Page:The truth about The Protocols.djvu/25

 of the Bolshevists in many respects resembled those advocated in the "Protocols." The book was translated into several European languages and made the basis for impassioned dissertations on an alleged Jewish world peril. There was a certain plausibility about this thesis that attracted many; but the authenticity of the "Protocols" was very vigorously called in question, and the whole matter was shrouded in doubt until our Correspondent made his remarkable discovery. A Russian in Constantinople, who had bought some books from an ex-officer of the Russian Secret Police, found among them one in which many passages struck him by their resemblance to the "Protocols." Our Correspondent, whose attention was called to the matter, found on examination that the "Protocols" consisted in the main of clumsy plagiarisms from this little French book, which he has forwarded to us. The book had no title-page, but we identified it in the British Museum as a political pamphlet directed against. and published in Brussels in 1865 by a French lawyer named, and entitled "Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu." The book was published anonymously, but the author was immediately seized by 's police and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. A second edition was published in Brussels in 1868, with the author's name and a note on his imprisonment.

The author of the "Protocols" simply copied from the "Dialogues" a number of passages in which is made to enunciate the doctrines and tactics of despotism as they were at that time practised by, and put them into the mouth of an imaginary Jewish Elder. There can be little doubt that the forgery was perpetrated by some member of the Russian Secret Police. , who may have acted in good faith, declared