story is repeated with
further variations, in the fourth edition, published in 1917, extracts
from which are given in the _Morning Post_, August 12, 1920. In this
edition Nilus quotes certain enigmatic statements of the late Theodor
Herzl as proof of a secret Jewish teaching. It happens that the
correspondence with Herzl on this subject is in the possession of the
present writer. It has nothing to do with a secret Jewish teaching.

[41] Fourth edit., cap. III. (Quoted by _Morning Post_, Aug. 12, 1920.)

[42] "The Jewish Peril," pp. 12, 13, 14, 32.

[43] Lond., 1898.

[44] Pobyedonoszeff: "Reflections" (English edit.), pp. 26, 27, 28.
Allowance must be made for the different styles and qualities of the
two translations.

[45] "The Jewish Peril," pp. 2, 5.

[46] Mautner: _Der Bolschewismus_ (Stuttgart, 1920), p. 95. See also
Landau-Aldanov: _Lenine_ (Paris, 1920), pp. 31-32. It is amusing to
note that the _Morning Post_ (July 21, 1920) counts almost all these
Jewish Mensheviks as Bolsheviks.

[47] The date of the original Russian edition is unknown to the present
writer, but a German edition was published at Zurich in 1918.

[48] Semenoff: "The Russian Government and the Massacres" (Lond.,
1907).

[49] "The Nikky-Willy Correspondence," _Times_, Sept. 4, 1917; _Daily
Telegraph_, Sept. 4, 27, and 29, 1917; and _Morning Post_, Sept. 15,
1917.

[50] For Russian text of Count Lamsdorf's proposal see Vol. VI. of
"Secret Documents," published by the Soviet Commissariat of Foreign
Affairs. An English translation with an introduction appears in Wolf:
"Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question" (London, 1919), pp. 54-62.

[51] These leaflets were very promptly withdrawn as soon as the
attention of His Majesty's Government was called to them.

[52] Besides Count Reventlow's article see a very light-giving article
entitled "Reventlow und die Weisen von Zion" in the _Berliner
Tageblatt_, May 18, 1920.




III

JEWS AND BOLSHEVISM


The final argument of the anti-Semitic scaremongers is the
Judeo-Bolshevik bogey. The _Morning Post_ theory of "World Unrest" may
prove difficult of assimilation to matter-of-fact minds, and the
authenticity of the Nilus Protocols may be suspect, but the Bolshevism
of the Jews is asserted to be an incontrovertible fact, which proves
that both the theory and its documents are morally justifiable. Were
it not for its very tragical possibilities, the evocation of this
bogey would be a fit subject for mirth, or, at best, a problem for the
folk-lorist or the student of corporate hallucination. As it is, it is
a very serious matter, seeing that the lives of many thousands of
innocent persons are jeopardised by it.

The bogey takes the specific form of a charge against the Jews of
Russia and Poland that they are for the most part Bolsheviks, and that
the Bolshevist revolution was engineered by them and is still
controlled and directed by them.[53] The only evidence cited in
support of it is that Trotsky and a few of the more prominent
Bolshevist commissaries are men of Jewish birth, and that a similar
element on an even more restricted scale is found in certain of the
Soviets. But those men are no more Jews than Lenin, Lunacharsky,
Chicherin, and the great bulk of the Russian Bolsheviks are
Christians. It would, indeed, be just as reasonable to say that the
mainstay of Russian Bolshevism is to be found in American and British
Christendom because it has found sympathisers in Mr. Bullitt and Mr.
Steffens, in Mr. Goode, Mr. Price, Mr. Russell, Mr. Ransome, Mr. Hunt,
and many other Americans and Englishmen of Christian birth.

