Chapter 4

_THE PRESENT_

11

MODERN FREEMASONRY

In the foregoing portion of this book we have followed the history of Freemasonry in the past and the various interpretations that have been placed on its rites and ceremonies. The question now arises: what is the role of Freemasonry to-day?

The fundamental error of most writers on this question, whether Masonic or anti-Masonic, is to represent all Freemasons as holding a common belief and animated by a common purpose. Thus on one hand the panegyrics by Freemasons on their Order as a whole, and on the other hand the sweeping condemnations of the Order by the Catholic Church, are equally at fault.

The truth is that Freemasonry in a generic sense is simply a system of binding men together for any given purpose, since it is obvious that allegories and symbols, like the _x_ and _y_ of algebra, can be interpreted in a hundred different manners. Two pillars may be said to represent strength and stability, or man and woman, or light and darkness, or any other two things we please. A triangle may signify the Trinity, or Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, or any other triad. To say that any of these symbols have an absolute meaning is absurd.

The allegories of Freemasonry are equally capable of various interpretations. The building of the Temple of Solomon may signify the progress of any undertaking and Hiram the victim of its opponents. So also with regard to the "secret tradition" of Freemasonry concerning "a loss which has befallen humanity"[658] and its ultimate recovery. Any body of people working for an object may be said to have experienced a loss and to aim at its recovery.

In the same way the whole organization of Freemasonry, the plan of admitting candidates to successive degrees of initiation, of binding them to secrecy by fearful oaths, is one that can be employed for any purpose, social, political, philanthropic, or religious, for promoting that which is good or for disseminating that which is evil. It may be used to defend a throne or to overthrow it, to protect religion or to destroy it, to maintain law and order or to create anarchy.

Now, there was, as we have seen, from the beginning, besides the written charges, an _oral tradition_ in Masonry, after the manner of the Cabala, on which the guidance of the society depended. The true character of any form of Freemasonry is thus not to be judged only by its printed ritual, but by the oral instruction of the initiates and the interpretations placed on the symbols and ritual. Naturally these interpretations vary in different countries and at different periods. Freemasonry is described in its Ritual as "a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." But what code of morality? In studying the history of the Order we shall find that the same code was by no means common to all masonic bodies, nor is it to-day. Some maintain a very high standard of morals; others appear to possess no standard at all. Mr. Waite observes that "the two doctrines of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul constitute 'the philosophy of Freemasonry.'"[659] But these doctrines are by no means essential to the existence of Freemasonry; the Grand Orient has renounced both, but it still ranks as Freemasonry.

M. Paul Nourrisson is therefore perfectly right in saying: "There are as many Masonries as countries; there is no such thing as universal Masonry."[660] Broadly, however, modern Freemasonry may be divided into two kinds: the variety worked in the British Empire, in America, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, etc., and Grand Orient Masonry, which prevails in Catholic countries and of which the most important centre is the Grand Orient of Paris.

Continental Masonry

The fact that Masonry in Protestant countries is neither revolutionary nor anti-religious is frequently used by Catholic writers to show that Protestantism identifies itself with the aims of Masonry, and by Freemasons to prove that the tyranny of the Church of Rome has driven Masonry into an attitude hostile to Church and State. The point overlooked in both these contentions is the essential difference in the character of the two kinds of Masonry. If the Grand Orient had adhered to the fundamental principle of British Masonry not to concern itself with religion or politics, there is no reason why it should have come into conflict with the Church. But its duplicity on this point is apparent. Thus in one of its earlier manuals it declares, like British Masonry, that it "never interferes with questions of government or of civil and religious legislation, and that whilst making its members participate in the perfecting of all sciences, it positively excepts in the lodges two of the most beautiful, _politics_ and _theology_, because these two sciences divide men and nations which Masonry constantly tends to unite."[661] But on a further page of the same manual from which this quotation is taken we find it stated that Masonry is simply "the political application of Christianity."[662] Indeed, during the last fifty years the Grand Orient has thrown off the mask and openly declared itself to be political in its aims. In October 1887 the Venerable Bro∴ Blanc said in a discourse which was printed for the lodges:

You recognise with me, my brothers, the necessity for Freemasonry to become a vast and powerful political and social society having a decisive influence on the resolutions of the Republican government.[663]

And in 1890 the Freemason Fernand Maurice declared "that nothing should happen in France without the hidden action of Freemasonry," and "if the Masons choose to organize, in ten years' time no one in France will be able to move outside us (_personne ne bougera plus en France en dehors de nous_)."[664]

This is the despotic power which the Grand Orient has established in opposition to both Church and Government.

Moreover, Grand Orient masonry is not only political but subversive in its political aims. Instead of the peaceful trilogy of British masonry, "Brotherly love, relief, and truth," it has throughout adhered to the formula which originated in the Masonic lodges of France and became the war-cry of the Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." "It is the law of equality," says Ragon, "that has always endeared Masonry to the French," and "as long as equality really exists only in the lodges, Masonry will be preserved in France."[665] The aim of Grand Orient Masonry is thus to bring about universal equality as formulated by Robespierre and Babeuf. In the matter of liberty we read further that as men are all by nature free--the old fallacy of Rousseau and of the Declaration of the Rights of Man--therefore "no one is necessarily subjected to another nor has the right to rule him."[666] The revolutionary expresses the same idea in the phrase that "no man should have a master." Finally, by fraternity Grand Orient Masonry denotes the abolition of all national feeling.

It is to Masonry [Ragon says again] that we owe the affiliation of all classes of society, it alone could bring about this fusion which from its midst has passed into the life of the peoples. It alone could promulgate that humanitarian law of which the rising activity, tending to a great social uniformity, leads to the fusion of races, of different classes, of morals, codes, customs, languages, fashions, money, and measures. Its virtuous propaganda will become the humanitarian law of all consciences.[667]

The policy of the Grand Orient is thus avowedly International Socialism. Indeed in a further passage Ragon plainly indicates this fact:

Every generous reform, every social benefit derives from it, and if these survive it is because Masonry lends them its support. This phenomenon is due only to the power of its organization. The past belongs to it and the future cannot escape from it. By its immense lever of association it alone is able to realize by a productive communion (_communion génératrice_) that great and beautiful social unity conceived by Jaurez, Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier. If Masons wish it, the generous conceptions of these philanthropic thinkers will cease to be vain Utopias.[668]

Who are the philanthropic thinkers enumerated here but the men derisively described by Karl Marx as the "Utopian Socialists" of the nineteenth century? Utopian Socialism is thus simply the open and visible expression of Grand Orient Freemasonry. Moreover, these Utopian Socialists were almost without exception Freemasons or members of other secret societies.

The Freemason Clavel confirms the foregoing account by Ragon. Thus, like Ragon, he quotes, the principle expressed in a ritual for the initiation of a Master Mason:

It is expressly forbidden to Masons to discuss amongst themselves, either in the lodge or outside it, religious and political matters, these discussions having usually the effect of creating discord where formerly peace, union, and fraternity reigned. This masonic law admits of no exceptions.[669]

But Clavel also goes on to say:

To efface amongst men the distinctions of colour, rank, creed, opinions, country; to annihilate fanaticism, and ... the scourge of war; in a word, to make of the whole human race one and the same family united by affection, by devotion, by work and knowledge: that, my brother, is the great work which Freemasonry has undertaken, etc.[670]

Up to a point many a British Freemason reading these passages will declare himself completely in accord with the sentiments expressed. Humanitarianism, the obliteration of class distinctions, fraternization between men of all races, conditions, and religious creeds, enter of course largely into the spirit of British Masonry, but form simply the basis on which Masons meet together in the lodges and not a political system to be imposed on the world in general.

British Masonry thus makes no attempt to interfere with the existing social system or form of Government; the essence of its teaching is that each member of the Fraternity should seek to reform himself and not society. In a word, individual regeneration takes the place of the social reorganization advocated by the Grand Orient under the influence of Illuminism. The formula of the "United States of Europe" and of the "Universal Republic" first proclaimed by the Illuminatus, Anacharsis Clootz,[671] has long been the slogan of the French lodges.[672]

In the matter of religion, Grand Orient Masonry has entirely departed from the principle laid down by the British lodges. If the Catholic Church has shown itself hostile to Masonry, it must be remembered that in Catholic countries Masonry has shown itself militantly anti-Catholic. "Freemasonry," one of its modern orators declared, "is the anti-Church, the anti-Catholicism, the Church of Heresy (_la contre Eglise, le contre Catholicisme, l'Eglise de l'Hérésie_)."[673] The _Bulletin_ of the Grand Orient in 1885 officially declared: "We Freemasons must pursue the definite demolition of Catholicism."

But the Grand Orient goes further than this and attacks all forms of religion. Thus, as has been said, those "ancient landmarks" of British Masonry, belief in the Great Architect of the Universe and in the immortality of the soul, had never formed an integral part of its system, and it was only in 1849 that for the first time "it was distinctly formulated that the basis of Freemasonry is a belief in God and in the immortality of the soul, and the solidarity of Humanity." But in September 1877 the first part of this formula was deleted, all allusions to the Great Architect were omitted, and the statute now reads: "Its basis is absolute liberty of conscience and the solidarity of Humanity."[674] British Freemasonry, which does not admit liberty of conscience in the sense of Atheism, but demands that every Mason should profess belief in some form of religion and which insists that the Volume of the Sacred Law--in England the Bible, in Mohammedan countries the Koran, and so on--should be placed on the table in its lodges, thereupon broke off all relations with the Grand Orient. In March 1878 the following resolution was passed unanimously:

That the Grand Lodge, whilst always anxious to receive in the most fraternal spirit the Brethren of any foreign Grand Lodge whose proceedings are conducted according to the Ancient Landmarks of the Order, of which a belief in T.G.A.O.T.U. is the first and most important, cannot recognize as "true and genuine" Brethren any who have been initiated in lodges which either deny or ignore that belief.[675]

The Grand Orient, says M. Copin Albancelli, not content with renouncing the Great Architect whose glory it had celebrated on every possible occasion and whose praises had been incessantly sung in its lodges, demanded of its initiates that they should declare themselves to be absolutely convinced that the Great Architect was nothing but a myth.[676] More than this, violent anti-religious tirades have been permitted and even applauded in the lodges. Thus in 1902 the Freemason Delpech in his discourse at a masonic banquet uttered these words:

The triumph of the Galilean has lasted twenty centuries; he is dying in his turn. The mysterious voice which once on the mountains of Epirus announced the death of Pan, to-day announces the death of the deceiver God who had promised an era of justice and peace to those who should believe in him. The illusion has lasted very long; the lying God in his turn disappears; he goes to rejoin in the dust of ages the other divinities of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, who saw so many deluded creatures throw themselves at the food of their altars. Freemasons, we are pleased to state that we are not unconcerned with this ruin of false prophets. The Roman Church, founded on the Galilean myth, began to decline rapidly on the day when the masonic association was constituted. From the political point of view Freemasons have often varied. But in all times Freemasonry has stood firm on this principle: war on all superstitions, war on all fanaticism.[677]

How is it possible to reconcile this attitude towards religion in general and Christianity in particular with the fact that the Grand Orient still works the Rose-Croix degree? This degree--which, as we have seen, was first devised (whether in Scotland or in France) to give a Christian meaning to Masonry--was only incorporated into British Freemasonry in 1846 and in our country has retained its original character. Its ritual, centring around a lost word, signifies that the Old Testament dispensation has come to an end with the Crucifixion, and is so strongly Christian that no Jew, Mohammedan, or other non-Christian can be admitted to it. Moreover, since this degree, known as the eighteenth degree, forms in reality the first degree of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, as worked in this country, non-Christians are excluded from the whole of this Rite and can only take the degrees of Royal Arch, Mark Mason, Royal Ark Mariner, and finally Royal Select and Super-Excellent Master. Consequently the thirty-three Masons of the thirty-third degree who compose the Supreme Council which directs the Ancient and Accepted Rite are necessarily professing Christians. Exactly the opposite is the case in France; the Rose-Croix, worked by professing atheists and Jews, can only be parody of Christian mysteries.

