In 1806, in order to satisfy the mind of Napoleon upon some questions which had arisen concerning the Jews, an a.s.sembly of Notables was called, whose membership consisted of prominent Jews of France. They, in turn, to bring the sanction of all Jewry to the answers which they should give Napoleon, convoked the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin a.s.sembled in Paris on February 9, 1807. It followed the prescribed ancient forms; it was comprised of Jews from all parts of Europe; it was a.s.sembled to put the whole authority of Jewry behind any compact the French Jews may have been able to make with Napoleon.
In putting forth its decisions, this Sanhedrin of 1807 declared that it was in all respects like the ancient Sanhedrin, "a legal a.s.sembly vested with power of pa.s.sing ordinances in order to promote the welfare of Israel."
The significance of these facts is this: Whatever the leaders of the Jews may do today in the way of maintaining the policy and const.i.tution of Israel, would not const.i.tute a new departure. It would not signify a new att.i.tude. It would not be evidence of a new plan.
It would be entirely natural, Jewish solidarity being what it is, that the Sanhedrin should still be continued. The ancient Sanhedrin appears to have had a group of ten who were somewhat exalted in importance above the rest; it would be perfectly natural if the leaders of the Jews were today divided into committees, by countries or by objects.
There are always being held, year by year, world meetings of the princ.i.p.al Jews of all lands. They come together whenever called, to the disregard of everything else. Great judges from the high courts of the various countries, international financiers, Jewish orators of the "liberal type" who have the ear of the Gentiles, political maneuverers from all the parties represented in the world, they a.s.semble wherever they will, and the subjects of their deliberations are made known only to the extent they will. It is not to be supposed that all of the attendants on these conventions are members of the inner circle. The list of delegates will show scores of persons with whom no one would a.s.sociate Lord Reading and Judge Brandeis. If the modern Sanhedrin meets, and it would be the most natural thing in the world if it should, we may be sure it meets within the closed circle of those persons which the Jewish aristocracy of money, intellect and power approves.
The machinery of a Jewish world government exists ready-made. The Jew is convinced that he has the best religion, the best morality, the best method of education, the best social standards, the best ideal of government. He would not have to go outside the circle of that which he considers best to get anything which he may need to advance the welfare of his people, or to execute any program which may have to do with the outside world.
It is the ancient machinery that the international Jew uses in all those activities which he permits the world to see in part. There are gatherings of the financial, political and intellectual chief rulers of the Jews. These gatherings are announced for one or another thing--sometimes. Sometimes there is a gathering of Jews in a world capital, with no announced purpose. They all appear in one city, confer and depart.
Whether there is a recognized head to all of this is yet to be disclosed. There can be little doubt, however, as to the existence of what may be called a "foreign policy," that is, a definite point of view and plan of action with reference to the Gentile world. The Jew feels that he is in the midst of enemies, but he also feels that he is a member of a people--"one people." He must have some policy with regard to the outer world. He cannot help but consider present conditions, he cannot consider them without being stirred to speculate upon what the outcome must be, and he cannot speculate on the outcome without in some manner endeavoring to make it as he would like it to be.
The invisible government of the Jews, its att.i.tude toward the Gentile world, its policy with regard to the future, are not, then, the abnormal things that some would make them appear. Given the Jewish position, they are of all things most natural. Jewish existence in this world is not such as woos the Jew into sleepy contentment; it is such as stirs him into organization against future contingencies and into programs which may shape those contingencies to the benefit of his race. That there should be a Sanhedrin of the Jews, a world body of the leading men of all countries; that there should even be an exilarch, a visible and recognized head of the Sanhedrin, mystically foreshadowing the autocrat to come; that there should even be a world program, just as every government has its foreign policy, are not strange, uncanny suppositions. They grow normally out of the situation itself.
And it is also natural that not every Jew should know this. The Sanhedrin always was the aristocracy, and would be today. When rabbis cry from their pulpits that they know nothing about this thing, they are doubtless telling the truth. What the international Jew depends upon is the likelihood of every Jew approving that which brings power and prestige to his people. At any rate, it is well enough known that however little the ordinary Jewish leader may have been told about world programs, he regards with the greatest respect and confidence the very men who must put these programs through, if these exist at all.
The twenty-fourth Protocol of the Learned Elders of Zion has this to say:
"Now I will discuss the manner in which the roots of the house of King David will penetrate to the deepest strata of the earth. This dynasty, even to this day, has given the power of controlling world affairs to our wise men, the educational directors of all human thought."