The appearance of the bogey at this moment is not difficult to
understand. There has always been at the back of the anti-Semitic mind
an uneasy feeling that the Jews are, as the old law books say,
_perpetui inimici Regis et Religionis_. Their participation in the
bourgeois Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 gave political point to this
superstition, and ever since it has been a favourite theory of the
more fanatical reactionaries that the whole Democratic movement in
Europe is a Jewish conspiracy for the subversion of Christianity and
Christian society. In this respect the _Morning Post_ theory is, as
has already been shown, not new. In Russia it became early an
expedient of reactionary tactics. To denounce revolution on its merits
was difficult, but to denounce it as a Jewish conspiracy against the
Throne and the Altar was always calculated to impress large classes of
the population who otherwise might not have been indisposed to look
indulgently on a great political change. This was the cue of all the
incendiary appeals of the Okhrana against the Revolution of 1905.[54]

Thus, when Bolshevism arose, it was quite in the line of traditional
Russian policy to denounce it as the work of the Jews. From the
reactionary camps of Deniken and Koltchak, and even from the Allied
armies in the North, where the Intelligence and Propaganda Services
were necessarily in the hands of Russian officers of the old Tsarist
_regime_, the country was flooded with pamphlets and broadsheets
declaring that Bolshevism was a Jewish plot, and that the aim of those
who were making war on it was not to fight their Russian brothers, but
to deliver them from their Jewish bondage. It was, however, in Germany
that the bogey was adapted for consumption in Western Europe. The old
Junker anti-Semitism received a great impulse from the collapse of
thrones which followed the Armistice of 1918. All the revolutionary
movements were at once attributed by them to the Jews, and, by way of
showing the victorious Allies the danger they were courting by
tolerating them, bloodcurdling pictures of Russian Bolshevism as the
first fruits of an international Jewish conspiracy were issued from
the presses of the anti-Semitic society known as _Deutschland's
Erneuerung_, in Munich.[55] A circle of Russian Monarchist refugees in
Berlin founded a weekly paper called _The Sunbeam_ to help in the holy
work. It was in the columns of this journal that translations of
extracts from Nilus's forged Protocols first appeared.[56] Early in
1919 the themes of these imbecile ephemerides were gathered up and
co-ordinated in bulky volumes by Baron Hans von Liebig,[57] by Dr.
Friedrich Wichtl, and by a person calling himself "Wilhelm
Meister."[58] These writers were the final artificers of the bogey as
we now know it, Trotsky being represented in their pages as the
conscious instrument not only of the Jewish Rabbinate and of Jewish
finance, but also of the secretly Judaised Masonic Lodges. A curious
restatement of this apocalypse will be found in an anonymous pamphlet,
entitled "Le Bolshevisme," which was printed in Paris last year by the
Jesuits of the Rue Garanciere.[59] The French, however, have been very
loth to touch this unclean product of German _Kultur_.

We need only glance at the leading tenets of the Bolsheviks to realise
how stupid all this is--indeed, how impossible it is that Bolshevism
should find even an appreciable measure of sympathy in the Jewish
community. Lenin, Trotsky, and their associates are not only extreme
Communists, but are also avowed Atheists. On the other hand, the great
bulk of the Jews of Russia are extremely orthodox members of the
Synagogue, who hold in horror every symptom of Atheism. The strength of
this element was recently estimated by M. Paderewski himself at 75 per
cent. In their economic affiliation these Jews are not less hostile to
Bolshevism. They belong in an overwhelming proportion to the upper and
middle-class bourgeoisie. Moreover, the Jew is instinctively and by all
his traditions an individualist. It has been possible to found under
the great names of Lamennais, Kingsley, Maurice, Hughes, Bishop
Ketteler, and others a school of Christian Communism seeking its
sanctions in the teachings of orthodox Christianity. No such school in
the strictly economic sense exists or is possible in the Jewish Church.
Marx and Lassalle ceased to be Jews long before they became Socialists,
and, in so far as the Jewish proletariat which has arisen in Russia and
Poland under the stress of exceptional and ephemeral conditions is
Socialistic, it is notoriously remote from the Synagogue--as from every
other kind of "clericalism"--and impatient of its control.