Now, it is essential to realize that in France the anti-masonic camp is divided into two parties. Whilst the majority of Catholic writers regard Freemasonry itself as the source of all evil--"the Synagogue of Satan"--more impartial investigators have pronounced the opinion that it is not Freemasonry even of the Grand Orient variety but something concealed behind Freemasonry which constitutes the principal danger. This view is expressed by M. Copin Albancelli, whose book _Le Pouvoir occulte contre la France_ is of the utmost importance to an understanding of the masonic danger, for here there can be no question of Catholic prejudice or of imaginary accusations made by a stranger to Masonry. M. Copin Albancelli entered the Grand Orient as an agnostic and has never returned to the bosom of the Church; yet as a Frenchman, a patriot, and a believer in law, morality, and Christian ethics he found himself obliged, after six years' experience in the lodges and after attaining the degree of Rose-Croix, to leave Freemasonry and, further, to denounce it. From what he himself heard and observed M. Copin Albancelli declares the Grand Orient to be anti-patriotic, subversive of all morality and religious belief, and an immense danger to France.

But further than this, M. Copin Albancelli declares the Grand Orient to be a system of deception by which members are enlisted in a cause unknown to themselves; even the initiates of the upper degrees are not all aware of the real aim of the Order or of the power behind it. M. Copin Albancelli thus arrives at the conclusion that there are three Freemasonries one above the other: (i) Blue Masonry (i.e. the three Craft Degrees), in which none of the real secrets are revealed to the members and which serves merely as a sorting-ground for selecting likely subjects; (2) the Upper Degrees, in which most of the members, whilst imagining themselves to have been initiated into the whole secret of the Order and "bursting with importance" over their imaginary rôle of leaders, are only admitted to a partial knowledge of the goal to which they are tending; and (3) the inner circle, "the true masters," those who conceal themselves behind high-grade Masonry. Admission to this inner circle may be, moreover, not a matter of degrees. "Whilst in the lower Masonries the adepts are obliged to pass through all the degrees of the established hierarchy, the upper and invisible Freemasonry is certainly recruited not only amongst the thirty-three degrees but in all the groups of upper-degree Masonry, and perhaps even in certain exceptional cases outside these."[678] This inner and invisible Freemasonry is to a large extent _international_.

The most illuminating passage in the whole of M. Copin Albancelli's book is where he describes an experience that befell him after he had taken the degree of Rose-Croix. It was then that one of his superiors took him aside and addressed him in the following terms:

"You realize the power which Freemasonry has at its disposal. We can say that we hold France. It is not because of our numbers, since there are only 25,000 Freemasons in this country [this was in 1889]. Nor is it because we are the brains, for you have been able to judge of the intellectual mediocrity of the greater number of these 25,000 Freemasons. We hold France because we are organized and the only people who are organized. But above all, we hold France because we have an aim, this aim is unknown; as it is unknown, no obstacle can be put in its way; and finally, as no obstacle is put up, the way is wide open before us. This is logical, is it not?"

"Absolutely."

"Good. But what would you say of an association which instead of consisting of 25,000 nonentities as in Freemasonry, were composed of, say, only a thousand individuals, but a thousand individuals recruited in the manner that I will tell you."

And the Freemason went on to explain the way in which such individuals were selected, the months and years of observation, of supervision, to which they were subjected, so as to form a body of picked men inside Freemasonry capable of directing its operations.

"You can imagine the power at the command of such an association?"

"An association thus selected would do anything it chose. It could possess the world if it pleased."

Thereupon the higher adept, after asking for a further promise of secrecy, declared:

"Well, in exchange for this promise, Brother Copin, I am authorized to let you know that this association exists and that, further, I am authorized to introduce you into it."[679]

It was then that Monsieur Copin Albancelli understood that the point to which the conversation was leading up was not, as he had at first supposed, an invitation to take the next step in Freemasonry--the thirtieth degree of Knight Kadosch--but to enter through a side-door into an association concealed within Freemasonry and for which the visible organization of the latter served merely as a cover. A very curious resemblance will here be noticed between the method of sounding M. Copin Albancelli and that of the Illuminatus Cato in the matter of Savioli, described in a passage already quoted:

Now that he is a Mason I have ... taken up the general plan of our ⊙, and as this pleased him I said that such a thing really existed, whereat he gave me his word that he would enter it.

M. Copin Albancelli, however, did not give his word that he would enter it, but, on the contrary, checked further revelations by declaring that he would leave Freemasonry.

This experience had afforded him a glimpse of "a world existing behind the masonic world, more secret than it, unsuspected by it as by the outside world."[680] Freemasonry, then, "can only be the half-lit antechamber of the real secret society. That is the truth."[681] "There exists then necessarily a permanent directing Power. We cannot see that Power, therefore it is occult."[682]

For some time M. Copin Albancelli concluded this Power to be "the Jewish power," and elaborated the idea in a further work[683]; but the war has led him to develop his theories in yet another book, which will shortly appear.

That the lodges of the Grand Orient are largely controlled by Jews is, however, certain, and that they are centres of political propaganda is equally undeniable. We have only to glance at the following extracts--some of which are reproduced on the opposite page--from the programme of debates in the _Bulletin_ of the Grand Orient for June 5, 1922, to recognize that the ideas they propagate are simply those of International Socialism:

Loge "Union et France": Lecture du Rapport de notre T∴ C∴ F∴ Chardard sur "L'Exploitation des richesses nationales au profit de la collectivité."

Loge "Les Rénovateurs": "Exploitation des Richesses nationales et des grosses Entreprises an profit de la collectivité." Conférence de notre F∴ Goldschmidt, Orat∴ adjoint sur la même question.

Loge "Les Zélés Philanthropes": "La Transformation de la Société Actuelle s'impose-t-elle?" Conférence par le T∴ C∴ F∴ Edmond Cottin.

Loge "Paix-Travail-Solidarité": "Rôle de la Franc-Maçonnerie dans la politique actuelle" par le F∴ F∴

Loge "Les Trinitaires": "Le Socialisme Français" par le T∴ Ill. F∴ Elie May.

Ten∴ Collective des L∴ "Emmanuel Arago" & "les Coeurs Unis indivisibles": "Comment propager notre Idéal Maçonnique dans le Monde profane." Conférence par le F∴ Jahia, de la R∴ L∴ Isis Monthyon.

Loge "Isis Monthyon et Conscience et Volonté": "La Terreur et le Péril Fasciste en Italie, le Fascisme et la F∴-Maç∴ Italienne," impressions de notre F∴ Mazzini, de retour, après un séjour prolongé en Italie.

It will be seen by the last of these extracts that Grand Orient Masonry is the enemy of Fascismo, which saved Italy in her hour of peril. Indeed, the Italian Masons passed a resolution which was directly opposed to Fascist views, especially with regard to the religious policy of Mussolini, who has restored the crucifix to the schools and religious teaching to the curriculum. The Fascist _Giornale di Roma_ declared that the principles announced by the Masons in this resolution were those which threatened to submerge the State and nation. Consequently Mussolini declared that Fascisti must either leave their lodges or leave Fascismo.[684]

In Belgium Freemasonry has taken the same political and anti-religious course. In 1856 the directing committee of the Belgian Grand Orient declared: "Not only is it the right but the duty of the lodges to supervise the actions in public life of those amongst its members whom it has placed in political posts, the right to demand explanations...."[685] When in 1866 at a funeral ceremony in honour of the deceased King Leopold I the Grand Orient of Belgium displayed the maxim, "The soul which has emanated from God is immortal," the Freemasons of Louvain entered a violent protest on the ground that "Free-thinking had been admitted by the Belgian lodges in 1864 as its fundamental principle," and that the Grand Orient had therefore violated the convictions of its members.[686]

In Spain and Portugal Freemasonry has played not merely a subversive but an actively revolutionary and sanguinary rôle. The anarchist Ferrer, intimately concerned with a plot to murder the King of Spain, was at the same moment entrusted with negotiations between the Grand Orient of France and the Grand Lodge of Catalonia.[687] These murderous schemes, frustrated in Spain, met, however, in Portugal with complete success. The Portuguese revolutions from 1910 to 1921 were organized under the direction of Freemasonry and the secret society of Carbonarios. The assassination of King Carlos and his elder son had been prepared by the same secret organizations. In 1908 a pamphlet modelled on the libels published against Marie Antoinette was directed against Queen Amélie and her husband. A month later the assassination took place. Amongst the leaders of the new Republic was Magalhaes Lima, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Portugal.[688]

The authorship of these disorders was, in fact, so clearly recognized that honest Freemasons forsook the lodges. An English Mason, unaware of the true character of Portuguese Freemasonry, when in Lisbon in August 1919, made himself known to several moderate Portuguese Masons, who, while glad to welcome him as a brother, refused to take him to a lodge, declaring that they had severed all connection with Masonry since it had passed under the control of assassins. They also added that the assassination of Señor Paes, the President in December 1918, was the work of certain Portuguese lodges. A special meeting had previously been held in Paris in conjunction with the Grand Orient of France, at which it had been decided that Paes was to be removed. This decision reached, the earliest opportunity of putting it into force was sought--with fatal results. The assassin was imprisoned in the Penitentiary but liberated by the revolution of 1921, and no attempt has been made to recapture him. The murder of Dr. Antonio Granjo in October 1921 was traced to the same agency. In the pocket of the murdered man was found a document from the "Lodge of Liberty and Justice"(!) warning him of the decision taken against him for having ordered the police to protect the British tramway company.[689]

The present Portuguese Government, indeed, makes no secret of its masonic character and prints the square and compass on its bank-notes.

But whilst in Spain and Portugal Freemasonry manifested itself in Anarchist outrages, in the east of Europe the lodges, largely under the control of Jews, followed the line of Marxian Socialism. After the fall of the Bela Kun régime in Hungary a raid on the lodges brought to light documents clearly revealing the fact that the ideas of Socialism had been disseminated by the Freemasons. Thus in the minutes of meetings it was recorded that on November 16, 1906, Dr. Kallos had addressed the Gyor Lodge on Socialist ideals. "The ideal world which we call the masonic world," he declared, "will be also a Socialist world and the religion of Freemasonry is that of Socialism as well." Dr. Kallos then proceeded to acquaint the members with the theories of Marx and Engels, showing that no help was to be found in Utopias, as the interests of the proletarians were in absolute conflict with those of other classes, and these differences could only be settled by international class warfare. Nevertheless with that fear of the proletariat which has always characterized the democrats of revolutionary Freemasonry, Dr. Kallos declared later that "the social revolution must take place without bloodshed."[690] The Karolyi régime was the direct outcome of these illusions, and as in all revolutions paved the way for the more violent elements.

Still further east in Europe the lodges, though revolutionary, instead of following the International Socialist line of Hungarian Freemasonry, exhibited a political and nationalist character. The Young Turk movement originated in the masonic lodges of Salonica under the direction of the Grand Orient of Italy, which later contributed to the success of Mustapha Kemal. Moreover, as we approach the Near East, cradle of the masonic system, we find the Semitic influence not only of the Jews but of other Semite races directing the lodges. In Turkey, in Egypt, in Syria now, as a thousand years ago, the same secret societies which inspired the Templars have never ceased to exist, and in this mingling of the East and West it is possible that the Grand Orient may draw reinforcement from those sources whence it drew its system and its name.