This would indicate, if reliable, that, as the Protocol goes on to recite, the Autocrat himself has not appeared, but the dynasty, or the Davidic line in which he must appear, have entrusted the work of preparing for him to the Wise Men of Zion. These wise men are represented not only as preparing those who exercise rulership over Judaism"s affairs, but also as framing and influencing the world"s thought toward ends which shall be propitious to these plans. Whatever may be hidden in the program, it is certain that its execution or the effects of its execution cannot be hidden. Therefore, it may be possible to find in the outer world the clues which, traced back to their source, reveal the existence of a program, whose promise for the world, good or bad, ought to be widely known.
[Issue of July 17, 1920.]
X.
An Introduction to the "Jewish Protocols"
The doc.u.ments most frequently mentioned by those who are interested in the theory of Jewish World Power rather than in the actual operation of that power in the world today, are those 24 doc.u.ments known as "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion."
The Protocols have attracted much attention in Europe, having become the center of an important storm of opinion in England only recently, but discussion of them in the United States has been limited. These are the doc.u.ments concerning which the Department of Justice was making inquiries more than a year ago, and which were given publication in London by Eyre and Spottiswoode, the official printers to the British Government.
Who it was that first ent.i.tled these doc.u.ments with the name of the "Elders of Zion" is not known. It would be possible without serious mutilation of the doc.u.ments to remove all hint of Jewish authorship, and yet retain all the main points of the most comprehensive program for world subjugation that has ever come to public knowledge.
Yet it must be said that thus to eliminate all hint of Jewish authorship would be to bring out a number of contradictions which do not exist in the Protocols in their present form. The purpose of the plan revealed in the Protocols is to undermine all authority in order that a new authority in the form of autocracy may be set up. Such a plan could not emanate from a ruling cla.s.s which already possessed authority, although it might emanate from anarchists. But anarchists do not avow autocracy as the ultimate condition they seek. The authors might be conceived as a company of French Subversives such as existed at the time of the French Revolution and had the infamous Duc d"Orleans as their leader, but this would involve a contradiction between the fact that those Subversives have pa.s.sed away, and the fact that the program announced in these Protocols is being steadily carried out, not only in France, but throughout Europe and very noticeably in the United States.
In their present form which bears evidence of being their original form, there is no contradiction. The allegation of Jewish authorship seems essential to the consistency of the plan.
If these doc.u.ments were the forgeries which Jewish apologists claim them to be, the forgers would probably have taken pains to make Jewish authorship so clear that their anti-Semitic purpose could easily have been detected. But only twice is the term "Jew" used in them. After one has read much further than the average reader usually cares to go into such matters, one comes upon the plans for the establishment of the World Autocrat, and only then it is made clear of what lineage he is to be.
But all through the doc.u.ments there is left no doubt as to the people against whom the plan is aimed. It is not aimed against aristocracy as such. It is not aimed against capital as such. It is not aimed against government as such. Very definite provisions are made for the enlistment of aristocracy, capital and government for the execution of the plan. It is aimed against the people of the world who are called "Gentiles." It is the frequent mention of "Gentiles" that really decides the purpose of the doc.u.ments. Most of the destructive type of "liberal" plans aim at the enlistment of the people as helpers; this plan aims at the degeneration of the people in order that they may be reduced to confusion of mind and thus manipulated. Popular movements of a "liberal"
kind are to be encouraged, all the disruptive philosophies in religion, economics, politics and domestic life are to be sown and watered, for the purpose of so disintegrating social solidarity that a definite plan, herein set forth, may be put through without notice, and the people then molded to it when the fallacy of these philosophies is shown.
The formula of speech is not, "We Jews will do this," but "The Gentiles will be made to think and do these things." With the exception of a few instances in the closing Protocols, the only distinctive racial term used is "Gentiles."
To ill.u.s.trate: the first indication of this kind comes in the first Protocol in this way:
"The great qualities of the people--honesty and frankness--are essentially vices in politics, because they dethrone more surely and more certainly than does the strongest enemy. These qualities are attributes of Gentile rule; we certainly must not be guided by them."
And again:
"On the ruins of the hereditary aristocracy of the Gentiles we have set up the aristocracy of our educated cla.s.s, and over all the aristocracy of money. We have established the basis of this new aristocracy on the basis of riches, which we control, and on the science guided by our wise men."
Again:
"We will force up wages, which however will be of no benefit to workers, for we at the same time will cause a rise in the prices of prime necessities, pretending that this is due to the decline of agriculture and of cattle raising. We will also artfully and deeply undermine the sources of production by instilling in the workmen ideas of anarchy and encourage them in the use of alcohol, at the same time taking measures to drive all the intellectual forces of the Gentiles from the land."
(A forger with anti-Semitic malice might have written this any time within the last five years, but these words were in print at least 14 years ago according to British evidence, a copy having been in the British Museum since 1906, and they were circulated in Russia a number of years prior.)
