THE " PROTOCOLS."
(To THE EDITOR or THE SPECTATOR."I Sia,—When the Protocols first appeared in English it was pointed out that they embodied a forgery perpetrated by the Tsar's police with the idea of promoting pogroms. It now appears that they are adapted from a " pamphlet of 1865 attacking the Second Empire." This is most interesting, but it explains nothing. As you point out, Mrs. Webster had shown the Protocols to be full of plagiarisms which she effectively explained by the use of parallel columns, and before her most able book appeared Mr. Lucien Wolf had traced other similarities. As the Protocols were obviously a compiles tion this was to be expected, and further resemblances may be discovered. The importance of the most sinister compilation that has ever appeared resides in the subject-matter. The Protocols explain in almost. laborious detail the objects of l3olshevisin and the- methods of carrying it into effect. Most methods were in operation in 1901, when Nilus said that he received the documents, but Bolshevism was then Mandan Communism, and the time had not come for applying it by military force. Nothing that was written in 1865 can have any bearing upon the deadly accuracy of the forecasts in the Protocols, most of which have since been fulfilled to the letter. Moreover the principles they enunciate correspond closely with the recorded statements of Jewish authorities. If you will read the American edition, with its valuable annexes, you will understand this, and the confirmatory quotations there given can be multiplied. Even the "Jewish world- despotism," which you described as ".a piece of malignant lunacy," is not obscurely hinted at. Take this one quotation from the Jewish State, by Theodore Herzl: "When we sink we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of the revolutionary party; when we rise, -there rises also our terrible power of the purse." Compare this ominous state- ment with those of the Protocols, of which it is plainly an echo.
I note with thankfulness that you say that the discovery of the French pamphlet " does not clear up the whole mystery." Indeed it does not, and if you will carefully read Mr. Ford's amazing disclosures you will wish for more light. The main point is, of course, the source from which Nilus obtained the Protocols. The Russians who know Nilus and his writings cannot all have been exterminated by the Bolsheviks. His book, in which the Protocols only form one chapter, has not been translated, though it would give some idea of the man. He was, I have been told by a Russian lady, absolutely incapable either of writing any portion of the Protocols or of being a party to a fraud.
What is the most striking characteristic of the Protocols? The answer is knowledge of a rare kind, embracing the widest field. The solution of the " fnystery," if it is one, is to be found by ascertaining where this uncanny knowledge, on which prophecies now literally fulfilled or being fulfilled are based,
can be shown to reside.—I am, Sir, &c., STDENHAM.
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