Amongst the strange survivals of early Eastern sects are the Druses of Lebanon, who might indeed be described as the Freemasons of the East; their outer organization closely resembles that of the Craft Degrees in Western Masonry, yet such is their power of secrecy that few if any Europeans have ever succeeded in discovering the secret doctrines. That their tendency is largely political admits of little doubt; in fact men intimately acquainted with the Near East have declared that the influence they exercise over the politics of that region is as far-reaching as that of the Grand Orient over the affairs of Europe and that they form the breeding-ground of all political ideas and changes. Though small in numbers this mysterious society is composed of past masters in the game of intrigue, who, whilst playing apparently a minor part at political meetings, secret or otherwise, or even remaining completely silent, contrive to influence decisions with startling results.

British Masonry

We shall now consider the further ways in which British Masonry differs from the Grand Orient.

In the first place, whilst working the same degrees, its rituals, formulas, and ceremonies, as also the interpretation it places on words and symbols, are different in many essential points.

Secondly, British Masonry is essentially an honest institution. Whereas in the Grand Orient the initiate is led through a maze of ceremonies towards a goal unknown to him which he may discover too late to be other than he supposed, the British initiate, although admitted by gradual stages to the mysteries of the Craft, knows nevertheless from the beginning the general aim of the Order.

Thirdly, British Masonry is primarily philanthropic and the sums it devotes to charitable purposes are immense. Since the war the three principal masonic charities have collected annually over £300,000.

But the point to be emphasized here is that British Masonry is strictly non-political, not merely in theory but in practice, and that it enforces this principle on every occasion. Thus before the recent General Election, the Report of the Board of General Purposes, drawn up by Grand Lodge on December 5, 1923, recalled to the notice of the Craft that "'all subjects of a political nature are strictly excluded from discussion in masonic meetings,' this being in accordance with long-established masonic tradition ... it follows from this that Masonry must not be used for any personal or party purpose in connexion with an election." It further emphasized the distinct caution "that any attempt to bring the Craft into the electioneering arena would be treated as a serious masonic offence."

At the same time a fresh injunction was made with regard to the Grand Orient of France:

As recognition was withdrawn from that body by the United Grand Lodge of England in 1878, ... it is considered necessary to warn all members of our lodges that they cannot visit any lodge under the obedience of a jurisdiction unrecognized by the United Grand Lodge of England; and further that under Rule 150 of the Book of Constitutions, they cannot admit visitors therefrom.

For the reasons given at the beginning of this section British Masonry stands rigidly aloof from all attempts to create an international system of Masonry. The idea was first suggested at the Masonic Congress of Paris in 1889, convened to celebrate the centenary of the first French Revolution, but led to nothing very definite until the Congress of Geneva in September 1902, at which the delegates of thirty-four lodges, Grand Lodges, Grand Orients, and Supreme Councils were present, and a proposal was unanimously adopted "tending towards the creation of an International Bureau for Masonic Affairs," to which twenty Powers, mostly Europeans, gave their adherence. Brother Desmons, of the Grand Orient of France, in an after-dinner speech declared it to have been always "the dream of his life" that "all democracies should meet and understand one another in such a way as one day to form the Universal Republic."[691]

According to the official report of the proceedings, "the representatives of Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, England, Spain, Italy, and Switzerland greeted with much feeling the dawn of this new era." The same Report goes on to observe that--

It is altogether a mistake ... to believe that Freemasonry does not attack the defects of such and such a State, and that consequently it remains a stranger to party-strife and the tendencies of the times.

And again:

Freemasonry has imposed upon itself a task--a mission. It is a question of nothing less than the rebuilding of society on an entirely new basis, which shall be more in accordance with the present conditions of the means of communication, of situation, and production, as well as of a reform of right, of a complete renewal of the principle of existence, especially of the principle of community and of the relations of men among one another.

The Report here quoted is, however, inaccurate in one important particular. No English delegates were present at the Geneva Congress or on any other occasion of the kind. There was a delegate from Adelaide who spoke a good deal, but the Chairman specifically mentioned England as taking no part in the movement. Later on, in a Report of the Board of General Purposes to Grand Lodge on March 2, 1921, a letter from Lord Ampthill, pro Grand Master, appears, declining an invitation from the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina to British Freemasons to attend an International Masonic Congress in Geneva and quoting the following letter from the Grand Secretary as an earlier precedent for this refusal:

I am directed to state, in reply to the invitation to attend an International Masonic Conference in Switzerland during the coming autumn, that the United Grand Lodge of England will be unable to send representatives on the occasion. It never participates in a Masonic gathering in which are treated as an open question what it has always held to be ancient and essential Landmarks of the Craft, these being an express belief in the Great Architect of the Universe, and an obligatory recognition of the Volume of the Sacred Law. Its refusal to remain in fraternal association with such Sovereign Jurisdictions as have repudiated or made light of these Landmarks has long been upon record, and its resolve in this regard remains unshaken.

Lord Ampthill then went on to say:

A further consequence of certain happenings of the war is to make more firm our resolve to keep, as far as in us lies, Freemasonry strictly away from participation in politics, either national or international. This attitude of aloofness from necessarily controversial affairs of State, on which Brethren can legitimately and most properly differ, has ever been maintained by our Grand Lodge since it was first convened in 1717. Because of this, it held aloof from such international conferences as were summoned during the war; and never more than now has the necessity for the maintenance of this attitude been felt by British Freemasons.... For these reasons, the invitation to participate in the proposed International Conference of Freemasons at Geneva cannot be accepted. Such an assembly might be termed informal, but inevitably it would be regarded as opening a door to compromise on those things which this Grand Lodge has always held to be essentials. Such a compromise English Freemasonry will never contemplate. On these essentials we take the firm stand we have always done; we cannot detract from full recognition of the Great Architect of the Universe, and we shall continue to forbid the introduction of political discussion into our Lodges.

British Masonry has thus taken a firm stand against the Grand Orient. But it is regrettable that views so admirably expressed should be confined to masonic correspondence and not made more apparent to the world in general. On the Continent, outside masonic circles, the difference between British Masonry and the Grand Orient variety is _not_ sufficiently known, and the reticence of leading British Masons on this subject has not only played into the hands of the intractable anti-Masons, who declare all Masonry to be harmful, but has strengthened the position of the revolutionaries who use Masonry for a subversive purpose. Thus in the Portuguese revolution of 1920 the Masons of that country who were directing the movement sheltered themselves behind the good name of England. "How can you accuse the lodges of being murder clubs," they said to the people, "when Masonry is directed by England and had King Edward for its Grand Master?"

However ludicrous all this may seem to the British public, yet for the honour of our country such accusations should not remain unrefuted. A witness of the disorders that took place in Portugal declared to the present writer that if only Grand Lodge of England would have published a notice in the Continental press disassociating itself from the Grand Orient in general and from Portuguese Freemasonry in particular, the power of the revolutionaries would have been immensely weakened and the anti-British and pro-German propaganda then circulating in the country defeated. But British Freemasonry preferred to maintain an attitude of aloofness, contenting itself with issuing periodical warnings against the Grand Orient privately to the lodges.

This policy has done much to damage not only the good name of England but of British Masonry in the eyes of the outside world, and particularly in those of Roman Catholics, which is the more regrettable since Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic Church are the only two organized bodies in this country which really exercise discipline over their members and forbid them to belong to subversive secret societies; hence they provide the two strongest bulwarks against the occult forces of revolution. For this reason, as we shall see later, they are the two bodies which are the most feared by the recruiting agents of these societies.

But in the case of Freemasonry the fact is unfortunately too little known to the world in general. As a singularly broad-minded Jesuit has recently expressed it:

The anti-clerical and revolutionary activities of Continental Freemasonry did not begin when the Grand Orient finally abolished God. During a century and more these evil forces had been at work. Nevertheless English Masons only shrugged their shoulders and looked another way, though the true character of foreign Masonry was brought to their notice in such books as that of John Robison, _Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe_....

No doubt [the same writer says again] there has been at times a deplorable amount of exaggeration among Continental Catholics in attributing all the moral and social evils of the world to the insidious workings of Freemasonry.... But so long as English Freemasons resolutely avert their gaze from the anti-religious and anti-social activities of their Continental brethren there can be no hope of any better understanding.[692]

It is impossible to deny the truth of these strictures. As has already been pointed out in the course of this book, British Freemasons have frequently not only ignored Robison's warning but vilified him as the enemy of Masonry, although he never attacked their Order but only the perverted systems of the Continent; too often also they have exonerated the most dangerous secret societies, notably the Illuminati, because, apparently from a mistaken sense of loyalty, they conceive it their duty to defend any association of a masonic character. This is simply suicidal. British Masonry has no bitterer enemies than the secret societies working for subversion, which, from the Illuminati onwards, have always regarded honest Masonry with contempt and used its doctrines for an ulterior purpose.

It is easy to see how these doctrines may be perverted to an end directly opposed to that which British Masons have in view. Thus, for example, the idea of the brotherhood of man in the sense of love for all humanity is the essence of Christianity--"Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another." In adopting "brotherly love" as a part of their sacred trilogy British Masons adopt an entirely Christian standpoint. But if by the brotherhood of man is meant that men of every race are equally related and that therefore one owes the same duty to foreigners as to one's fellow-countrymen it is obvious that all national feeling must vanish. The British Freemason does not, of course, interpret the theory in this manner; he cannot seriously regard himself as the brother of the Bambute pygmy or the Polynesian cannibal, thus he uses the term merely in a vague and theoretical sense.

What indeed does the word "brother" literally mean? If we consult the dictionary we shall see it defined as "a male born of the same parents; anyone closely united with or resembling one another; associated in common interests, occupation," etc. It is therefore obviously absurd to say that men of such different races as those referred to are brothers; they are not born of the same kind of parents, they are not united in their aims, they do not remotely resemble one another, and they are not associated in common interests and occupations. Though these happen to be extreme cases, there are nevertheless essential differences between men of the same zone and climate. The Englishman and the Frenchman are not brothers because they do not see life from the same point of view, but that is no reason why they should not be close allies.

The brotherhood of man, if taken literally, is therefore a misleading term, nor is such a relationship necessary to the peace of the world. Cain and Abel were not better friends, for being brothers. David and Jonathan, on the other hand, were not brothers but devoted friends. In striving after universal brotherhood in a literal sense, Freemasons are therefore pursuing a chimera.

The most dangerous fallacy to which democracy, under the influence of Illuminized Freemasonry, has succumbed is that peace between nations can be brought about by means of Internationalism, that is to say, by the destruction of national feeling. Yet a man is not more likely to live at peace with his neighbours because he is devoid of natural affection; on the contrary, the good brother, the devoted father, is most likely to become the faithful friend. Permanent peace between nations will probably never be ensured, but the only basis on which such a situation can conceivably be established is the basis of sane Nationalism--an understanding between the patriotic and virile elements in every country which, because they value their own liberties and revere their own traditions, are able to respect those of other nations. Internationalism is an understanding between the decadent elements in each country--the conscientious objectors, the drawing-room Socialists, the visionaries--who shirk the realities of life and, as the Socialist Karl Kautsky in a description of Idealists has admirably expressed it, "see only differences of opinion and misapprehension where there are actually irreconcilable antagonisms." This is why at times of crisis Idealists are of all men the most dangerous and Pacifists the great promoters of wars. Understanding between nations is wholly desirable, but the destruction of the national spirit everywhere can only lead to the weakening of all countries where this process takes place and the triumph of the nations who refuse to accept the same principle.

