1868. Goedsche"s _Biarritz_ (parallels quoted by Mr. Lucien Wolf).
1869. Gougenot Des Mousseaux"s _Le Juif_, etc.
" Bakunin"s _Polemique contre les Juifs_.
It will be seen, then, that at the moment when Maurice Joly wrote his _Dialogues_, the ideas they embodied were current in many different circles. It is interesting, moreover, to notice that the authors of the last two works referred to above, the Catholic and Royalist Des Mousseaux and the Anarchist Bakunin, between whom it is impossible to imagine any connexion, both in the same year denounced the growing power of the Jews whom Bakunin described as "the most formidable sect" in Europe, and again a.s.serted that a leakage of information had taken place in the secret societies. Thus in 1870 Bakunin explains that his secret society has been broken up because its secrets have been given away,[869] and that his colleague Netchaeff has arrived at the conclusion that "in order to found a serious and indestructible society one must take for a basis the policy of Machiavelli."[870] Meanwhile Gougenot Des Mousseaux had related in _Le Juif_, that in December 1865 he had received a letter from a German statesman saying:
Since the revolutionary recrudescence of 1848, I have had relations with a Jew who, from vanity, betrayed the secret of the secret societies with which he had been a.s.sociated, and who warned me eight or ten days beforehand of all the revolutions which were about to break out at any point of Europe. I owe to him the unshakeable conviction that all these movements of "oppressed peoples," etc., etc., are devised by half a dozen individuals, who give their orders to the secret societies of all Europe. The ground is absolutely mined beneath our feet, and the Jews provide a large contingent of these miners....[871]
These words were written in the year after the _Dialogues aux Enfers_ were published.
It is further important to notice that Joly"s work is dated from Geneva, the meeting-place for all the revolutionaries of Europe, including Bakunin, who was there in the same year, and where the first Congress of the _Internationale_ led by Karl Marx was held two years later. Already the revolutionary camp was divided into warring factions, and the rivalry between Marx and Mazzini had been superseded by the struggle between Marx and Bakunin. And all these men were members of secret societies. It is by no means improbable then that Joly, himself a revolutionary, should during his stay in Geneva have come into touch with the members of some secret organization, who may have betrayed to him their own secret or those of a rival organization they had reason to suspect of working under the cover of revolutionary doctrines for an ulterior end. Thus the protocols of a secret society modelled on the lines of the Illuminati or the Haute Vente Romaine may have pa.s.sed into his hands and been utilized by him as an attack on Napoleon who, owing to his known connexion with the Carbonari, might have appeared to Joly as the chief exponent of the Machiavellian art of duping the people and using them as the lever to power which the secret societies had reduced to a system.
This would explain Maurice Joly"s mysterious reference to the "political system which has not varied for a single day in its application since the disastrous and alas! too far-off date of its enthronement."
Moreover, it would explain the resemblance between all the parallels to the Protocols from the writings of the Illuminati and Mirabeau"s _Projet de Revolution_ of 1789 onwards. For if the system had never varied, the code on which it was founded must have remained substantially the same.
Further, if it had never varied up to the time when Joly wrote, why should it have varied since that date? The rules of lawn tennis drawn up in 1880 would probably bear a strong resemblance to those of 1920, and would also probably follow each other in the same sequence. The differences would occur where modern improvements had been added.
Might not the same process of evolution have taken place between the dates at which the works of Joly and Nilus were published? I do not agree with the opinion of the _Morning Post_ that "the author of the Protocols must have had the _Dialogues_ of Joly before him." It is possible, but not proven. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone embarking on such an elaborate imposture should not have possessed the wit to avoid quoting pa.s.sages verbatim--without even troubling to arrange them in a different sequence--from a book which might at any moment be produced as evidence against him. For contrary to the a.s.sertions of the _Times_ the _Dialogues_ of Joly is by no means a rare book, not only was it to be found at the British Museum but at the London Library and recently I was able to buy a copy for the modest sum of 15 francs. There was therefore every possibility of Nilus being suddenly confronted with the source of his plagiarism. Further, is it conceivable that a plagiarist so unskilful and so unimaginative would have been capable of improving on the original? For the Protocols are a vast improvement on the _Dialogues_ of Joly. The most striking pa.s.sages they contain are not to be found in the earlier work, nor, which is more remarkable, are several of the amazing prophecies concerning the future which time has realized. It is this latter fact which presents the most insuperable obstacle to the _Times_ solution of the problem.
To sum up then, the Protocols are either a mere plagiarism of Maurice Joly"s work, in which case the prophetic pa.s.sages added by Nilus or another remain unexplained, or they are a revised edition of the plan communicated to Joly in 1864, brought up to date and supplemented so as to suit modern conditions by the continuers of the plot.
Whether in this case the authors of the Protocols were Jews or whether the Jewish portions have been interpolated by the people into whose hands they fell is another question. Here we must admit the absence of any direct evidence. An International circle of world revolutionaries working on the lines of the Illuminati, of which the existence has already been indicated, offers a perfectly possible alternative to the "Learned Elders of Zion." It would be easier, however to absolve the Jews from all suspicion of complicity if they and their friends had adopted a more straightforward course from the time the Protocols appeared. When some years ago a work of the same kind was directed against the Jesuits, containing what purported to be a "Secret Plan" of revolution closely resembling the Protocols,[872] the Jesuits indulged in no invectives, made no appeal that the book should be burnt by the common hangman, resorted to no fantastic explanations, but quietly p.r.o.nounced the charge to be a fabrication. Thus the matter ended.
But from the moment the Protocols were published the Jews and their friends had recourse to every tortuous method of defence, brought pressure to bear on the publishers--succeeded, in fact, in temporarily stopping the sales--appealed to the Home Secretary to order their suppression, concocted one clinching refutation after another, all mutually exclusive of each other, so that by the time the solution now p.r.o.nounced to be the correct one appeared, we had already been a.s.sured half a dozen times that the Protocols had been completely and finally refuted. And when at last a really plausible explanation had been discovered, why was it not presented in a convincing manner? All that was necessary was to state that the origin of the Protocols had been found in the work of Maurice Joly, giving parallels in support of this a.s.sertion. What need to envelop a good case in a web of obvious romance?
Why all this parade of confidential sources of information, the pretence that Joly"s book was so rare as to be almost unfindable when a search in the libraries would have proved the contrary? Why these allusions to Constantinople as the place "to find the key to dark secrets," to the mysterious Mr. X. who does not wish his real name to be known, and to the anonymous ex-officer of the Okhrana from whom by mere chance he bought the very copy of the _Dialogues_ used for the fabrication of the Protocols by the Okhrana itself, although this fact was unknown to the officer in question? Why, further, should Mr. X., if he were a Russian landowner, Orthodox by religion and a Const.i.tutional Monarchist, be so anxious to discredit his fellow Monarchists by making the outrageous a.s.sertion that "the only occult Masonic organization such as the Protocols speak of"--that is to say, a Machiavellian system of an abominable kind--which he had been able to discover in Southern Russia "was a Monarchist one"?
It is evident then that the complete story of the Protocols has not yet been told, and that much yet remains to be discovered concerning this mysterious affair.
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_
_s.p.a.cious Days_