[p. 5]

"There is one thing about Constantinople that is worth your while to remember," said a diplomatist to the writer in 1908. "If you only stay here long enough you will meet many men who matter, and you may find the key to many strange secrets." Yet I must confess that when the discovery which is the theme of these articles was communicated to me I was at first incredulous. Mr. X., who brought me the evidence, was convinced. "Read this book through," he said, "and you will find irrefutable proof that the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion' is a plagiarism."

Mr. X, who does not wish his real name to be known, is a Russian landowner with English connexions. Orthodox by religion, he is in political opinion, a Constitutional Monarchist. He came here as a refugee after the final failure of the White cause in South Russia. He had long been interested in the Jewish question as far as it concerned Russia, had studied the "Protocols," and during the period of Denikin's ascendancy had made investigations with the object of discovering whether any oc cult "Masonic" organization, such as the "Protocols" speak of, existed in Southern Russia. The only such organization was a Monarchist one. The discovery of the key to the problem of the "Protocols" came to him by chance.

A few months ago he bought a number of old books from a former officer of the "Okhrana" (Political Police) who had fled to Constantinople. Among these books was a small volume in French, lacking the title-page, with dimensions of 5 1/2 in. by 3 3/4in. It had been cheaply rebound. On the leather back is printed in [p. 6] Latin capitals the word Joli. The preface, entitled "Simple avertissement," is dated Geneva, October 15, 1864. The book contains 324 pages, of which numbers 315-322 inclusive follow page 24 in the only copy known to Mr. X, perhaps owing to a mistake when the book was rebound. Both the paper and the type are characteristic of the "sixties and seventies" of the last century. These details are given in the hope that they may lead to the discovery of the title of the book [see Preface]. Mr. X. believes it must be rare, since, had it not been so, the "Protocols" would have speedily been recognized as a plagiarism by anyone who had read the original.

That the latter is a "fake" could not be maintained for an instant by anyone who had seen it. Its original possessor, the old Okhrana office, did not remember where he obtained it, and attached no importance to it. Mr. X, glancing at it one day, was struck by a resemblance between a passage which had caught his eye and a phrase in the French edition of the "Protocols" (Edition de la Vieille France, 1920, 5, Rue du Préaux-Clercs, 5, Paris 7^th Arrondissement). He followed up the clue, and soon realized that the "Protocols" were to a very large extent as much a paraphrase of the Geneva original as the published version of a War Office or Foreign Office telegram is a paraphrase of the ciphered original.

Before receiving the book from Mr. X, I was, as I have said, incredulous. I did not believe that Sergei Nilus's "Protocols" were authentic; they explained too much by the theory of a vast Jewish conspiracy. Professor Nilus's account of how they were obtained was too melodramatic to be credible, and it was hard to believe that real "Learned Elders of Sion " would not have produced a more intelligent political scheme than the crude and theatrical subtilties [sic] of the Protocols. But I could not [p. 7] have believed, had I not seen, that the writer who supplied Nilus with his originals was a careless and shameless plagiarist.

The Geneva book is a very thinly-veiled attack on the despotism of Napoleon III. in the form of a series of 25 dialogues divided into four parts. The speakers are Montesquieu and Machiavelli. In the brief preface to his book the anonymous author points out that it contains passages which are applicable to all Governments, "but it particularly personifies a political system which has not varied in its application for a single day since the fatal and alas! Too distant date when it was enthroned." Its references to the "Haussmannisation" of Paris, to the repressive measures and policy of the French Emperor, to his wasteful financial system, to his foreign wars, to his use of secret societies in his foreign policy (cf., hi notorious relations with the Carbonari) and his suppression of them in France, to his relations with the Vatican, and to his control of the Press are unmistakable.

The Geneva book, or as it will henceforth be called the Geneva Dialogues, opens with the meeting of the spirits of Montesquieu and Machiavelli on a desolate beach in the world of shades. After a lengthy exchange of civilities Montesquieu asks Machiavelli to explain why from an ardent Republican he had become the author of "The Prince" and "the founder of that somber school of thought which has made all crowned heads your disciples, but which is well fitted to justify the worst crimes of tyranny." Machiavelli replies that he is a realist and proceeds to justify the teaching of "The Prince," and to explain its applicability to the Western European States of 1864.

In the first six "Geneva Dialogues" Montesquieu is given a chance of argument of which he avails himself. In the seventh dialogue, [p. 8] which corresponds to the fifth, sixth, seventh , and part of the eighth "Protocols," he gives Machiavelli permission to describe at length how he would solve the problem of stabilizing political societies "incessantly disturbed by the spirit of anarchy and revolution." Henceforth Machiavelli or in reality Napoleon III., speaking through Machiavelli, has the lion's share of the dialogue. Montesquieu's contributions thereto become more and more exclamatory; he is profoundly shocked by Machiavelli-Napoleon's defense of an able and ru thless dictatorship, but his counter-arguments grow briefer and weaker. At times, indeed, the author of "L'Esprit des Lois" is made to cut as poor a figure as – parvum componere magno – does Dr. Watson when he attempts to talk criminology to Sherlock Holmes.

The "Protocols" follow almost the same order as the Dialogues. Dialogues 1-17 generally correspond with "Protocols" 1-19. There are a few exceptions to this. One is in the 18^th "Protocol," where, together with paraphrases of passages from the 17^th Dialogue ("Geneva Dialogues," pp. 216, 217), there is an echo of a passage in the 25^th "Geneva Dialogue," viz: -- "Quand le malheureux est opprimé il dit 'Si le Roi le savait'; Quand on veut se venger, qu'on espère un secours, on dit 'le Roi le saura.' " This appears on page 68 of the English edition of the "Protocols" (4^th Edition, published by "The Britons," 62, Oxford-street, London, W.) as "In order to exist, the prestige of power must occupy such a position that the people say among themselves, 'If only the King knew about it,' or 'When the King knows about it.' "

The last five "Protocols" (Nos. 20-24 inclusive) do not contain so many paraphrases of the "Geneva Dialogues" as the first 29. Some of their resemblances and paraphrases are, however, very striking, e.g., the following: -- [p. 9]

But generally speaking "Protocols" 20 and 21, which deal (somewhat unconvincingly) with the financial programme of the Learned Elders, owe less to the "Geneva Dialogues," Nos. 18-21, than to the imagination of the plagiarist author who had for once in a way to show a little originality. This is natural enough since the "Dialogues" in question describe the actual financial policy of the French Imperial Government, while the "Protocols" deal with the future. Again in the last four "Geneva Dialogues" Machiavelli's apotheosis of the Second Empire, being based upon historical facts which took place between 1852 and 1864, obviously furnished scanty material for the plagiarist who wished to prove or, very possibly, had been ordered to prove in the "Protocols" that the ultimate aim of the leaders of Jewry was to give the world a ruler sprung from the House of David.

The scores of parallels between the two books and a theory concerning the methods of the plagiarist and the reasons for the publication of the "Protocols" in 1905 will be the subject of further articles. Meanwhile it is amusing to find that the only subject with which the "Protocols," deal on lines quite contrary to those followed by Machiavelli in the "Dialogues" is the private life of the Sovereign. [p. 10] The last words of the "Protocols" are "Our Sovereign must be irreproachable." The Elders evidently propose to keep the King of Israel in good order. The historical Machiavelli was, we know, rather a scandalous old gentleman, and his shade insists that amorous adventures, so far from injuring a Sovereign's reputation, make him an object of interest and sympathy to "the fairest half of his subjects."