It will perhaps be answered that Freemasons do not believe in the doctrine of brotherhood between all men, but only between Masons of all races. But this may lead no less to national disintegration if it creates a nation within each nation, an international fraternity independent of the countries to which its members belong. The logical outcome of this may be that a man will refuse to fight for his country against his brother Masons--it is what has happened in France. The Grand Orient was before the recent war the great breeding-ground of anti-patriotism, where all schemes for national defence were discouraged. Before 1870 the same thing took place, and it was in the masonic lodges that Germany found her most valuable allies.

In the same way the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature lends itself to perversion. Nothing could be more desirable than that man should strive after perfection. Did not Christ enjoin His disciples: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect"? Man is therefore acting in accordance with Christian principles in seeking after divine perfection. But when he comes to believe that he has already attained it he makes of himself a god. "If I justify myself," said Job, "mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse." And St. John: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." More than this, if we seek perfection in others we deceive ourselves equally and make gods of men. This is precisely the conclusion at which perverted Freemasonry and the forms of Socialism deriving from it arrive. Human nature, they say, is itself divine; what need then for other divinities? The Catholic Church is consequently quite right in declaring that the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature leads to the deification of humanity in that it puts humanity in the place of God. The Grand Orient, which definitely accepts this doctrine, has therefore logically erased the name of the Great Architect of the Universe from its ritual and has become an association of Freethinkers and Atheists.

Is it necessary to point out the folly as well as the crime of this delusion--the ludicrous inconsequence of men who divinize humanity yet revile what they call "society"? All the evils of the world, they declare, are not to be found in nature but in "man-made laws," in the institutions of "society." Yet what is society but the outcome of human wills, of human aspirations? Society may be, and no doubt is, in need of reformation, but are not its imperfections the creation of imperfect beings? It is true that to-day the world is in a state of chaos, industrial chaos, political chaos, social chaos, religious chaos. Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is rent with divisions, the ruling classes are abdicating in favour of unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith for popularity.

And what has brought the world to this pass? Humanity! Humanity, that all-wise, all-virtuous abstraction that needs no light from Heaven. Humanity that was to take the place of God! If ever there was a moment in the history of the world when the futility of this pretension should be apparent it is the present moment. All the ills, all the confusion, what are they but the outcome of human error and of human passions? It is not Capitalism that has failed, nor yet Democracy, nor yet even Socialism as a principle, it is not monarchy that has broken down, nor Republicanism, nor again religion; _it is humanity that has broken down_. The ills of Capitalism arise from the egoism of individual capitalists; Socialism has failed because, as Robert Owen discovered, the idle, the quarrelsome, the selfish have prevented its success. If men were perfect, Socialism might succeed, but so might any other system. A perfect capitalist would love his employee as himself, just as a perfect Socialist would be willing to work for the common good. It is the imperfections of human nature that prevent, and will always prevent, any system from being perfect. There will never be a Millennium of man's making. Only the application of Christian principles to human conduct can bring about a better order of things.

Grand Orient Masonry, in deifying human nature, thus not only builds upon the sand, but by its rejection of all religion takes away the sole hope of human progress. Meanwhile, by the support it lends to Socialism it encourages the class war instead of the brotherhood between men of all ranks and conditions which it professes to advocate. British Freemasonry, on the other hand, whilst not interpreting brotherhood in a political sense, nevertheless contributes to social peace. At the annual conference of the Labour Party in 1923 a proposal was made by the extreme section that "any person who is a Free mason should be excluded from any kind of office," it being suggested that "in cases where an understanding has been reached between Trade Union leaders and employers, thus preventing or limiting industrial trouble, the secret has been the bond of Freemasonry."[693] Whether this was the case or not, British Masonry, by taking its stand on patriotism and respect for religion, necessarily tends to unite men of all classes and therefore offers a formidable bulwark against the forces of revolution. Any attacks on British Masonry as at present constituted and directed are therefore absolutely opposed to the interests of the country. But at the same time it behoves Masons to beware of the insidious attempts that are being made by irregular secret societies to infiltrate the Craft and pervert its true principles. The present satisfactory condition of Freemasonry in England is owing not only to its established statutes, but to the character of the men who control it--men who are not, as in eighteenth-century France, mere figureheads, but the real directors of the Order. Should the control ever pass into the wrong hands and the agents of secret societies succeed in capturing a number of the lodges, this great stabilizing force might become a gigantic engine of destruction. How insidiously these efforts are being made we shall see in the next chapter.

12

SECRET SOCIETIES IN ENGLAND

We have seen that from the Illuminati onwards subversive societies have always sought recruits amongst orthodox Freemasons. The reason for this is obvious: not only do the doctrines of Freemasonry lend themselves to perversion, but the training provided in the Lodges makes an admirable preparation for initiation into other secret systems. The man who has learnt to maintain silence even on what may appear to him as trivialities, who is willing to submit to mystification, to ask no questions, and to recognize the authority of superiors whom he is in no way legally obliged to obey, who has, moreover, become imbued with the _esprit de corps_ which binds him to his fellow-members in a common cause, is naturally a better subject for the secret society adept than the free lance who is liable to assert his independence at any moment. Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the nature of the masonic oaths. These terrible penalties, which many Freemasons themselves regret as a survival of barbarism and which have in fact been abolished in the higher degrees, have done much to create prejudice against Freemasonry, whilst at the same time they provide an additional incentive to outside intriguers. In the opinion of M. Copin Albancelli, the abolition of the oath would go far to prevent penetration of British Masonry by the secret societies.

Now, by their obligations British Freemasons are forbidden to join these irregular societies, not only because their principles are in conflict with those of orthodox Masonry, but because in most cases they admit women. According to the ruling of Grand Lodge, "any member working under the English Jurisdiction ... violates his Obligation by being present at or assisting in assemblies professing to be Masonic which are attended by women." Warnings to this effect have been frequently given in the Lodges; on September 3, 1919, the Board of General Purposes issued the following report:

The Board's attention is being increasingly drawn to sedulous endeavours which are being made by certain bodies unrecognized as Masonic by the United Grand Lodge of England, to induce Freemasons to join in their assemblies. As all such bodies which admit women to membership are clandestine and irregular, it is necessary to caution Brethren against being inadvertently led to violate their Obligation by becoming members of them or attending their meetings. Grand Lodge, nine years since, approved the action of the Board in suspending from all Masonic rights and privileges two Brethren who had contumaciously failed to explain the grave Masonic irregularity to which attention is now again called; and it is earnestly hoped that no occasion will arise for having again to institute disciplinary proceedings of a like kind.

The idea of women Masons is, of course, not a new one. As early as 1730 lodges for women are said to have existed in France, and towards the end of the century several excellent women, such as the Duchesse de Bourbon and the Princesse de Lamballe, played a leading part in the Order. But this _Maçonnerie d'Adoption_, as it was called, retained a purely convivial character; a sham ceremonial, with symbols, pass words, and a ritual, was devised as a consolation to the members for their exclusion from the real lodges. These mummeries were, as Ragon observes, "only the pretexts for assemblies; the real objects were the banquet and the ball, which were their inevitable accompaniments."[694]

But this precedent, inaugurated as a society pastime and accompanied by all the frivolity of the age, paved the way for Weishaupt's two classes of women members, who, although never initiated into the secrets of the Order, were to act as useful tools "directed by men without knowing it." For this purpose they were to be divided into two classes, the "virtuous" to play the part of figureheads or decoys, and the "freer-hearted," who were to carry out the real designs of the Order.

The same plan was adopted nearly a hundred years later by Weishaupt's disciple Bakunin, who, however, did admit women as actual initiates into his secret society, the Alliance Sociale Démocratique, but, like Weishaupt, divided them into classes. The sixth category of people to be employed in the work of social revolution is thus described in his programme:

The sixth category is very important. They are the women, who must be divided into three classes: the first, frivolous women, without mind or heart, which we must use in the same manner as the third and fourth categories of men [i.e. by "getting hold of their dirty secrets and making them our slaves"]; the second, the ardent, devoted and capable women, but who are not ours because they have not reached a practical revolutionary understanding, without phrase--we must make use of these like the men of the fifth category [i.e. by "drawing them incessantly into practical and perilous manifestations, which will result in making the majority of them disappear while making some of them genuine revolutionaries"]; finally, the women who are entirely with us, that is to say completely initiated and having accepted our programme in its entirety. We ought to consider them as the most precious of our treasures, without whose help we can do nothing.[695]

The first and only woman to be admitted into real Masonry, if such a term can be applied to so heterogeneous a system, was Maria Deraismes, an ardent French Feminist celebrated for her political speeches and electioneering campaigns in the district of Pontoise and for twenty-five years the acknowledged leader of the anti-clerical and Feminist party.[696] In 1882 Maria Deraismes was initiated into Freemasonry by the members of the Lodge _Les Libres Penseurs_, deriving from the Grande Loge Symbolique Écossaise and situated at Pecq in the Department of Seine-et-Oise. The proceeding being, however, entirely unconstitutional, Maria Deraismes's initiation was declared by the Grande Loge to be null and void and the Lodge _Les Libres Penseurs_ was disgraced.[697] But some years afterwards Dr. George Martin, an enthusiastic advocate of votes for women, collaborated with Maria Deraismes in founding the _Maçonnerie Mixte_ at the first lodge of the Order named "Le Droit Humain." The _Suprême Conseil Universel Mixte_ was founded in 1899.

The Maçonnerie Mixte was political and in no way theosophical or occult, and its programme, like that of the Grand Orient, was Utopian Socialism, whilst by its insistence on the supremacy of reason it definitely proclaimed its antagonism to all revealed religion. Thus in the involved language of Dr. George Martin himself:

The Ordre Maçonnique Mixte Internationale is the first mixed, philosophic, progressive, and philanthropic Masonic Power to be organized and constituted in the world, placed above all the prooccupations of the philosophical or religious ideas which may be professed by those who ask to become members.... The Order wishes to interest itself principally in the vital interests of the human being on earth; it wishes above all to study in its Temples the means for realizing Peace between all nations and social Justice which will enable all human beings to enjoy during their lives the greatest possible sum of moral felicity and of material well-being.... Claiming no divine revelation and loudly affirming that it is only an emanation of human reason, this fraternal institution is not dogmatic, it is rationalist.[698]

Into this materialist and political club, erected under the guise of Freemasonry, entered Annie Besant with all the strange conglomeration of Eastern doctrines now known as Theosophy.

Theosophy

Before entering on this question it is necessary to make my own position clear. Although I should much prefer not to introduce a personal note into the discussion, I feel that nothing I say will carry any weight if it appears to be an expression of opinion by one who has never considered religious doctrines from anything but the orthodox Christian point of view. I should explain, then, that I have known Theosophists from my early youth, that I have travelled in India, Ceylon, Burma, and Japan and seen much to admire in the great religions of the East. I do not believe that God has revealed Himself to one portion of mankind alone and that during only the last 1,900 years of the world's history; I do not accept the doctrine that all the millions of human beings who have never heard of Christ are plunged in spiritual darkness; I believe that behind all religions founded on a law of righteousness there lies a divine and central truth, that Ikhnaton, Moses and Isaiah, Socrates and Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mohammed were all teachers who interpreted to men the aspect of the divine as it had been vouchsafed to them and which in harmony with the supreme revelation given to man by Jesus Christ.

