The Jew and American Ideals | Page 4

7). Efforts are to be made to compromise the honor and besmirch the reputations of the most influential statesmen and to use blackmail in order to make these statesmen serve the purposes of the conspirators (Protocol 10). Revolutionary movements, anarchistic, communistic, and socialistic, are to be fostered for the purpose of destroying non-Jewish civilization (Protocol 3). In the event of unfavorable action by any power or group of powers, it is to be met by resistance in the form of universal war (Protocol 7). Disorganization of the economic life of the world through the debasement and ruin of the credit and currency systems, of the principal nations, and the creation of "a universal economic crisis" are also to be used to the same end (Protocol 3).
I have briefly summarized only a few of the more important items in this monstrous program. There is more of the same general type of fiendishness. Concerning the character of the program itself, there can be no difference of opinion between honest Americans. It is as diabolical as it is fantastic. What importance we ought to attach to it, however, must necessarily depend upon our judgment concerning its origin. If these protocols, and the program contained in them, are to be seriously accepted for what they pretend to be--namely, a deliberate statement of the purposes and aims of the leaders of the Jewish people throughout the world, with practically the entire Jewish race behind them--then the matter assumes enormous importance. If, on the other hand, there is no substantial evidence of this--and such evidence as is available indicates that the protocols are the product of a single diseased and depraved mind--the documents cease to possess any great significance and the terrible injustice and frightfully dangerous consequences of charging them against the Jewish people are obvious. We must, therefore, pay critical attention to the origin of the protocols and the circumstances surrounding their publication, as well as to any internal evidences of their genuineness or otherwise.

III
THE MYSTERY OF THE PROTOCOLS
First of all, then, what do we actually know about the origin of these protocols? In the year 1903 a book was published at Solotarevo in Russia, entitled The Great in Little. The reputed author of the book was one Prof. Sergei Nilus, concerning whom we have no absolutely reliable information. Author of a book which has made an enormous sensation in many lands and become the subject of furious controversy, he is quite unknown. No responsible person in or out of Russia has ever positively identified Nilus, so far as I have been able to discover. From what he says of himself it is practically certain that he was in the service of the infamous Secret Police Agency of the late Tsar Nicholas II. For reasons which will presently appear, I am disposed to believe that the very un-Russian name Nilus is really a pseudonym.
In a second edition of his book, published in 1905, Nilus gives a brief autobiographical account of himself. He says that he was born in 1862 of Russian parents who held liberal opinions, and that his family was well known in Moscow, its members being educated people who were firm in their allegiance to the Tsar and the Greek Church. This is hardly what a Russian of the period would describe as holding "liberal opinions," but let that pass. Nilus claims to have been graduated from Moscow University and to have held a number of civil-service posts, all of them, so far as his specifications go, connected with the police and judicial systems. He went to the government of Orel, where he became a landowner and a sort of petty noble. He entered the Troitsky-Sergevsky Monastery, near Moscow, or so he says. Although numerous efforts have been made in Russia to find this Sergei Nilus, none has succeeded.
It is true that a number of persons have testified to the existence of Sergei Nilus, but in each case a different person has been referred to, though Nilus is not a Russian name or commonly found in Russia. The present writer learned of two men, father and son, each bearing this very unusual name. First information led to the belief that at last the mysterious author had been discovered. The father was of about the right age and was said to be a writer interested in religious subjects. Further inquiry elicited the information that this man had died in 1910, whereas the Nilus we are interested in was alive as late as 1917. Greatly enlarged editions of his work, with new personal matter added, appeared in 1911 and 1917. Obviously, therefore, the man who died in 1910 was not our author. The anonymous editor of an edition of the protocols issued in New York toward the end of 1920 says that "a returning traveler