[p. 17]

There is no evidence as to how the Geneva Dialogues reached Russia. The following theory may be suggested.

The Third Napoleon's secret police, many of whom were Corsicans, must have known the existence of the Dialogues and almost certainly obtained them from some of the many persons arrested on the charge of political conspiracy during the reign of of Napoleon III. In the last two decades of the 19^th century and in the early years of the 20^th there were always a few Corsicans in the Palace Police of the Tsar, and in the Russian secret service. Combining courage with secretiveness, a high average of intelligence with fidelity to his chief, the Corsican makes a first-class secret agent or bodyguard. It is not improbably that Corsicans who had been in the service of Napoleon III., or who had had kinsmen in his secret service, brought the Geneva Dialogues to Russia, where some member of the Okhrana or some Court official obtained possession of them, But this is only a theory.

As to the Protocols, they were first published in 1905 at Tsarskoye Selo in the second edition of a book entitled "The Great Within the Small," the author of which was Professor Sergei Nilus. Professor Nilus has been described to the writ er as a learned, pious, credulous Conservative, who combined much theological and some historical erudition with a singular lack of knowledge of the world. In January, 1917, Nilus, according to the introduction to the French version of the Protocols, pub lished a book, entitled "It is Here, at Our Doors!!" in which he republished the Protocols. In this latter work, according to the [p. 18] French version, Professor Nilus stated that the manu script of the Protocols was given him by Alexis Nicolaievich Sukhotin, a noble who afterwards became Vice-Governor of Stavropol.

According to the 1905 edition of the Protocols they were obtained by a woman who stole them from "one of the most influential and most highly initiated leaders of Freemasonry. The theft was accomplished at the close of the secret meeting of the 'initiated' in France, that nest of Jewish conspiracy." But in the epilogue to the English version of the Protocols Professor Nilus says, "My friend found them in the sages at the headquarters of the Society of Zion which are at present situa ted in France." According to the French version of the Protocols, Nilus in his book of 1917 states that the Protocols were notes of a plan submitted to the "Council of Elders" by Theodor Herzl at the first Zionist Congress which was held a t Basle, in August, 1897, and that Herzl afterwards complained to the Zionist Committee of Action of the indiscreet publication of confidential information. The Protocols were signed by "Zionist representatives of the 33^rd Degree" in Orient Freemasonry and were secretly removed from the complete file of the proceedings of the aforesaid Zionist Congress, which was hidden in the "Chief Zionist office, which is situated in French territory."

Such are Professor Nilus's rather contradictory accounts of the origin of the Protocols. Not a very convincing story! Theodor Herzl is dead; Sukhotin is dead, and where are the signatures of the Zionist representatives of the 33^rd Degree?

Turning to the text of the Protocols, and comparing it with that of the Geneva Dialogues, one is struck by the absence of any effort on the part of the plagiarist to conceal his plagiarism. The paraphrasing has been very careless; parts [p. 19] of sentences, whole phrases at times, are identical; the development of the thought is the same; there has been no attempt worth mentioning to alter the order of the Geneva Dialogues. The plagiarist has introduced Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche in one passage in order to be "up to date"; he has given a Jewish colour to "Machiavelli's" schemes for dictatorship, but he has utterly failed to conceal his indebtedness to the Geneva Dialogues. This gives the impression that the real writer of the Protocols, who does not seem to have had anything to do with Nilus and may have been some quite unimportant prècis writer employed by the Court or by the Okhrana, was obliged to paraphrase the original at short notice. A proof of Jewish conspiracy was required at once as a weapon for the Conservatives against the Liberal elements in Russia.

Mr. X, the discoverer of the plagiarism, informs me that Protocols, shortly after their discovery in 1901, four years before their publication by Professor Nilus, served a subsidiary purpose, namely, the first defeat of Monsieur Philippe, a French h ypnotist and thought-reader, who acquired considerable influence over the Tsar and Tsaritsa at the beginning of the present century. The Court favorite was disliked by certain great personages, and incurred the natural jealousy of the monks, thaumaturgis ts, and similar adventurers who hoped to capture the Tsar though the Empress in their own interest, or in that of various cliques. Philippe was not a Jew, but it was easy to represent a Frenchman from "that nest of Jewish conspiracy" as a Zioni st agent. Philippe fell from favour, to return to Russia and find himself once more in the Court's good graces at a later date.

But the principal importance of the Protocols was their use during the first Russian revolu- [p. 20] tion. This revolution was supported by the Jewish element in Russia, notably by the Jewish Bund. The Okhrana organization knew this perfectly well; it had its Jewish and crypto-Jewish agents, one of whom afterwards assassinated M. Stolypin; it was in league with the powerful Conservative faction; with its allies it sought to gain the Tsar's ear. For many years before the Russian revolution of 1905-1906 there had been a tale of a secret council of Rabbis [sic] who plotted ceaselessly against the Orthodox. The publication of the Protocols in 1905 certainly came at an opportune moment for the Conservatives. It is said by some Russians that the manuscript of the Protocols was communicated to the Tsar early in 1905, and that its communication contributed to the fall of the Liberal Prince Svitopolk-Mirski in that year and the subsequent strong reac tionary movement. However that may be, the date and place of publication of Nilus's first edition of the Protocols are most significant now that we know that the originals which were given him were simply paraphrases.

The following conclusions are, therefore, forced upon any reader of the two books who has studied Nilus's account of the origin of the Protocols and has some acquaintance with Russian history in the years preceding the revolution of 1905-6:--

1. The Protocols are largely a paraphrase of the book here provisionally called the "Geneva Dialogues."
2. They were designed to foster the belief among Russian Conservatives, and especially in Court circles, that the prime cause of discontent among the politically minded elements in Russia was not the repressive policy of the bureaucracy, but a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. They thus served as a weapon against the Russian Liberals, who urged the Tsar [p. 21] to make certain concessions to the intelligentsia.
3. The Protocols were paraphrased very hastily and carelessly.
4. Such portions of the Protocols as were not derived from the Geneva Dialogues were probably supplied by the Okhrana, which organization very possibly obtained them from the many Jews it employed to spy on their coreligionists.

So much for the Protocols. They have done harm not so much, in the writer's opinion, by arousing anti-Jewish feeling, which is older than the Protocols and will persist in all countries where there is a Jewish problem until that problem is solved; rather, they have done harm by persuading all sorts of mostly well-to-do people that every recent manifestation of discontent on the part of the poor is an unnatural phenomenon, a factitious agitation caused by a secret society of Jews.