This conception of an affinity between all great religious faiths was beautifully expressed by an old Mohammedan to a friend of the present writer with whom he stood watching a Hindu procession pass through an Indian village. In answer to the Englishman's enquiry, "What do you think of this?" the Mohammedan replied:

"Ah, sahib, we cannot tell. We know of three roads up the hill of endeavour to the gates of Paradise--the way of Mousa [Moses], the way of Issa [Jesus], and the way of Mahmoud, and there may be other roads of which you and I know nothing. I was born in the way of Mahmoud, and I believe it to be the best and the easiest to follow, and you were born in the way of Issa. And of this I am very sure: that if you will follow your guide on your road and I follow my guide on my road, when we have climbed the hill of endeavour, we shall salute one another again at the gates of Paradise."

If, then, in the following pages I attempt to show the errors of Theosophy, it is not because I do not recognize that there is much that is good and beautiful in the ancient religions from which it professes to derive.

But what is Theosophy? The word, as we have already seen, was used in the eighteenth century to denote the theory of the Martinists; it was known two centuries earlier when Haselmeyer in 1612 wrote of "the laudable Fraternity of the Theosophists of the Rosy Cross." According to Colonel Olcott, who with Madame Blavatsky founded the modern Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, the word was discovered by one of the members "in turning over the leaves of a Dictionary" and forthwith unanimously adopted.[699] Madame Blavatsky had arrived in America two years earlier, before which date she professed to have been initiated into certain esoteric doctrines in Thibet. Monsieur Guénon, who writes with inside knowledge of the movement, indicates, however, the existence of concealed superiors on the Continent of Europe by whom she was in reality directed.

What is very significant ... is that Madame Blavatsky in 1875 wrote this: "I have been sent from Paris to America in order to verify phenomena and their reality and to show the deception of the Spiritualist theory." Sent by whom? Later she will say: by the "Mahatmas"; but then there was no question of them, and besides it was in Paris that she received her mission, and not in India or in Thibet.[700]

Elsewhere Monsieur Guénon observes that it is very doubtful whether Madame Blavatsky was ever in Thibet at all. These obvious attempts at concealment lead Monsieur Guénon therefore to the conclusion that in the background of Theosophy there existed a mysterious centre of direction, that Madame Blavatsky was simply "an instrument in the hands of individuals or occult groups sheltering behind her personality," and that "those who believe she invented everything, that she did everything by herself and on her own initiative, are as much mistaken as those who, on the contrary, believe her affirmations concerning her relations with the pretended Mahatmas."[701]

There is some reason to believe that the people under whom Madame Blavatsky was working at this date in Paris were Serapis Bey and Tuiti Bey, who belonged to "the Egyptian Brothers." This might answer M. Guénon's question: "By whom was she sent to America?" But another passage from Madame Blavatsky's writings, on the person of Christ, that M. Guénon quotes later, indicates a further source of inspiration: "For me, Jesus Christ, that is to say the Man-God of the Christians, copy of the Avatars of all countries, of the Hindu Chrishna as of the Egyptian Horus, was never a _historical_ personage." Hence the story of His life was merely an allegory founded on the existence of "a personage named Jehoshua born at Lud." But elsewhere she asserted that Jesus may have lived during the Christian era or a century earlier "_as the Sepher Toldoth Jehoshua indicates_" (my italics). And Madame Blavatsky went on to say of the savants who deny the historical value of this legend, that they--

either lie or talk nonsense. _It is our Masters who affirm it_ [my italics]. If the history of Jehoshua or Jesus Ben Pandera is false, then the whole of the Talmud, the whole of the Jewish canon law, is false. It was the disciple of Jehoshua Ben Parachia, the fifth President of the Sanhedrim since Ezra, who re-wrote the Bible.... This story is much truer than that of the New Testament, of which history does not say a word.[702]

Who were the Masters whose authority Madame Blavatsky here invokes? Clearly not the Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood to whom she habitually refers by this term, and who can certainly not be suspected of affirming the authenticity of the Toldoth Yeshu. It is evident, then, that there were other "Masters" from whom Madame Blavatsky received this teaching, and that those other masters were Cabalists.

The same Judaic influence appears more strongly in a book published by the Theosophical Society in 1903, where the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu are quoted at great length and the Christians are derided for resenting the attacks on their faith contained in these books, whilst the Jews are represented as innocent, persecuted victims. One passage will suffice to give an idea of the author's point of view:

The Christ [said the mystics] was born "of a virgin"; the unwitting believer in Jesus as _the_ historical Messiah in the exclusive Jewish sense, and in his being _the_ Son of God, nay God Himself, in course of time asserted that Mary was that virgin; whereupon Rabbinical logic, which in this case was simple and common logic, met this extravagance by the natural retort that, seeing that his paternity was unacknowledged, Jesus was therefore illegitimate, a bastard [_mamzer_].[703]

It is obviously, then, less from Thibetan Mahatmas, Hindu Swamis, Sikh Gurus, or Egyptian Brothers than from Jewish Cabalists that these leaders of Theosophy have borrowed their ideas on Jesus Christ. As the Jewish writer Adolphe Franck has truly observed: "Dès qu'il est question de théosophie, on est sûr de voir apparaître la Kabbale."[704] And he goes on to show the direct influence of Cabalism on the modern Theosophical Society.

Mrs. Besant, without endorsing the worst blasphemies of the Toledot Yeshu, nevertheless reflected this and other Judaic traditions in her book _Esoteric Christianity_, where she related that Jesus was brought up amongst the Essenes, and that later He went to Egypt, where He became an initiate of the great esoteric lodge--that is to say, the Great White Lodge--from which all great religions derive. It will be seen that this is only a version of the old story of the Talmudists and Cabalists, perpetuated by the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, and the nineteenth-century _Ordre du Temple_.[705] But according to one of Mrs. Besant's Theosophical antagonists, her doctrine "rests on a perpetual equivocation," and whilst allowing the English public to believe that when she spoke of the coming Christ she referred to the Christ of the Gospels, she stated to her intimates what Mr. Leadbeater taught in his book _The Inner Life_, namely, that the Christ of the Gospels never existed, but was an invention of the monks of the second century.[706] It should be understood, however, that in the language of the Theosophists, led by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, Jesus and "the Christ" are two separate and distinct individualities, and that when they now speak of "the Christ" they refer to someone living in a bungalow in the Himalayas with whom Mr. Leadbeater has interviews to arrange about his approaching advent.[707] Portraits of this person have been distributed amongst the members of "The Star in the East," an Order founded at Benares in 1911 by Mr. Leadbeater and J. Krishnamurti for the purpose of preparing the world for the coming of the Great Teacher.

But it is time to return to the alliance between Theosophy and the Maçonnerie Mixte. Whether Mrs. Besant, who had begun her career as a Freethinker, retained some lingering belief in her earlier creed at the time she entered into relations with the Order, or whether she saw in this materialistic society a valuable concrete organization for the dissemination of her new esoteric theories, it is impossible to know. At any rate, she rose rapidly through the succeeding degrees and became before long Vice President of the _Suprême Conseil_, which appointed her its national delegate to Great Britain. It was in this capacity that she founded the English branch of the Order under the name of Co-Masonry (that is, admitting both sexes) at the Lodge "Human Duty" in London, which was consecrated on September 26, 1902, and later founded another lodge at Adyar in India, named "The Rising Sun." The number of lodges on the Grand Roll of Co-Masonry, including those abroad, is now said to be no less than 442.

Co-Masonry thus receives a two-fold direction, for whilst remaining in constant correspondence with the _Suprême Conseil Universel Mixte_, situated at 5 Rue Jules-Breton in Paris and presided over by the Grand Master Piron, with Madame Amélie Gédalje, thirty-third degree, as Grand Secretary-General, it receives further instructions from "the V∴ Ill∴ Bro∴ Annie Besant 33°" at Adyar. In order not to shock the susceptibilities of English adepts who might be repelled by the rationalist tendencies of the Maçonnerie Mixte, Mrs. Besant has, however, borrowed the formulas of British Masonry together with its custom of placing the V.S.L. on the table in the lodges. These conflicting doctrines are blended in an amusing manner on the certificates of the Order, where at the top we find the French motto and initials:

Liberté Égalité Fraternité À∴ L∴ G∴ D∴ L'H∴ (i.e. à la gloire de l'Humanité)

and below, for the benefit of English members, the initials of the British masonic device, that does not of course appear on the diplomas of the French Order, which, like the Grand Orient, has rejected the Great Architect:

T∴ T∴ G∴ O∴ T∴ G∴ A∴ O∴ T∴ U∴ (To the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe).

Our Co-Masons therefore enjoy the advantage of being able to choose whether they shall render glory to God or to Humanity. That the two devices are somewhat incompatible does not appear to strike the English initiates, nor do they probably realize the imposture practised on them by the further wording of the certificate, which, after announcing in imposing capitals "To all Masons dispersed over both Hemispheres, Greeting," goes on to say "We therefore recommend him (_or_ her) as such to all Freemasons of the Globe, requesting them to recognize him (_or_ her) in all the rights and privileges attached to this Degree, as we will do to all presenting themselves under similar circumstances."

Now, any British Mason will see at a glance that all this is a false pretension. No order of Masonry can recommend its members for rights and privileges to "all the Freemasons of the world," for the simple reason that, as has been said, there is no such thing as "Universal Masonry," so that even Grand Lodge of England--the most important Lodge in the world--could not, if it would, accord the right of entry for its members into Continental lodges. As an English Mason recently expressed it:

The impression among non-Masons generally appears to be that a British or Irish member of the Craft is able to enter a masonic lodge in any part of the world and take part in its deliberations and proceedings. To this belief an unqualified denial may at once be given. Nor may a member of a lodge under any Jurisdiction not in communion with the Grand Lodges of the United Kingdom be received as a visitor or as a Joining Member in any subsidiary lodge of the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland, or Scotland.[708]

But for Co-Masonry to make this claim is even more ridiculous, since at the time when the above quoted diploma was drawn up Co-Masonry and its parent, the Maçonnerie Mixte, were not recognized by any other order of Masonry except the "Droit Humain," and it is not only unrecognized but utterly repudiated by Grand Lodge of England. The British Mason, in fact, does not recognize the Co-Mason as a Mason at all, and would violate his obligations by discussing masonic secrets with him or her, so that there is no manner in which the Co-Mason could be accorded masonic rights and privileges by British Masons. In order, further, to keep up the illusion in the minds of its members that they are genuine Masons, Co-Masonry, in its quarterly organ, _The Co-Mason_, is careful to include masonic news relating to British Masonry as if it formed one and the same order.

With regard to the Grand Orient, an equally tortuous policy was pursued. As we have already seen, the Grande Loge disgraced the lodge that had admitted Maria Deraismes and did not officially recognize the Maçonnerie Mixte. The ritual adopted by the latter Order was, however, not that of British Masonry, and in most Co-Masonic Lodges the ritual employed contains variations derived from the Grand Orient[709]; indeed the Grand Orient character of Co-Masonry has always been generally recognized in masonic circles. This being so, I pointed out in _World Revolution_ that Co-Masonry derives from the Grand Orient, but I received the following protest from a woman Co-Mason:

Are you aware that for twenty years the Grand Orient has refused to recognize it [Co-Masonry] as a legitimate body, just as the English Orthodox Masons do now? Also, we are distinctly told before joining that we shall not be recognized by that body. Also, we have nothing to do with Illuminati, or with Germany. As the Grand Orient have eliminated the Deity, it is rather a dreadful thing to a Mason to be connected in any way with that Order, and I cannot imagine a worse thing could be said about us.

