The theory of the Morning Post may be briefly stated. Its fundamental contention is that all political unrest is artificial. It is a product of the Hidden Hand which is now revealed to us as a "Formidable Sect" encompassing the world. This sect has been at its present work for at least a hundred and fifty years. The French Revolution was contrived by it, as well as all the subordinate revolutions down to our own time. Trade Unionism, Socialism, Syndicalism, Bolshevism, Sinn Fein, Indian Nationalism, and their analogues in every part of the globe are outward and visible signs of its sinister activity. That there are social grievances and even evils at the root of this unrest is not denied, but they are as artificial as the unrest itself. They have all been deliberately brought about by the Hidden Hand in order to stir up revolt against the Throne and Altar. The way in which it has been done is a little complicated. Behind the restless and seditious movements which we all know there is a secret revolutionary organisation in the shape of Freemasonry. But this is only intermediate, for Freemasonry itself, through some obscure transaction between the Templars and the Old Man of the Mountain, was created by the "Formidable Sect," and is wholly, though perhaps unconsciously, under its control. Freemasonry had a specially "activist" wing in the Illuminati—also an invention of the Formidablists—which was chiefly responsible for the French Revolution.
Now, what is this "Formidable Sect"? It is no other than the Jews. Those ancient enemies of the human race appear to have been even more daring and dynamic in evil-doing than even Torquemada supposed. Throughout their world-wide Dispersion they have secretly preserved their old political organisation, and they have used it—and are still using it—with deadly persistency to overturn the established Christian order of things and to found in its place a universal Jewish dominion under the sceptre of a Sovereign of the House of David. The Jews are, in short, the "cause of the world unrest."
There is nothing new in this theory except the claim of its authors to have produced documentary proof of its final development—that is, of its Jewish aspect. Quâ international conspiracy, it was invented over a century ago, as it has been resurrected to-day, to explain the unfamiliar international character of the prevailing unrest. The clergy and the nobility of the ancien régime were as little capable as the Morning Post to-day of understanding the natural causes of this phenomenon. And yet they were by no means obscure. The French Revolution, as Burke pointed out, was not a mere uprising against local oppression, but a "revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma"[2] which was bound to find echoes beyond the French frontiers. In this respect it resembled the Reformation, and also that other "armed doctrine" which we know as Bolshevism. Nevertheless it puzzled the Bourbon apologists, and, confusing cause and effect, they became convinced that they were in the presence of an international conspiracy.
The theory was first propounded by a Superior of the Seminary of Eudists at Caen in 1790,[3] but it was afterwards vastly developed by the Abbé Barruel in his "Mémoires sur le Jacobinisme," by Robison of Edinburgh in his "Proofs of a Conspiracy," and by the Chevalier de Malet in his tedious "Recherches Historiques." Their conclusion was that there was a triple conspiracy of Philosophers, Freemasons, and Illuminati, who formed an actual sect aiming deliberately and methodically at the overthrow of the established religions and governments throughout Europe. It is noteworthy that their researches failed to discern any Jewish element in this conspiracy, though in minuteness of investigation and in the gluttony of their credulity they were by no means inferior to the Morning Post, while they had the advantage over that journal of being in close touch with the facts. The theory had a short shrift, though the industry of its authors certainly did much to throw light on the organisation and activities of the secret societies. So far as the Freemasons and Illuminati were concerned, it was easily demolished by the Earl of Moira, who at a meeting of the Grand Lodge of England in 1800 showed convincingly that it was a mare's nest.[4] As for the Philosophers, no one ever took the charge against them seriously. For half a century scarcely anything more was heard of this aspect of the "Formidable Sect," though meanwhile the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 took place. The non-suit of Barruel was chose jugée.
It was revived in the sixties under the influence of the religious passions kindled by the war for Italian unity. The struggle for Jewish emancipation had triumphed all over Western Europe, largely as a consequence of the Revolutions of 1848, and the new citizens thus enfranchised had everywhere cast in their lot with the Liberal parties. This was swiftly and angrily noted by the Ultramontane polemists, and the old bogey of a "Formidable Sect" began to haunt them in a revised and enlarged form. In the new conspiracy there was no longer any talk of Philosophers and Illuminati. Their place was taken by Jews and Protestants. The "Formidable Sect" thus became a triple alliance of Freemasons, Jews, and Protestants, which was said to be directed by the "Grand Master Palmerston," and supported by the whole British people, not only as Protestants, but as descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The chief protagonist of this stupendous hallucination was M. Gougenot des Mousseaux, who in 1869 embodied it in a volume entitled "Le Juif, le Judaïsme, et la Judaïsation des Peuples Chrétiens." From his own admissions, however, it appears that he was largely indebted to German Catholic inspiration. Once again the theory failed to find support, and Gougenot's book, like the books of Barruel and Robison, became relegated to the literature of forgotten crazes.
Later on attempts to revive it were made by M. de Saint-André, the Abbé Chabauty, M. Drumont, M. Martin, and M. Copin-Albancelli, in the full flood of the Anti-Semitic agitation which had been imported into France from Germany. The only notable addition made to the theory by these writers was the hypothesis of a secret Jewish Government, transported from Jerusalem into the Diaspora, which, throughout the ages, has never ceased to command the allegiance of an imaginary international Jewry, to keep it disloyal to all other Governments, and to direct it in an insidious campaign against the established order of Christian Society. Since 1909 the agitation has become retransferred to the headquarters of Clerical Anti-Semitism in Vienna and Munich, and the most recent works on the subject—with which the Morning Post appears to have mainly worked, although for obvious reasons it does not acknowledge them—are Wichtl's "Weltfreimaurerei, Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik," Meister's "Judas Schuldbuch," and Rosenberg's "Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten," all published in 1919. All this literature, while expounding exactly the same theory of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy as the Morning Post, is as violently anti-English as it is anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish. A great deal of it is published under the auspices of the Deutschland's Erneuerung Committee, of which Mr. Houston Chamberlain is a leading spirit.
This, then, is the very dubious raw material of the theory hashed up by the Morning Post as a serious contribution to the grave political preoccupations of British statesmanship at this moment. It will be noted that in the forms so far reviewed it is confessedly a theory, resting at the best on evidence of a highly conjectural and circumstantial character. The novelty in its latest presentation is that an effort is made to bolster it up with what is claimed to be direct evidence. This takes the form of a document entitled "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which was opportunely published in an anonymous pamphlet a few months ago by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode. These protocols are alleged to be the minutes of certain meetings of the Secret Directory of the Jewish people held in Paris towards the end of the last century, and they pretend to record avowals by the "Elders" of the very conspiracy set forth hypothetically by MM. Gougenot des Mousseaux and Copin-Albancelli. The joy of the Morning Post at the discovery of this evidence is not difficult to understand. Its theory threatened to collapse under the weight of its inherent grotesqueness, and here, in the nick of time, was documentary proof, complete and apparently irrefutable. "In this book," says the Post triumphantly, "for the first time we find an open declaration of the terrible conspiracy of the 'Formidable Sect.'"[5]
Unhappily for the Morning Post, this document is a forgery, and one which has already been used for even more disreputable purposes than the bolstering up of the malicious hypothesis in support of which it is cited. The story of this forgery will be told presently.[6] For the moment I content myself with noting that it is a forgery, and proceed to examine briefly the main historical propositions which it is invoked to corroborate and co-ordinate. This is necessary not because they are in themselves worth taking seriously, but because they are held to react on the forged protocols and to supply presumptive evidence of their genuineness.
I take the propositions in the logical order of the argument they are put forward to illustrate:—