But, it is said, the Jews must be held responsible for Bolshevism
because Bolshevism is only applied Marxism, and Marx was a Jew. I have
already pointed out that, strictly speaking, Marx was not a Jew, but,
even supposing he were, that would not make Bolshevism a Jewish
creation, seeing that in point of fact it is, in its main lines, not
even Marxist. There is so much loose thinking on this question that it
may be well to indicate--however briefly--the fundamental differences
between the teachings of Marx and Lenin. In the first place, Marx was
a Democrat, while Lenin is confessedly an Oligarch. Democracy is
axiomatic with Marx, the foundation of all his doctrine. Lenin, on the
other hand, derides the mere counting of heads. He is, as he would put
it, for the supremacy of truth, whatever the number of its disciples.
This vital difference affects the systems of the two men at all
essential points. Thus, while Marx teaches that the Dictatorship of
the Proletariat should be the outcome of a Democratic Republic based
on Universal Suffrage, Lenin rejects Universal Suffrage, and bases the
Dictatorship on a Guild or Soviet Republic. Again, Marx stands for
Revolution by Law in all Democratic States, while Lenin stands for
Revolution by Force, whatever the constitution of the State. Nor does
this apply only to revolutions, for while Marx holds that the
authority of the State must, whenever possible, be exercised by
peaceful means, Lenin teaches that Force is inherent in the State and
its exercise unavoidable. This leads Lenin to the view of Robespierre
that even the Terror is in a sense mystically sanctified--a view of
which Marx never dreamt in his most daring moments. Finally, contrast
the conceptions of the State as set forth by the two men. Both, of
course, are for the State, but while Marx pictures it, after the
decision of the Class War, as composed of the whole Democracy seeking
the conciliation of its conflicting elements, Lenin would confine it
to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, even though the other classes
might be in the majority.[60] There is, of course, much to be said for
both theories within the ring-fence of Socialist polemics, but I am
not concerned at this moment with their respective merits. All I want
to show is that Marx cannot be held responsible for Bolshevism as we
know it, and that if the alleged Jewishness of Bolshevism rests on the
theory that it has any essential affinity with Marxism it is
singularly unconvincing.

The case against the bogey is, however, not limited to these
generalisations. It may be said, while the upper and middle classes
in Jewry are probably free from Bolshevism, this is not the case with
the Jewish proletariat. If not orthodox Jews, they certainly profess a
strong Jewish nationalism, and if from them Bolshevism draws its main
strength, then Jewry must bear the responsibility. On this point,
happily, very definite information is available. First, with regard to
the leaders. Bolshevism was founded in 1903, through a split among the
Russian Socialists, which took the form of a revolt against Lenin. Who
led the revolt? The Jew Martoff, and he was supported by all the most
conspicuous Jews in the party, including Trotsky himself.[61] They
were followed by the great bulk of the rank-and-file of so-called
Jewish Socialists. How true this is, can be shown by an analysis of
the Leninite party fourteen years later. In the autumn of 1917 the
Bolsheviks themselves published a statistical analysis of the
constituents of the Soviets, with special regard to their geographical
and ethnographical distribution. It was there shown that the
Bolsheviks had a clear majority over the Mensheviks, or non-Bolshevist
Socialists, and that they were far more largely composed of pure
Russian elements than the Mensheviks. Their greatest strength was
found in the districts of Petrograd, Moscow, the Baltic Provinces, the
Volga, the Ural, and Asiatic Russia, where the Great-Russian working
masses dominate. On the other hand, the Mensheviks were almost
entirely confined to the western and south-western provinces, the Don
district, and the Caucasus, where the chief non-Russian races are
found. Here the return for the Jewish Pale of Settlement that is, the
provinces in which 95 per cent. of the Jews of Russia and Poland
reside--is most significant. The number of organised Mensheviks is
given at 18,000, while of organised Bolsheviks there is no trace
whatever in the whole region. The other non-Russian districts in these
provinces were less fortunate, for in the south-western governments
the proportion of Bolsheviks to Mensheviks was 8 to 11, in the Don
district 18 to 29, and in the Caucasus 1 to 5. The statistics here,
however, show clearly that the strength of Bolshevism was always in an
inverse ratio to the strength of the local Jewish population.[62]