This letter was dated March 6, 1922, and on the 19th of the preceding month of February an alliance between the Grand Orient and Co-Masonry had been finally celebrated at the Grand Temple of the Droit Humain in Paris! We find a report of this ceremony in the _Co-Mason_ for the following April. It is evident, therefore, that members who were likely to be repelled by the idea of connexion with the Grand Orient were assured that no such connexion existed. But when this covert _liaison_ developed into official recognition--although this did not include the right of entry to the lodges of the Grand Orient for women members--the triumphant manner in which the great event was announced in the _Co-Mason_ suggests that the majority of members were likely to feel nothing but satisfaction at association with the Order that "had eliminated the Deity." It is true that a few members protested, and by this time Co-Masonry was too completely under the control of Mrs. Besant for any faction to question her dictates. Moreover, the opposition had been weakened by a schism which took place in the Order in 1908, when a number of members who objected to the introduction of Eastern occultism into Masonry and likewise disapproved of the Grand Orient, formed themselves into a separate body under Mrs. Halsey and Dr. Geikie Cobb, working only the Craft Degrees according to the Grand Lodge of England.

It has been shown by this brief résumé that Co-Masonry is a hybrid system deriving from two conflicting sources--the political and rationalist doctrines of the _Maçonnerie Mixte_ and the Eastern occultism of Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant.

As a professing Buddhist, Madame Blavatsky consistently dissociated herself from any schemes of material welfare. Thus in the early Constitution of the Theosophical Society it is stated:

"The Society repudiates all interference on its behalf with the Governmental relations of any nation or community, confining its attention exclusively to the matters set forth in the present document."[710]

These matters relate to the study of Occult Sciences. Again Madame Blavatsky herself wrote in the _Theosophist_:

Unconcerned about politics: hostile to the insane dreams of Socialism and Communism, which it abhors--as both are but disguised conspiracies of brutal force and selfishness against honest labour; the Society cares but little about the outward human management of the material world. The whole of its aspirations are directed towards the occult truths of the visible and invisible worlds.[711]

It will be seen that this declaration is diametrically opposed to that of the Maçonnerie Mixte. Nevertheless, Madame Blavatsky so far departed from her purely occult programme after her arrival in India in 1879 as to reconstruct the society on the basis of "Universal Brotherhood." This idea was completely absent from her first scheme; "the Brotherhood plank in the Society's future platform," wrote her coadjutor Colonel Olcott, "was not thought of."[712] It was over this plank, however, that Mrs. Besant was able to walk to the Supreme Council of the Maçonnerie Mixte, and adding Liberty and Equality to the principle of Fraternity to establish Co-Masonry on a definitely political basis as a preparation for the Socialist doctrines her teacher had "abhorred."

In the matter of esoteric doctrines Mrs. Besant again departed from the path laid down by Madame Blavatsky, whose aim had been to rehabilitate Buddhism in India, representing the teachings of Gautama Buddha as an advance on Hinduism.[713] Mrs. Besant, however, came to regard the doctrines of the Brahmins as the purer faith. Yet it was neither Buddhism nor Hinduism in a pure form that she introduced to the Co-Masons of the West, but an occult system of her own devising, wherein Mahatmas, Swamis, and Gurus were incongruously mingled with the charlatans of eighteenth-century France. Thus in the Co-Masonic lodges we find "the King" inscribed over the Grand Master's chair in the East, in the North the empty chair of "the Master"--to which, until recently, all members were required to bow in passing--and over it a picture, veiled in some lodges, of the same mysterious personage. Should the neophyte enquire, "Who is the King?" he may be told that he is the King who is to come from India--whether he is identical with the young Hindu Krishnamurti adopted by Mrs. Besant in 1909 is not clear--whilst the question "Who is the Master?" will probably be met with the reply that he is "the Master of all true Freemasons throughout the world," which the enquirer takes to mean the head of the religion to which he happens to belong--Christ, Mohammed, or another. But in the third degree the astonishing information is confided with an appearance of great secrecy that he is no other than the famous Comte de Saint-Germain, who did not really die in 1784, but is still alive to-day in Hungary under the name of Ragocsky. In yet a higher degree, however, the initiate may be told that the Master is in reality Prince Eugene of Austria.

It would be superfluous to describe in detail the wild nonsense that composes the creed of Co-Masonry, since a long series of articles was recently devoted to the subject in _The Patriot_ and can be consulted by anyone who desires information concerning its ceremonies and the personnel directing it.[714] Suffice it to say here that its course, like that of most secret societies, has been marked by violent dissensions amongst the members--the Blavatsky-ites passionately denouncing the Besantites and the Besantites proclaiming the divine infallibility of their leader--whilst at the same time scandals of a peculiarly unsavoury kind have been brought to light. This fact has indeed created a serious schism in the ranks of the Theosophists, which shows that a number of perfectly harmless people are to be found amongst them. Yet the peculiar recurrence of such scandals in the history of secret societies leads one inevitably to wonder how far these are to be regarded as merely deplorable accidents or as the results of secret-society methods and of occult teaching. That the men against whom charges of sexual perversion were brought were not isolated examples of these tendencies is shown by a curious admission on the part of one of Madame Blavatsky's "chelas," or disciples, who relates:

I was a pupil of H.P.B. before Mrs. Besant joined the T.S. and saw her expel one of her most gifted and valued workers from the Esoteric Section for offences against the occult and moral law, similar to those with which Mr. Leadbeater's name has now been associated for nearly twenty years. H.P.B. was always extremely strict on this particular point, and _many_ [my itals.] would-be aspirants for chelaship were refused on this one ground alone, while others who had been accepted "on probation" failed almost immediately afterwards.[715]

It would appear, then, that these deplorable proclivities are peculiarly prevalent amongst aspirants to Theosophical knowledge.

It is unnecessary to enlarge at length on Mrs. Besant's connexion with the seditious elements in this country and in India, since these have frequently been referred to in the press. It is true that the Theosophical Society, like the Grand Orient, disavows all political intentions and professes to work only for spiritual development, but the leaders appear to consider that a radical change must take place in the existing social system before true spiritual development can be attained. That this change would lie in the direction of Socialism is suggested by the fact that a group of leading Theosophists, including Mrs. Besant, were discovered in 1919 to be holding a large number of shares in the Victoria House Printing Company, which was financing the _Daily Herald_ at that date[716]; indeed, Mrs. Besant in her lectures on Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, at the Queen's Hall in October of the same year, clearly indicated Socialism as the system of the coming New Era.[717] Since then the "Action Lodge" has been founded with the object of carrying "Theosophical ideals and conceptions into all fields of human activity"[718]--from which the political field appears not to be excluded, since this lodge has been known to co-operate with the promoters of a political meeting on the Indian question.[719] It is interesting to notice that a leading member of the "Action Lodge," and also of the "Order of the Star in the East," was recently reported in the press to have been long connected with the Labour Party and to have notified her intention of standing for it in Parliament.

This is, of course, not to say that all Theosophists are Socialists. The Theosophical Society of America, in an admirable series of articles[720] discussing the theory of world-revolution set forth in my books, pointed out that:

The pupils of the powers of evil work ... untiringly to thwart every real advance of the human race, to pull down whatever civilization painfully builds, that makes for light and true development and spiritual growth.... It would not be difficult to suggest reasons why these pupils and co-workers of the powers of darkness choose the chief clauses of their creed: Internationalism, Communism, the destruction of the higher class through the despotic rule of the lowest class, the corruption of family life. The attack on religion hardly needs comment.

It will be seen, then, that Socialism and Internationalism are not an essential part of Theosophical teaching, and that the more enlightened Theosophists recognize the danger of these destructive doctrines. At a Special Convention in England on April 6 of this year, seven Lodges entered a protest against recent departures from the original policy of the Society. Amongst the resolutions put forward was one urging the President (Mrs. Besant) to establish a tribunal "to investigate matters affecting the good name of the Society, and the conduct of certain members"; this was lost by "an overwhelming majority." Another resolution regretted that "the Administration, the Magazine, and the influence of the Society have been used for controversial political ends and sectarian religious propaganda." Unhappily these resolutions were not met in the fraternal spirit that might be expected from a Society setting out to establish Universal Brotherhood and were stigmatized in a proposed amendment as "destructive motions ... at variance with the objects for which the Society stands." This clause in the amendment was lost by a small majority, but a very large majority supported the further clauses in which the Special Convention affirmed "its complete confidence in the administration of the Society and its beloved and revered President Dr. Annie Besant, the chosen leader of whom it is justly proud," and sent "its cordial greetings to Bishop Leadbeater, F.T.S.," thanking him "for his invaluable work and his unswerving devotion to the cause of Theosophy and the service of the Theosophical Society."

There are, then, a certain number of Theosophists in this country who have the courage and public spirit to protest against the use of the Society for political ends and against infractions of the moral code which they believe certain members to have committed. But this party unfortunately constitutes only a small minority; the rest are prepared to render blind and unquestioning obedience to the dictates of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater. In this respect the Theosophical Society follows the usual plan of secret societies. For although not nominally a secret society it is one in effect, being composed of outer and inner circles and absolutely controlled by supreme directors. The inner circle, known as the Esoteric Section, or rather the Eastern School of Theosophy--usually referred to as the E.S.--is in reality a secret society, consisting in its turn of three further circles, the innermost composed of the Mahatmas or Masters of the White Lodge, the second of the Accepted Pupils or Initiates, and the third of the Learners or ordinary members. The E.S. and Co-Masonry thus compose two secret societies within the open order controlled by people who are frequently members of both. Whether even these higher initiates are really in the secret is another question. Dr. Weller van Hook who is said to have been also a Rosicrucian and an important member of the Grand Orient once cryptically observed that "Theosophy is not the hierarchy," implying that it was only part of a world-organization, and darkly hinting that if it did not carry out the work allotted to it, the Rosicrucians would take control. That this is more than probable we shall see later.

The outer ranks of the Theosophical Society seem to be largely composed of harmless enthusiasts who imagine that they are receiving genuine instruction in the religions and occult doctrines of the East. That the teaching of the E.S. would not be taken seriously by any real Orientalist and that they could learn far more by studying the works of recognized authorities on these subjects at a University or at the British Museum does not occur to them for a moment. Nor would this fulfil the purpose of the leaders. For the Theosophical Society is not a study group, but essentially a propagandist society which aims at substituting for the pure and simple teaching of Christianity the amazing compound of Eastern superstition, Cabalism, and eighteenth-century charlatanism which Mrs. Besant and her coadjutors have devised. Yet even were the doctrines of Mrs. Besant those of true Buddhism or of Brahmanism, to what extent are they likely to benefit Western civilization? Setting the question of Christianity aside, experience shows that the attempt to orientalize Occidentals may prove no less disastrous than the attempt to occidentalize Orientals, and that to transport Eastern mysticism to the West is to vulgarize it and to produce a debased form of occultism that frequently ends in moral deterioration or mental derangement.[721] I attribute the scandals that have taken place amongst Theosophists directly to this cause.

But it is time to turn to another society in which this debased occultism plays a still more important part.

Rosicrucianism

At the present time, as in the eighteenth century, the term "Rosicrucianism" is used to cover a number of associations differing in their aims and doctrines.

