Page:The truth about The Protocols.djvu/19

 III.—SOME CONCLUSIONS.

There is no evidence as to how the Geneva Dialogues reached Russia. The following theory may be suggested.

The Third Napoleon's secret police, many of whom were Corsicans, must have known the existence of the Dialogues and almost certainly obtained them from some of the many persons arrested on the charge of political conspiracy during the reign of Napoleon III. In the last two decades of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th there were always a few Corsicans in the Palace Police of the Tsar, and in the Russian secret service. Combining courage with secretiveness, a high average of intelligence with fidelity to his chief, the Corsican makes a first-class secret agent or bodyguard. It is not improbable that Corsicans who had been in the service of Napoleon III., or who had had kinsmen in his secret service, brought the Geneva Dialogues to Russia, where some member of the Okhrana or some Court official obtained possession of them. But this is only a theory.

As to the Protocols, they were first published in 1905 at Tsarskoye Selo in the second edition of a book entitled "The Great Within the Small," the author of which was Professor Sergei Nilus. Professor Nilus has been described to the writer as a learned, pious, credulous Conservative, who combined much theological and some historical erudition with a singular lack of knowledge of the world. In January, 1917, Nilus, according to the introduction to the French version of the Protocols, published a book, entitled "It is Here, at Our Doors!!" in which he republished the Protocols. In this latter work, according to the