In 1868 an ingenious German named Hermann Goedsche conceived the idea of galvanising the agitation into effective life by giving a dramatic form to all its theoretical extravagances.[28] Formerly in the Prussian postal service, where he also acted as a spy for the Secret Police and the Kreuz Zeitung party, he had been dismissed from his office for subornation of forgery in connection with the prosecution of the famous Democratic leader Benedict Waldeck.[29] He was now engaged in palming off on the German public a series of apocryphal works, half memoirs and half historical romances, which he alleged were written by an Englishman named "Sir John Retcliffe." They dealt with all the palpitating international political problems and events of the middle of the nineteenth century, from the Crimean War to the War of the Danish Duchies. In one of these romances, entitled "Biarritz,"[30] he touched on the economic question which had been opened in its most formidable shape by the foundation of Lassalle's Workingmen's Union and the publication, in the previous year, of Marx's "Das Kapital." This led him to a melodramatic Jewish interlude.

Two of his characters, a Jewish Social Democrat named Lasali and a scientific dreamer named Faust, overhear the proceedings of a secret assembly of the "Elect of Israel," held once in every century round the tomb of a mythical "Holy Rabbi" named Simeon ben Jehudah in the ancient Jewish cemetery at Prague. The conclave is pictured as engaged in the worship of the Golden Calf,[31] which, we are told, has been preserved as the profoundest mystery of the Jewish Cabala by which the Jews may eventually secure their domination over all the nations of the earth. The practical application of the principles of this cultus is discussed in a long series of cynical speeches, which are in close agreement with the hypotheses of Gougenot des Mousseaux and similar writers. The Jews are to work with gold and the Press for the subversion of Christianity, and they are to act as a universal disturbing and demoralising instrument, so that in the fulness of time they may establish the Jewish Universal Dominion on the ruins of Christian society. When on the stroke of midnight this uncanny conventicle breaks up, Lasali solemnly pledges himself to his friend Faust to fight the hideous materialism of his co-religionists with the ideals of Social Democracy.[32]

This was the editio princeps of a number of forged anti-Semitic documents, of which the Nilus Protocols are the latest redaction. They differ among themselves in detail, according to the varying stages of the evolution of the political and economic struggle, but in their broad lines they are constant to the original presentation of their case by Goedsche.

The first forgeries, in which Goedsche's avowed fiction was transformed into protocols or reports of alleged Jewish confessions, were produced early in the eighties by the more irresponsible elements of the German anti-Semitic movement then in process of formation by Treitschke and Stöcker in Germany, and were widely circulated as broadsheets. In 1893 the same material was worked up simultaneously by two German anti-Semitic papers, the Deutsch-soziale Blätter and the Antisemitische Korrespondenz, and published as an authentic speech delivered by a Jewish Rabbi at a secret meeting of his disciples held in the Jewish cemetery at Prague.[33] The source of this fabrication was placed beyond doubt by a thoughtless editorial statement that it was extracted from a work written by an eminent Englishman named "Sir John Retcliffe," and entitled "Memoirs of the Politico-Historical Events of the Last Ten Years." Needless to say, this book is as apocryphal as Retcliffe himself, the alleged speech being chiefly a condensed paraphrase of Goedsche's avowed fiction. There is, however, one important deviation from the original which brings it nearer to the Nilus text, the Jews being pictured not as divided into anti-Christian Materialists and Socialists, but as being all simulators of Socialism and Anarchism for their own revolutionary purposes while still remaining, among themselves, devotees of the Golden Calf, with all its moral, or rather immoral, implications. In 1901 a literal Czech translation of this precious protocol, but without the acknowledgment of indebtedness to "Retcliffe," was published in Prague under the title "A Rabbi on the Goyim."[34] It was immediately confiscated by the police on the ground that it was calculated to disturb the peace, but the anti-Semites revenged themselves by incorporating the whole text in an interpellation to the Minister of Justice, which was brought forward by the deputy Brzenovsky in the Austrian Reichsrath on March 13, 1901, and gave rise to a lively debate.[35] It was not heard of again until 1911, when it was translated into French—this time with the "Retcliffe" acknowledgment—by M. Kalixt de Wolski, and published together with a réchauffé of the more notorious forgeries of Braafmann and Lutostansky.[36] Finally, in 1912 the anti-Semitic Press in Germany republished it in a new form. Instead of an alleged historical document, it now appeared as a piece of news—a stenographic report of a speech delivered by a "Jewish Rabbi" at a Jewish Congress held at Lemberg.[37] Anyone who takes the trouble, however, to make the comparison will find that it is a textual précis of the speeches made by the Golden Calf worshippers in Goedsche's "Biarritz."

It is consoling to note that none of these scandalous fabrications made any durable appeal to the relatively sober mentality of those happy pre-war days. No reputable newspaper noticed them. Even M. Drumont, while appropriating all the theories of Gougenot des Mousseaux in his "France Juive"—without acknowledgment, by the way—does not mention Goedsche or any of his malicious plunderers.