The first of these societies to be founded in England was the _Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia_, founded in 1867 by Robert Wentworth Little on instructions received from abroad. Only Master Masons are admitted--a procedure not condemned by Grand Lodge of England, which regards the S.R.I.A. as a perfectly innocuous body. Although neither polical nor anti-Christian, but, on the contrary, containing distinctly Christian elements and claiming to descend from Christian Rosenkreutz--a claim which must be dismissed as an absurdity--the S.R.I.A. is nevertheless largely Cabalistic,[722] dealing with the forces of Nature, alchemy, etc. If its progenitors are really to be traced further back than the Rosicrucians of the nineteenth century--Ragon, Eliphas Lévi, and Kenneth Mackenzie--they must be sought amongst certain esoteric Masons in Hungary and also amongst the French Martinistes, whose rituals doubtless derived from a kindred source. It will be remembered that Marlines Pasqually bequeathed to his disciples a large number of Jewish manuscripts which were presumably preserved in the archives of the Martiniste Lodge at Lyons. The Order of Martinistes has never ceased to exist, and the President of the Suprême Conseil, Dr. Gérard Encausse, well known as "Papus," an avowed Cabalist, only died in 1916. To these archives another famous Cabalist, the renegade Abbé, Alphonse Louis Constant, who assumed the name of Eliphas Lévi, may well have had access. It is said that one of Eliphas Lévi's most distinguished disciples, the occultist Baron Spedalieri of Marseilles, was a member of the "Grand Lodge of Solitary Brethren of the Mountain," an "Illumined Brother of the Ancient Restored Order of Manicheans," a high member of the Grand Orient, and also a "High Illuminate of the Martinistes." Before his death in 1875 Eliphas Lévi announced that in 1879 a new political and religious "universal Kingdom" would be established, and that it would be possessed by "him who would have the keys of the East." The manuscript containing this prophecy was passed on by Baron Spedalieri to Edward Maitland, who in his turn gave it to a leading member of S.R.I.A., by whom it was published in English.[723]

But, as we have already seen, the principal centre of Cabalism was in Eastern Europe, whilst Germany was the principal home of Rosicrucianism, and it was from these directions that, a few years later, a new Rosicrucian Order in England derived its inspiration. It is curious to notice that the eighties of the last century were marked by a simultaneous recrudescence of secret societies and of Socialist organizations. In 1880 Leopold Engel reorganized Weishaupt's Order of Illuminati, which, according to M. Guénon, played thenceforth "an extremely suspect political rôle," and soon after this in 1884 it is said that a strange incident took place in London. The Rev. A.F.A. Woodford, a F∴ M∴, happened to be turning over the contents of a second-hand bookstall in Farringdon Street when he came upon some cypher MSS., attached to which was a letter in German saying that if the finder were to communicate with Sapiens Dominabatur Astris, c/o Fraulein Anna Sprengel, in Germany, he would receive further interesting information.

This, at any rate, is the story told to initiates of the Order which came to be founded according to the instructions given in the cypher. But when we remember that precisely the same story was told by Cagliostro concerning his discovery of a MS. in London by the mysterious George Cofton on which he had founded his Egyptian rite, we begin to wonder whether the placing of a MS. in a spot where it is certain to be discovered by precisely the people qualified to decipher it forms one of the traditional methods of secret-society adepts for extending their sphere of influence without betraying their identity or revealing the centre of direction.

In this case it certainly succeeded admirably, for by a fortunate coincidence the clergyman who found the cypher MSS. was acquainted with two prominent members of the S.I.R.A., Dr. Wynn Westcott and Dr. Woodman, to whom he took the documents, and by a further fortunate coincidence one of them happened to be the very person to whom Eliphas Lévi's prophecy had been given; These two men who now assumed the pseudonyms of S.A. (Sapere Aude) and M.E.V. (Magnus est Veritas), were able partially to decipher the manuscript; S.A., with the assistance of a German, then wrote to S.D.A. c/o Fraulein Anna Sprengel, saying that he and a friend had finished the deciphering and that they desired further information. In reply they were told to elaborate the notes, and that if diligent they would be allowed to form an elementary branch of the Rosicrucian Order in England. Finally S.D.A. wrote to S.A. authorising him to sign her (or his?) name to any warrant or document necessary for the constitution of an Order, and promising later on further rituals and advanced teachings if the preliminary Order proved successful. S.A. and M.E.V. now called in the aid of a third member of the S.I.R.A., Macgregor Mathers, henceforth known as D.D.C.F. (Deo Duce Comite Ferro), who, having more time at his disposal, was able, by means of long and arduous labour, to elaborate the rituals in Masonic style. On March 8, 1888, a warrant was then drawn up according to the design given in the cypher MSS. and was signed by S.A. for S.D.A., by M.E.V. and D.D.C.F., all three having received the honorary grade of 7-4 from S.D.A. so as to enable them to act as Chief of the New Temple. It is interesting to note that whilst the instructions in the cypher MSS. were in English and German, the name now given to the new Order "The Golden Dawn," was accompanied by its equivalent in Hebrew "Chebreth Zerech aur Bokher" that is to say "The Companions of the Rising Light of the Morning." Amongst the instructions we find: "Avoid Roman Catholics but with pity"; also these directions concerning the Obligation:

The candidate asking for Light is taken to the Altar and forced to take an Obligation to secrecy under penalty of expulsion and death or palsy from hostile current of will.

From the subsequent correspondence of the Order it is seen that this so-called "punitive current" was actually directed by the Chiefs against those who rebelled.

Although the members of the Golden Dawn later became linked up with the "Esoteric Masons" in Germany, neither the organization nor the ritual of the Order are masonic, but rather Martiniste and Cabalistic. For amidst all the confused phraseology of the Order, the phrases and symbols borrowed from Egyptian, Greek, or Hindu mythology, one detects the real basis of the whole system--the Jewish Cabala, in which all the three Chiefs were, or became, experts. Mathers in fact translated the famous book of Abraham the Jew from French into English with explanatory notes, and Wynn Westcott translated the Sepher Yetzirah from Hebrew. Lectures were given to the society on such subjects as the Tarot Cards, Geomantic Talismans, and the Schemhamphorasch or Tetragrammaton.

The Order was at first absolutely governed by the three Chiefs, but after a time--owing to the death of Woodman and the resignation of Wynn Westcott--Mathers became the Sole Chief and professed to have obtained further instructions from the Hidden Chiefs through his wife--a sister of Bergson--by means of clairvoyance and clairaudience. But the real directors of the Order were in Germany and known as the "Hidden and Secret Chiefs of the Third Order." A curious resemblance will here be noted with the "Concealed Superiors" by whom members of the _Stricte Observance_ in the eighteenth century declared themselves to be controlled.

Who these men were at the time the Order was founded remains a mystery not only to the outside world but even to the English initiates themselves. The identity of Sapiens Dominabatur Astris appears never to have been established, nor was anything more heard about the still more mysterious Anna Sprengel until her death in an obscure German village was reported in 1893. Indeed, one of the most active members of the Order, Dr. Robert Felkin, M.D., known as F.R. (Finem Respice), later declared that, although he had visited five temples of the Order in Germany and Austria, he had been unable to get into touch with the Hidden Chiefs, or to discover how the original MSS. came into the hands of the clergyman who handed them to Wynn Westcott and Woodman. According to Felkin's statement, all that he had been able to find out was that the MSS. were the notes of ceremonies made by a man who had been initiated into a Lodge in Germany, and that the temple from which they originated was "a special temple" working on the Cabala tree like the English branch of the Order. Further, he was told that none of the "big Three" who founded the Golden Dawn in England were real Rosicrucians at all.

The confusion of ideas which must inevitably result when, as in secret societies or revolutionary organizations, a number of people are being blindly led by hidden directors, naturally brought about dissensions amongst the members, who mutually accused each other of ignorance of the real aims of the Order. Thus the London Lodge ended by breaking with Mathers, who was in Paris, on account of his arrogance in claiming supreme power through the mystery of the Hidden Chiefs, and after two years of unsettled government, in 1902 elected three new chiefs--Dr. Felkin (F.R. = Finem Respice), Bullock, a solicitor (L.O. = Levavi Oculos) who resigned at the end of the year, and Brodie Innes (S.S.--Sub Spe). But although Mathers had been repudiated, his teachings were retained as emanating from the Hidden Chiefs.

Two years earlier a dramatic incident had occurred. In a very sinister personage, Aleister Crowley, had been introduced into the Order on the recommendation of A. E. Waite (S.R. = Sacramentum Regis) the well-known mystical writer. A man of many aliases, Crowley followed the precedent of the "Comte de Saint-Germain," the "Comte de Cagliostro," and the "Baron von Offenbach" by ennobling himself and masquerading under various titles in turn, such as "Count Svareff," "Lord Boleskine," "Baron Rosenkreutz," but usually known in the Order as "P" for "Perdurabo."

Crowley, who was a Cabalist, had written a book on Goetic Magic and soon after becoming a member of the "Golden Dawn" set to work with another "Frater" on magical experiments, including evocations, the consecration and use of talismans, divination, alchemy, etc. In 1900 Crowley had joined Mathers in Paris where the latter and his wife were living under the assumed names of the "Comte and Comtesse of Glenstrae" and engaged in reviving the mysteries of Isis at the Bodinière Theatre. In this task they were joined by an extraordinary lady, the notorious Madame Horos (alias the Swami) who claimed to be the real and authentic Sapiens Dominabatur Astris. Crowley described her as "a very stout woman and very fair" and "a vampire of remarkable power;" Mathers declared her to be "probably the most powerful medium living," but later, in a letter to another member of the "Golden Dawn" observed: "I believe her and her accomplices to be emissaries of a very powerful _secret occult order_ who have been trying for years to break up other Orders and especially my work." Incidentally this lady, who proved to be a false S.D.A., ended by starting an Order in collaboration with her husband, in which it was said that certain rituals of the Golden Dawn were adapted to an immoral purpose, with the result that the couple were brought to trial and finally condemned to penal servitude.

Whether owing to this disturbing experience, or because, as Crowley declared, he had "imprudently attracted to himself forces of evil too great and terrible for him to withstand, presumably Abramelin demons," Mathers' reason began to totter. This then was the situation at the time of his rupture with the Order, and the dramatic incident referred to was the sudden appearance of Crowley in London, who, whether acting as Mathers' envoy or on his own initiative, broke into the premises of the Order, with a black mask over his face, a plaid shawl thrown over his shoulders, an enormous gold (or gilt) cross on his breast, and a dagger at his side, for the purpose of taking over possession. This attempt was baffled with the prosaic aid of the police and Crowley was expelled from the Order. Eventually, however, he succeeded in obtaining possession of some of the rituals and other documents of the Golden Dawn, which he proceeded to publish in the organ of a new Order of his own. This magazine, containing a mixture of debased Cabalism and vulgar blasphemies, interspersed with panegyrics on haschish--for Crowley combined with sexual perversion an addiction to drugs--which might appear to express only the ravings of a maniac. But eccentricity has often provided the best cloak for dark designs, and the outbreak of war proved that there was a method in the madness of the man whom the authorities persisted in regarding merely as an irresponsible degenerate of a non-political kind. To quote the press report of his exploits after this date:

In November 1914 Crowley went to the United States, where he entered into close relations with the pro-German propagandists. He edited the New York _International_, a German propagandist paper run by the notorious George Silvester Viereck, and published, among other things, an obscene attack on the King and a glorification of the Kaiser. Crowley ran occultism as a side-line, and seems to have been known as the "Purple Priest." Later on he publicly destroyed his British passport before the Statute of Liberty, declared in favour of the Irish Republican cause, and made a theatrical declaration of "war" on England.... During his stay in America Crowley was associated with a body known as the "Secret Revolutionary Committee" which was working for the establishment of an Irish Republic. He is known also as the writer of a defeatest manifesto circulated in France in 1915.

But to return to the Golden Dawn. In 1903 a split occurred in the Order. A.E. Waite, an early member of it, seceded from it with a number of other members and carried off with him the name of "Golden Dawn," also the vault and other property of the Order. The original Order then took the name of "Stella Matutina," with Dr. Felkin as Chief.