Another important piece of evidence is to be found in the attitude of
the Jewish "Bund," which is the main organisation of Jewish workmen in
Poland and the Pale of Settlement. From the beginning of the Russian
Revolution the "Bund," avowedly Socialist, threw all its strength on
the side of the Mensheviks. The most passionate struggles in the
Congress of Soviets in 1917 were those waged between Lenin, on behalf
of the Bolsheviks, and Liber, the "Bund" leader, on behalf of the
Mensheviks. Liber and his colleague Dahn were at that time among the
staunchest supporters of the policy of the Entente in Russia. To this
day the great majority of the members of the "Bund" have remained
anti-Bolshevist in doctrine, although under the pressure of the
administration and for other political reasons which have appealed
equally to many ex-Tsarist generals and Christian Conservatives, they
have lately pledged their allegiance to the Lenin _regime_. In
political thought they are still numbered among the most ardent
supporters of the great coalition of Russian Mensheviks, which has its
headquarters in Stockholm, and--another significant fact--is captained
by a Jew, the well-known Socialist writer Paul Axelrod. There are
probably quite as many Jewish leaders in the anti-Bolshevist coalition
as there are Jewish Commissaries among the Bolsheviks.

Nor are the upper and middle-classes of Russian and Polish Jewry
merely passive spectators of the struggle. Politically they belong in
an overwhelming proportion to the moderate Liberal party known as the
Cadets, and many of them are active in the councils and Press of that
party. The present leader of the Cadets, who succeeded Professor
Miliukoff, after his unhappy but temporary defection from the cause of
the Entente, is the distinguished Jewish lawyer M. Vinaver, equally
conspicuous for his devotion to his co-religionists and the cause of
ordered liberty in Russia. Admiral Koltchak and General Denikin, in
spite of their compromising anti-Semitic associates, had no more
strenuous supporter and no wiser counsellor than M. Vinaver. Another
eminent Jew who may frequently be seen in consultation with MM.
Sazonoff and Maklakoff at the Russian Delegation in Paris is Baron
Alexandre de Gunzburg, at one time the most conspicuous member of the
Jewish Community in Petrograd.

The anti-Semitic impression that Bolshevism is largely Jewish is,
however, not altogether a bad dream, but rather an optical delusion
which has been maliciously exaggerated. The so-called Jewish
Bolsheviks are, indeed, a corps of officers without an army, and the
anti-Semites have a little too hastily inferred the army. Even then
these officers are not of the first rank. We have heard a great deal
of "Jewish Commissars," and I find a notorious German anti-Semitic
book quoting Mr. Robert Wilton, of the _Times_, as its authority for
the statement that "of 384 People's Commissars who constitute the
Government only 13 are Russians, while 300 are Jews."[63] What are the
facts? The only officials in Soviet Russia who are authorised to hold
the rank of People's Commissars are the members of the Cabinet.[64]
These number 17,[65] and of them 16 are indisputably Gentiles, while
only one--Trotsky--is of Jewish birth. And Trotsky, be it remembered,
is a Jew who has publicly abjured the Jewish and all other religions,
and who is so little a Jew in other respects that at the Socialist
Congresses at the beginning of the century he led the cosmopolitans in
denunciation of the Jewish Nationalism of the Bund. To describe
Russian Bolshevism as Jewish because one member of Lenin's Council of
People's Commissars is an apostate Jew is obviously ludicrous. Lenin
might far more justly describe the anti-Bolshevism of Western Europe
as Jewish because two years ago the French Cabinet contained one
professing Jew and the British two. The other so-called Jewish
Commissars are all men of the second and lower ranks of officials
belonging exclusively either to the Civil Service or the Soviet
analogue of our municipal life. They are probably fairly numerous, but
in what may be called the second rank they do not number more than
ten at the outside.[66] The others may or may not be convinced
Bolsheviks. They are servants of the State who may have many other
motives for serving the Soviets than an enthusiasm for Lenin's
politics. Not every head of a Government Department or Chairman of a
County Council in England is to-day necessarily a Lloyd Georgian.
Trotsky has in his War Office and Corps of Officers probably as many
ex-Tsarist officers--including sixteen Generals[67]--as there are
"Jewish Commissars" in the whole Soviet Administration. And yet nobody
dreams of describing the Red Legions as a Tsarist army. These officers
are probably not even Bolsheviks. If we could know their motives we
should probably find that they were not very widely different from
those which actuate the "Jewish Commissars."