Now it needs but a very cursory glance at these forgeries and their raw material in the treatises of the literary scaremongers to perceive at once the fraud which has been practised on the public by Nilus's book. But before I press this point home, let us see whether Nilus himself has any reasonable explanation to offer of the provenance of his documents. It should be borne in mind that these documents consist of a number of so-called "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," in which, as in the Goedsche romance, certain Jewish teachers are made to avow to their disciples the dark designs of Jewry for the corruption and subjugation of Christendom. Nilus does not refuse to say how he came by these Protocols. On the contrary he gives us no fewer than three explanations. Unfortunately for him, they are not only elusive and incredibly melodramatic, but they are also hopelessly contradictory. Two of them will be found in the English edition. According to one, the Protocols came from a deceased friend unnamed, who received them from a woman, also unnamed, who stole them from "one of the most influential and most highly initiated leaders of Freemasonry ... at the close of a secret meeting of the initiated in France."[38] According to the other, there was no woman intermediary and no despoiled French Freemason, but the whole business was done by the deceased friend himself, who rifled the safes of "the Headquarter Offices of the Society of Zion in France."[39] The inconsistency of these two stories may conceivably be explained, but it is not so easy to account for the third story, which Nilus relates in a third and enlarged edition of his work published in 1911. Here he tells us that the documents came not from France, but from Switzerland, that they were not Judeo-Masonic, but Zionist, and that they were the secret Protocols of the Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897.[40] From these conflicting statements it is perfectly clear that Nilus is not a witness of truth, and the damaging conclusion suggested by a comparison of his Protocols with the Goedsche fiction and its progeny of forgeries becomes irresistible.

The Protocols are, in short, an amplified imitation of Goedsche's handiwork adapted to the circumstances of the Russian Revolution of 1905. Whether it was made direct from the melodramatic text of "Biarritz" is doubtful. Had Nilus worked with that document his credulous mysticism would assuredly not have resisted its Golden Calf theory, of which he is refreshingly innocent. On the other hand, he does adopt the blending of the Materialist and Social Democratic elements which are separate and conflicting in Goedsche, but which, with the exclusion of the Golden Calf, were the chief points of difference between the Czech forgery of 1901 and its Goedsche original. It therefore seems probable that it was with the Czech text that Nilus operated, and this is confirmed by his own avowal that the "manuscript" which first made him acquainted with the alleged Protocols was given to him in 1901, the year in which the Czech pamphlet was published.[41]

In his main ideas Nilus followed this pamphlet very closely, but borrows, or, rather, purloins, additional matter, especially in regard to the Freemasons, from Gougenot des Mousseaux. He also annexes political and economic ideas on a large scale from modern Russian reactionary writers and from certain early Bolshevist programme-mongers. How closely his main thesis follows that of the Czech-Goedsche pamphlet is shown by the following parallel, in which both explain how the Jews hope to accomplish their fell purpose by simulating sympathy with the proletariat and leading it into destructive, and eventually suicidal, political revolution:—

THE CZECH GOEDSCHE.NILUS.
"Our people are conservative, faithful to the religious ceremonies and customs which have been bequeathed to us by our ancestors, but our interest exacts that we should simulate a zeal for the social questions which are the order of the day, especially those which deal with the amelioration of the condition of workmen. In reality our efforts should be directed to capturing this movement of public opinion. The blindness of the masses, their propensity to yield themselves to oratory as empty as it is sonorous, makes of them an easy prey and a docile instrument of popularity and credit. We shall find without difficulty among our own people the expression of such factitious sentiments and as much eloquence as sincere Christians find in their enthusiasm. We must as much as possible sustain the proletariat and bring it within the reach of those who have money at their disposal. By this means we shall be able to rouse the masses whenever we please, to lead them into upheavals and revolutions. Each of these catastrophes will advance by a long stride our own racial interests and will rapidly bring us nearer to our one great end—that of reigning over all the earth as it has been promised to us by our Father Abraham." "We intend to appear as though we were the liberators of the labouring man come to free him from his oppression, when we shall suggest to him to join the ranks of our armies of socialists, anarchists, and communists.... We govern the masses by making use of feelings of jealousy and hatred kindled by oppression and need.... When the time comes for our Worldly Ruler to be crowned we will see to it that by the same means—that is to say, by making use of the mob—we will destroy everything that may prove to be an obstacle in our way.... The populace in its ignorance blindly believes in printed words and in erroneous delusions which have been duly inspired by us.... The mob is used to listen to us who pay it for its attention and obedience. By these means we shall create such a blind force that it will never be capable of taking any decision without the guidance of our agents placed by us for the purpose of leading them".[42]

It would be easy to quote many other equally deadly parallels, but this one will assuredly suffice to show that, in their main argument, at any rate, the Protocols are not what they pretend to be—that is an actual statement of secret Jewish teaching by a Jew—but that they are not even an echo of Jewish ideas, seeing that they are derived from a Gentile forgery based on a work of confessedly Gentile imagination.