To sum up then, the Protocols are either a mere plagiarism of Maurice Joly's work, in which case the prophetic passages added by Nilus or another remain unexplained, or they are a revised edition of the plan communicated to Joly in 1864, brought up to date and supplemented so as to suit modern conditions by the continuers of the plot.
Whether in this case the authors of the Protocols were Jews or whether the Jewish portions have been interpolated by the people into whose hands they fell is another question. Here we must admit the absence of any direct evidence. An International circle of world revolutionaries working on the lines of the Illuminati, of which the existence has already been indicated, offers a perfectly possible alternative to the "Learned Elders of Zion." It would be easier, however to absolve the Jews from all suspicion of complicity if they and their friends had adopted a more straightforward course from the time the Protocols appeared. When some years ago a work of the same kind was directed against the Jesuits, containing what purported to be a "Secret Plan" of revolution closely resembling the Protocols,[872] the Jesuits indulged in no invectives, made no appeal that the book should be burnt by the common hangman, resorted to no fantastic explanations, but quietly pronounced the charge to be a fabrication. Thus the matter ended.
But from the moment the Protocols were published the Jews and their friends had recourse to every tortuous method of defence, brought pressure to bear on the publishers--succeeded, in fact, in temporarily stopping the sales--appealed to the Home Secretary to order their suppression, concocted one clinching refutation after another, all mutually exclusive of each other, so that by the time the solution now pronounced to be the correct one appeared, we had already been assured half a dozen times that the Protocols had been completely and finally refuted. And when at last a really plausible explanation had been discovered, why was it not presented in a convincing manner? All that was necessary was to state that the origin of the Protocols had been found in the work of Maurice Joly, giving parallels in support of this assertion. What need to envelop a good case in a web of obvious romance? Why all this parade of confidential sources of information, the pretence that Joly's book was so rare as to be almost unfindable when a search in the libraries would have proved the contrary? Why these allusions to Constantinople as the place "to find the key to dark secrets," to the mysterious Mr. X. who does not wish his real name to be known, and to the anonymous ex-officer of the Okhrana from whom by mere chance he bought the very copy of the Dialogues used for the fabrication of the Protocols by the Okhrana itself, although this fact was unknown to the officer in question? Why, further, should Mr. X., if he were a Russian landowner, Orthodox by religion and a Constitutional Monarchist, be so anxious to discredit his fellow Monarchists by making the outrageous assertion that "the only occult Masonic organization such as the Protocols speak of"--that is to say, a Machiavellian system of an abominable kind--which he had been able to discover in Southern Russia "was a Monarchist one"?
It is evident then that the complete story of the Protocols has not yet been told, and that much yet remains to be discovered concerning this mysterious affair.
INDEX
Abdullah ibn Maymūn, [37], [197]
Abraham, Book of, [8]
"Abraham the Jew," [85]
"Absolutes," the, [265]
Adam, Book of (see Codex Nasaræus)