All this is not to say that there are no professing Jews in the
Bolshevist ranks, or that the number of indifferent and apostate Jews
who have thrown in their lot with the Soviets is quite negligible.
What is contended is that normally the Jew is intensely anti-pathetic
to Bolshevism, and that at the beginning of the Revolution relatively
very few Jews--even of those who are Jews by race only--rallied to the
call of Lenin. That this situation has changed during the last year is
not improbable. But with whom does the blame rest? If Jews have
reluctantly turned towards Bolshevism, it is because they have been
forced into it by the anti-Bolsheviks. They cannot but be alarmed by
the persistency and passion with which the charge of Bolshevism is
levelled at them, and the threats which come from all sides to avenge
in their persons the sins of Lenin and Trotsky. They have had a bloody
instalment of this St. Bartholomew in the pogroms of the Polish
borderlands and the Ukrainian plains. What wonder, then, if some of
them--and they can only be relatively very few--turn for protection to
the Soviets, especially in the lands where the Soviets rule?
Nevertheless, their aversion from Bolshevism in theory and practice
remains, and is, indeed, for the great majority of them insuperable.

One word in conclusion. If some of the charges against the Jews which
have been examined in the foregoing pages were not so utterly
unfounded as they prove to be, ample explanation and excuse might be
found in the high and sustained tragedy of Jewish history. When in
1848 Ludwig Boerne was reproached by a political colleague with the
excessiveness of his revolutionary zeal, he replied: "I was born a
slave, and hence I love freedom better than you do." Twenty centuries
of a terrible oppression has made of the Jews in Europe an element of
no small importance in all the struggles for popular liberties, but
throughout it all they have always remained a relatively conservative
force. This is most strikingly exemplified by their career in the
Russian Revolution. Human nature being what it is, it would not have
been surprising if all the Jews in Russia had become fanatical
Bolsheviks. The extravagances of Bolshevism are the natural reaction
against the cruelties of Tsarism, and the Jews suffered more bitterly
from those cruelties than any other section of the sorely tried
Russian people. And yet their innate moderation--what Disraeli rightly
diagnosed as their ineradicable attachment to Religion and
Property--has prevailed, and even among the lower classes, who were
proletariatised and driven to Socialism by the infamous May Laws,[68]
Bolshevism has found only few and reluctant recruits. The Jews, no
doubt, have their defects, very much in the same way as Christians,
but what Mr. Gladstone once called "incivism" is not one of them.


FOOTNOTES:

[53] _Morning Post_ articles on "The Cause of World Unrest," _passim_.
See particularly July 21, 1920.

[54] Semenoff, _op. cit._

[55] The chief members of this Society, which is as Anglophobe as it is
Judeophobe, are a brother of General Von Below and the renegade Houston
Stewart Chamberlain.

[56] S. Poliakoff in _La Tribune Juive_ (Paris), No. 21.

[57] _Der Betrug am Deutschen Volke_ (Munich, 1919).

[58] _Supra_, p. 6.

[59] It provoked an excellent reply by "Un Russe" entitled _Bolchevisme
et Judaisme_ (Paris, 1919).

[60] See on this subject the elaborate analysis of the two teachings in
Mautner, _op. cit._, pp. 120-296.

[61] Mautner (p. 95) and Landau-Aldanov (pp. 31-32), _op. cit._

[62] Report of the Commissar for National Economy reprinted from the
_Novaya Shisn_ in the _Bote_ (Stockholm), Dec. 6, 1917.

[63] Meister, _op. cit._, p. 192.

[64] "Constitution of the Russian Soviet Republic," Article 48.

[65] _Ibid._, Article 43.

[66] As the result of a careful analysis M. Poliakoff gives their names
as follows: Zinovieff, Radek, Sverdloff, Steklof-Nakhamkes, Litvinoff,
Larine, Kameneff, Ganetzki-Furstenberg, Joffe and Ounitzky. Of these
two are dead and one is only a half-Jew (_La Tribune Juive_, Dec. 26,
1919).

[67] _Ibid._, gives full list.

[68] See Prof. A.V. Dicey's introduction to "The Legal Sufferings of
the Jews in Russia" (Lond., 1912).




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