Secret Societies and Subversive Movements

Secret Societies And Subversive
Movements, by

Nesta H. Webster This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
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Title: Secret Societies And Subversive Movements
Author: Nesta H. Webster
Release Date: August 23, 2006 [EBook #19104]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SECRET SOCIETIES and SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS
by

NESTA H. WEBSTER
CHRISTIAN BOOK CLUB OF AMERICA

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Chevalier de Boufflers The French Revolution World Revolution
The Socialist Network The Surrender of an Empire Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette: Before the Revolution Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette: During the Revolution Spacious Days
* * * * *
"There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House ... I
mean the secret societies.... It is useless to deny, because it is
impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe--the whole of Italy
and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other
countries--is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as
the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And
what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do
not want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated
institutions ... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the
present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical
establishments. Some of them may go further...." (DISRAELI in the
House of Commons, July 14, 1856.)

PREFACE

It is a matter of some regret to me that I have been so far unable to
continue the series of studies on the French Revolution of which The
Chevalier de Boufflers and The French Revolution, a Study in
Democracy formed the first two volumes. But the state of the world at
the end of the Great War seemed to demand an enquiry into the present
phase of the revolutionary movement, hence my attempt to follow its

course up to modern times in World Revolution. And now before
returning to that first cataclysm I have felt impelled to devote one more
book to the Revolution as a whole by going this time further back into
the past and attempting to trace its origins from the first century of the
Christian era. For it is only by taking a general survey of the movement
that it is possible to understand the causes of any particular phase of its
existence. The French Revolution did not arise merely out of conditions
or ideas peculiar to the eighteenth century, nor the Bolshevist
Revolution out of political and social conditions in Russia or the
teaching of Karl Marx. Both these explosions were produced by forces
which, making use of popular suffering and discontent, had long been
gathering strength for an onslaught not only on Christianity, but on all
social and moral order.
It is of immense significance to notice with what resentment this point
of view is met in certain quarters. When I first began to write on
revolution a well-known London publisher said to me, "Remember that
if you take an anti-revolutionary line you will have the whole literary
world against you." This appeared to me extraordinary. Why should the
literary world sympathize with a movement which from the French
Revolution onwards has always been directed against literature, art, and
science, and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers
over the intelligentsia? "Writers must be proscribed as the most
dangerous enemies of the people," said Robespierre; his colleague
Dumas said all clever men should be guillotined. "The system of
persecution against men of talents was organized.... They cried out in
the sections of Paris, 'Beware of that man for he has written a book!'"[1]
Precisely the same policy has been followed in Russia. Under Moderate
Socialism in Germany the professors, not the "people," are starving in
garrets. Yet the whole press of our country is permeated with
subversive influences. Not merely in partisan works, but in manuals of
history or literature for use in Schools, Burke is reproached for warning
us against the French Revolution and Carlyle's panegyric is applauded.
And whilst every slip on the part of an anti-revolutionary writer is
seized on by the critics and held up as an example of the whole, the
most glaring errors not only of conclusions but of facts pass
unchallenged if they happen to be committed by a partisan of the

movement. The principle laid down by Collot d'Herbois still