actually stolen in 1896, delivered to Nilus in 1901, and by him first made public in 1905, we have simply a coincidence of dates. I submit, however, that there is not a shred of credible evidence that the documents were so obtained by Nilus, or that they existed in 1896, 1901, 1903, or at any date earlier than 1905, the year of their first publication. I submit, furthermore, that it is highly probable that the passages in the alleged protocols which are now hailed as conclusive evidence that the Bolshevist policy had been formulated as early as 1896, were in reality written after 1903 and in the light of already published accounts of Bolshevist theories and tactics. There is not a thing that we know about these documents and their history which does not point directly to the conclusion that they are forgeries.

When I was in London in October, 1920, an English journalist of distinction, well known and influential on both sides of the Atlantic, with great earnestness and evident conviction sought to impress me with the serious importance of these alleged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He was quite convinced that the documents were genuine, and that they proved beyond reasonable doubt the existence of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. With great solemnity and manifest sincerity he sought to enlist my co-operation in defense of what he called "Anglo-Saxon civilization," which he seemed to regard as synonymous with Christian civilization. He was quite astonished when I directed his attention to the fact that a well-known French writer, Louis Martin, had published, as far back as 1895, a book in which he attempted to prove the existence of such a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. My friend honestly believed that the existence of this conspiracy had never been known or suspected prior to the publication of the work of the mysterious Sergei Nilus. He was still more surprised when I told him that in his book, L'Anglais Est-Il un Juif?, Martin had attempted to prove that the English people are part of the Jewish race, and that the British government is the principal directing power of the conspiracy; so that the world-wide Jewish conspiracy must, according to Martin, be understood as a secret compact between the British government, as a Jewish organization, and the leaders of Jewry in all other lands. Thus is the theory of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy reduced to absurdity. I confess that at that time I was not aware that in the original Russian of the 1905 edition of the work of Nilus this absurd theory of Martin had been reproduced, but carefully omitted from every English translation published in this country and in England. The reason for the omission is obvious; had the passage been given it would have made a laughing-stock of the protocols. I submit, however, that the omission of such an important passage from the text of Nilus without any reference to or explanation of the liberty taken with the text, places those responsible for the several translations in a very unfavorable light.

In closing this chapter it is perhaps well that some record should be made of the sinister use which was made of these alleged protocols during the World War. Not long after the United States had begun active participation in the war against Germany, it came to my attention that typewritten manuscripts purporting to prove that the war was part of a great conspiracy of international Jews were being circulated. On at least three different occasions, early in 1918, I was asked about this charge. I was told then that the British and American governments were in a special sense the agents of this Jewish conspiracy. In July, 1918, in Paris, a fuller account of the documents was given to me by a loyal Socialist, to whom they had been shown. There was not then, as there is not now, the slightest doubt in my mind that the pro-German propagandists resorted to this trick in order to weaken the morale of the principal Allied nations.

IVToC

IS SOCIALISM A JEWISH CONSPIRACY?

Upon the strength of statements made in this collection of documents of mysterious and suspicious origin, a number of papers, including the Dearborn Independent and the London Morning Post, have attempted to account for and explain the international Socialist movement as part of this Jewish imperialistic conspiracy. Neither in the protocols themselves nor in the newspapers making this particular charge has any shred of authentic evidence been adduced in its support. True, a great deal has been made of the undeniable fact that Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle, Wilhelm Liebnecht, and other noted Socialists belonged to the Jewish race. Against this fact might very well be set the equally undeniable fact that the foremost opponents of these men, and of Socialism, were also of the Jewish race. Apparently, therefore, we are to believe that the leaders of this Jewish conspiracy set up the Socialist movement and fostered it, while at the same time they enlisted their ablest minds to defeat it. Surely for the normal mind that is not obsessed this is a theory too absurd for belief.

Only those who are entirely ignorant of the history of Socialism and Socialist theories can possibly hold this view of its Jewish origin. Long before Karl Marx appeared upon the scene of action Socialism had already made an impress upon European thought. Marx was a boy of fifteen when the word Socialism first appeared in print as designating the doctrines preached by Robert Owen, the Welshman, for almost twenty years before that time. Was Owen the tool of Jewish conspirators? I have read most of the literature relating to Owen's life and teaching, including his own voluminous writings, and the innumerable controversies in which he was engaged throughout his life. I have not discovered in all this mass of material a single trace of Jewish influence. He had no Jewish friends or associates during the formative years, the period in which the Socialist ideas and ideals shaped themselves. His Socialism was the direct outcome of his experience as a successful manufacturer. He was not in any sense a man of books. From time to time he required large sums of money for his enterprises. Surely, if those enterprises, and his life's work as a whole, formed part of a great Jewish conspiracy which had behind it the vast financial resources of Jewry, it would not have been difficult for him to secure the financial support he needed. It is a fact of cardinal importance, therefore, that Owen never did receive Jewish financial support. Those who would have us believe that Socialism originated as a part of the great world-wide conspiracy of Jewish imperialism must first of all explain Robert Owen.

Nor does Owen stand alone in the history of Socialism among the Anglo-Saxon peoples. It is a well-known fact, one to which he himself has called attention, that the most important of the economic and sociological theories of Marx were held and promulgated before his time by a number of British writers. As Professor Foxwell and others have shown, the roots of what is called Marxian Socialist theory lie deep in the soil of British political economy. Karl Marx devoted his typically Jewish genius to the exposition of Socialist theories, but the theories themselves were not of Hebraic origin. William Godwin, Charles Hall, William Thompson, John Gray,