Page:The History of a Lie (1921).djvu/79

 sought every means of discrediting the Jews, may be gathered from the fact that in the most stupendous anti-Jewish plot ever devised by the Russian government to justify Jewish massacres,—the notorious Beilis case,—the protocols published eight years previously were never used by the prosecution, even though it resorted to every foul means that could be conjured up of slandering and vilifying the Jewish people. The very persons who were instrumental in spreading the “protocols” in Russia in 1905 seemed to have realized that the false accusations which they contained were too transparent and too clumsy to deceive even the most credulous, and so they were discarded.

But suddenly, after the armistice, a new edition of the Nilus book containing the “protocols,” dated 1917, made its appearance as suitable to the chaotic conditions that prevailed in Russia and during the past two years, as has been shown, it was reproduced in various countries. This time the antisemitic propagandists are trying to connect the “protocols” directly with Theodore Herzl and the Zionist movement. The war, the peace treaty and bolshevism are characterized as the fulfillment of these “protocols” which they say had been devised no less than 929 years before the birth of Christ, by Solomon and other Sages. The present “protocols” have been elaborated from the “Retcliffe-Goedsche” versions by the Russian secret police department and the Black Hundreds who ascribed all the evils in the world to the Jews.

The Black Hundred writer, G. Butmi, whose book “Enemies of the Human Race,” containing the fabricated speech by a “famous Rabbi” side by side with the “protocols,” gives several characteristic passages in his introduction that will convey to the reader a clear conception of the type of men who have stood behind the movement