Page:The Protocols of Zion.djvu/214

 themselves, it will receive an apotheosis in the admission that with it is bound up the well-being of every citizen of the State, for upon it will depend all order in the common life of the pack.

Overt defense of the kind argues weakness in the organization of his strength.

Our ruler will always among the people be surrounded by a mob of apparently curious men and women, who will occupy the front ranks about him, to all appearance by chance, and will restrain the ranks the rest out of respect as it will appear for good order. This will sow an example of restraint also in others. If a petitioner appears among the people trying to hand a petition and forcing his way through the ranks, the first ranks must receive the petition and before the eyes of the petitioner pass it to the ruler, so that all may know that what is handed in reaches its destination, that, consequently, there exists a control of the ruler himself. The aureole of power requires for its existence that the people may be able to say: "If the king knew of this," or: "the king will hear of it."

With the establishment of official secret defense the mystical prestige of authority disappears: given a certain audacity, and everyone counts himself master of it, the seditionmonger is conscious of his strength, and when occasion serves watches for the moment to make an attempt upon authority. . . For the goyim we have been preaching something else, but by that very fact we are enabled to see what measures of overt defense have brought them to.

Criminals with us will be arrested at the first more or less well-grounded suspicion; it cannot be allowed that out of fear of a possible mistake an opportunity should be given of escape to persons suspected of a political lapse or crime, for in these matters we shall be literally merciless. If it is still possible, by stretching a point, to admit a reconsideration of the motive causes in simple crime,