The above point continues: "That the true situation shall not be noticed by the Gentiles prematurely we will mask it by a pretended effort to serve the working cla.s.ses and promote great economic principles, for which an active propaganda will be carried on through our economic theories."
These quotations will ill.u.s.trate the style of the Protocols in making reference to the parties involved. It is "we" for the writers, and "Gentiles" for those who are being written about. This is brought out very clearly in the Fourteenth Protocol:
"In this divergence between Gentiles and ourselves in ability to think and reason is to be seen clearly the seal of our election as the chosen people, as higher human beings, in contrast with the Gentiles who have merely instinctive and animal minds. They observe, but they do not foresee, and they invent nothing (except perhaps material things). It is clear from this that nature herself predestined us to rule and guide the world."
This, of course, has been the Jewish method of dividing humanity from the earliest times. The world was only Jew and Gentile; all that was not Jew was Gentile.
The use of the word Jew in the Protocol may be ill.u.s.trated by this pa.s.sage in the eighth section:
"For the time being, until it will be safe to give responsible government positions to our brother Jews, we shall entrust them to people whose past and whose characters are such that there is an abyss between them and the people."
This is the practice known as using "Gentile fronts" which is extensively practiced in the financial world today in order to cover up the evidences of Jewish control. How much progress has been made since these words were written is indicated by the occurrence at the San Francisco convention when the name of Judge Brandeis was proposed for President. It is reasonably to be expected that the public mind will be made more and more familiar with the idea of Jewish occupancy--which will be really a short step from the present degree of influence which the Jews exercise--of the highest office in the government. There is no function of the American Presidency in which the Jews have not already secretly a.s.sisted in a very important degree. Actual occupancy of the office is not necessary to enhance their power, but to promote certain things which parallel very closely the plans outlined in the Protocols now before us.
Another point which the reader of the Protocols will notice is that the tone of exhortation is entirely absent from these doc.u.ments. They are not propaganda. They are not efforts to stimulate the ambitions or activity of those to whom they are addressed. They are as cool as a legal paper and as matter-of-fact as a table of statistics. There is none of the "Let us rise, my brothers" stuff about them. There is no "Down with the Gentiles" hysteria. These Protocols, if indeed they were made by Jews and confided to Jews, or if they do contain certain principles of a Jewish World Program, were certainly not intended for the firebrands but for the carefully prepared and tested initiates of the higher groups.
Jewish apologists have asked, "Is it conceivable that if there were such a world program on the part of the Jews, they would reduce it to writing and publish it?" But there is no evidence that these Protocols were ever uttered otherwise than in spoken words by those who put them forth. The Protocols as we have them are apparently the notes of lectures which were made by someone who heard them. Some of them are lengthy; some of them are brief. The a.s.sertion which has always been made in connection with the Protocols since they have become known is that they are the notes of lectures delivered to Jewish students presumably somewhere in France or Switzerland. The attempt to make them appear to be of Russian origin is absolutely forestalled by the point of view, the reference to the times and certain grammatical indications.
The tone certainly fits the supposition that they were originally lectures given to students, for their purpose is clearly not to get a program accepted but to give information concerning a program which is represented as being already in process of fulfillment. There is no invitation to join forces or to offer opinions. Indeed it is specifically announced that neither discussion nor opinions are desired.
("While preaching liberalism to the Gentiles, we shall hold our own people and our own agents in unquestioning obedience." "The scheme of administration must emanate from a single brain * * * Therefore, we may know the plan of action, but we must not discuss it, lest we destroy its unique character * * * The inspired work of our leader therefore must not be thrown before a crowd to be torn to pieces, or even before a limited group.")
Moreover, taking the Protocols at their face value, it is evident that the program outlined in these lecture notes was not a new one at the time the lectures were given. There is no evidence of its being of recent arrangement. There is almost the tone of a tradition, or a religion, in it all, as if it had been handed down from generation to generation through the medium of specially trusted and initiated men.
There is no note of new discovery or fresh enthusiasm in it, but the cert.i.tude and calmness of facts long known and policies long confirmed by experiment.
This point of the age of the program is touched upon at least twice in the Protocols themselves. In the First Protocol this paragraph occurs:
"Already in ancient times we were the first to shout the words, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," among the people. These words have been repeated many times by unconscious poll-parrots, flocking from all sides to this bait, with which they have ruined the prosperity of the world and true personal freedom * * * The presumably clever and intellectual Gentiles did not understand the symbolism of the uttered words; did not observe their contradiction in meaning; did not notice that in nature there is no equality * * *"
The other reference to the program"s finality is found in the Thirteenth Protocol:
"Questions of policy, however, are permitted to no one except those who have originated the policy and have directed it for many centuries."
Can this be a reference to a secret Jewish Sanhedrin, self-perpetuating within a certain Jewish caste from generation to generation?