In the preceding year the members of the London Lodge had again believed that they were in touch with the _Hidden Third Order_ and revived their efforts to communicate with the Secret Chiefs in Germany. This state of uncertainty continued till about 1910, when Felkin and Meakin set forth for Germany, where they succeeded in meeting several members of the Third Order, who professed to be "true and genuine Rosicrucians" and to know of Anna Sprengel and the starting of the Order in England. They were not, it was believed, the Secret and Hidden Chiefs, but more probably Esoteric Masons of the Grand Orient. These Fratres, however, told them that in order to form a definite etheric link between themselves and the Order in Great Britain, it would be necessary for a British Frater to be under their instruction for a year. Accordingly Meakin remained in Germany for special training, so that he might act as the "etheric link" between the two countries. After a pilgrimage to the Near East, closely following the itinerary of Christian Rosenkreutz, Meakin returned to Germany, and it appears to have been now that he was able to get into touch with a certain high adept of occult science.

This remarkable personage, Rudolf Steiner, had earlier belonged to the Theosophical Society, and it has been suggested that at some period he may have been connected with the revived Illuminati of Leopold Engel. There is certainly some reason to believe that at one point in his career he came into touch with men who were carrying on the teachings of Weishaupt, the chief of whom was the President of a group of Pan-German secret societies, and it seems not improbable that the mysterious S.D.A., under whose directions the Golden Dawn was founded, might be located in this circle.

A few years before the war, Steiner, whilst still a Theosophist, started a society of his own, the Anthroposophical Society, a name borrowed from the work of the XVIIth century Rosicrucian, Thomas Vaughan, "Anthroposophica Magica." The ostensible leader of Rosicrucianism in Germany was Dr. Franz Hartmann, founder of the "Order of the Esoteric Rose Croix." Although in some way connected with Engel's Illuminati and more definitely with the Theosophical Society, Hartmann was believed to be a genuine Christian mystic. Steiner also made the same profession, and it seems probable that he formed one of the group of mysterious personages, including besides Grand Orient Masons, Baron von Knigge, great grandson of Weishaupt's coadjutor "Philo," who met together in secret conference at Ingoldstadt where the first Lodge of the Illuminati had been founded in 1776, and decided to revive Illuminism on Christian mystic lines used in a very elastic sense amongst occultists. At the same time Steiner introduces into his teaching a strong vein of Gnosticism, Luciferianism, Johannism, and Grand Orient Masonry, whilst reserving Rosicrucianism for his higher initiates. On this last point he is extremely reticent, preferring to call his teaching "occult science," since he recognizes that "real Rosicrucians never proclaim themselves as such"; it is therefore only in the inner circle of his society, on which no information is given to the public and into which members are admitted by much the same forms of initiation as those used by the Grand Orient, that Rosicrucianism is mentioned. Some of Steiner's imitators in The Rosicrucian Fellowship at Oceanside, California, however, openly profess what they call Rosicrucianism and at the same time claim superior knowledge on the subject of Masonry. Thus in a book by the leader of this group we find it solemnly stated that according to Max Heindl, Eve cohabited with serpents in the garden of Eden, that Cain was the offspring of her union with "the Lucifer Spirit Samael," and that from this "divine progenitor" the most virile portion of the human race descended, the rest being merely the "progeny of human parents." Readers of the present work will recognize this as not the legend of Masonry but of the Jewish Cabala which has been already quoted in this context.[724] Whether this also forms part of Steiner's teaching it is impossible to say, since his real doctrines are known only to his inner circle; even some of his admirers amongst the Steiner Matutina, whilst consulting him as an oracle, are not admitted to the secrets of his grades of initiation and have been unable to succeed in obtaining from him a charter. Meanwhile they themselves do not disclose to the neophytes whom they seek to win over that they are members of any secret association. This is quite in accordance with the methods of Weishaupt's "Insinuating Brothers."

The result of what Steiner calls "occult science" is thus described in a striking passage of one of his own works:

"This is the change which the occult student observes coming over himself--that there is no longer a connection between a thought and a feeling or a feeling and a volition, except when he creates the connection himself. No impulse drives him from thought to action if he does not voluntarily harbour it. He can now stand completely without feeling before an object which, before his training, would have filled him with glowing love or violent hatred; he can likewise remain actionless before a thought which heretofore would have spurred him to action as if by itself," etc.

I can imagine no clearer exposé of the dangers of occultism than this. Weishaupt had said: "I cannot use men as I find them; I must form them." Dr. Steiner shows how this transformation can be accomplished. Under the influence of so-called occult training, which is in reality simply powerful suggestion, all a man's native impulses and inhibitive springs of action may be broken; the pupil of the occultist will no longer react to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, of right or wrong, which, unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not only his conscious deeds but his sub-conscious processes pass under the control of another. If this is indeed the method employed by Dr. Steiner and his adepts there would certainly seem to be some justification for the verdict of M. Robert Kuentz that "Steiner has devised occult exercises which render the mind incapable (rendent l'esprit anéanti), that he attacks the individual by deranging his faculties (il détraque les facultés)."[725]

What is the real motive power behind such societies as the Stella Matutina and again behind Steiner? This remains a mystery, not only to the outside world but to the "initiates" themselves. The quest of the Hidden Chiefs, undertaken by one intrepid pilgrim after another, seems to have ended only in further meetings with Steiner. Yet hope springs eternal in the breast of the aspirant after occult knowledge, and astral messages spurred the Fratres to further efforts. One of these contained the exhortation: "Go on with Steiner, which is not the ultimate end of search, and we will come into contact with many serious students who will lead us to the real master of the Order, who will be so overpoweringly impressive as to leave no room for doubt."

A curious analogy with Co-Masonry will here be observed. For whilst the veiled picture of the Co-Masonic lodges is said to represent "the Master" in the person of Ragocsky or some other personage in Austria or Hungary, so it is likewise in Austria and Germany that the members of Stella Matutina seek their Hidden Chiefs and the "real Master" of their Order. Moreover, whilst the Co-Masons await the coming of the great "World Teacher," King, or Messiah in 1926, it is also in 1926 that the Stella Matutina expect Christian Rosenkreutz to appear again.[726] There are many other points of resemblance between the phraseology of the two Orders, as, for example, the idea of the "Astral Light," "the Great White Lodge," and also "the GREAT WORK" by which both Orders denote the supreme object of their aspirations--"the union of the East and the West." It is therefore impossible not to suspect that, although the members of Co-Masonry and of the Stella Matutina imagine their respective Orders to be entirely unconnected and indeed appear to be hardly aware of each other's existence, there may be nevertheless some point of junction in the background and even a common centre of direction.

In this connexion it is interesting to notice the political tendencies of the societies in question. Although the outcome of the _Maçonnerie Mixte_, and nominally under the jurisdiction of headquarters in Paris, Co-Masonry does not appear to be pro-French in its sympathies. On the contrary, the Co-masonic lodges in this country, as also the head lodge in the Rue Jules-Breton, seem to have adopted that form of universal brotherhood which principally redounds to the benefit of Germany.

The Stella Matutina, whilst professing to be solely concerned in occult science and warning its members against Co-Masonry on account of the political tendencies of the latter, is nevertheless still more imbued with German influence, since, as we have seen, it has ever since it first came into existence been secretly under Germany direction. Indeed, during the war this influence became so apparent that certain patriotic members, who had entered the society in all good faith with the idea of studying occult science, raised an energetic protest and a schism took place. Thus, just as in the case of Co-Masonry, the more clear-sighted recognized the imprudence of placing themselves under foreign control. That this was no imaginary danger is shown by a correspondence which had taken place some years earlier and has recently been brought to light. It will be remembered that the great aim of Weishaupt and the Illuminati of the eighteenth century was to obtain control over all existing masonic and occult Orders, This also became the dream of Rudolf Steiner and his allies in other countries, whose plan was to form what they called an "International Bund." The idea of an International Bureau for Masonic Affairs had already, as we have seen, been started in Switzerland; this was the same idea applied to occult groups, so that all such societies as Rosicrucianism, Theosophy with its various ramifications of Co-Masonry, etc., Hermetic Orders, isolated occultists, and so on, were to be placed under German control. The audacity of the proposal seems to have been too much even for some of the most internationally minded members of the Stella Matutina, and in the discussion that took place it was pointed out that admirable as the scheme might be, there was nevertheless some British spirit amongst these Orders to be reckoned with. Even Mrs. Besant's followers, headed by the Co-Masons, described as a group which "attracts a large number of idle women who have leisure to take a little occultism with their afternoon tea," might be liable to ask, "Who are these Germans to interfere?" But the real obstacle to success was held to be British Freemasonry, to which a certain number of students of occult science, including all the members of the S.R.I.A., belonged. "English Masonry," it was remarked, "boasts the Grand Lodge of 1717, the Mother Lodge of the World. They are a proud, jealous, autocratic body. Co-Masonry derives from the Grand Orient of France, an illegitimate body according to English ruling. No English Mason can work with Co-Masons.... If the English Grand Lodge hears of anything called 'Esoteric Masonry' derived from such sources, under chiefs once T.S. [Theosophical Society] members, under a head in Berlin, it will not enquire who Dr. Steiner is or what is the nature of his work, it will simply say, 'No English Masons of the Free and Accepted Masons may join any Society working pseudo-Masonic rites, i.e. no one of ordinary accepted Freemasonry can attend any meetings or attend any grades in this illegitimate body.' Finis!... If a lodge of the Continental Order is to be established in England, Dr. Steiner will be faced with the Masonic difficulty. This is really serious...."[727]

Here then is one of the finest tributes ever paid to British Masonry, for it shows that as at present constituted and controlled it provides the most formidable barrier against the infiltration of this country by alien or subversive secret societies. Thus the Freemasons and the Roman Catholics are recognized as the principal obstacles to success. The Freemasons, however, would do well to realize the attempts that are made to break down this resistance by traitors in the Masonic camp, who, after violating their obligations by belonging to an irregular secret society, act as recruiting agents in the lodges. For the author of these remarks was a British Freemason who, in collusion with a foreign adept, proposed to penetrate Freemasonry by the process known in revolutionary language as "boring from within." To quote his own words, "_They must be got at from within, not from without_." This was to be accomplished in various ways--by adepts of the Continental Order getting themselves initiated into orthodox Masonry and then spreading their own doctrines in the lodges, or by enlisting recruits amongst orthodox Masons and using them as propagandists among their brother-Masons. It was also suggested that in order not to rouse suspicion it would be better to avoid the name "Esoteric Masonry," to adopt one of the rituals used in England, and to employ as "officers" a "mixed group" drawn from various secret societies. This plan has been carried out with considerable success, and at a recent conference held by a high Continental adept under the most distinguished patronage, it was interesting to notice the various secret societies represented by certain of the promoters, who of course to the general public appeared to be merely isolated individuals interested in philosophical speculation. But it is time to pass on to the question of yet another secret association, for amongst those present at the Conference referred to were members of the group Clarté.

This society, of which the name as well as its avowed aims are singularly reminiscent of Illuminism, was first heard of in France and was led by men who carried on active anti-patriotic propaganda throughout the war. Amongst these was Henri Barbusse, author of _Le Feu_, a defeatest novel which was received with acclamations from "illuminated" reviewers in the press of this country. Yet although outwardly a French organization, the real inspiration and teaching of _Clarté_ is essentially German-Jewish and a great number of Jews are to be found amongst its members, particularly in Central Europe. At the inaugural meeting of the Austrian group it was stated that 80 per cent. of those present were of the Jewish race. The keynote of _Clarté_ is Internationalism--abolition of nationality, destruction of frontiers, and pacifism or rather the substitution of class warfare for war between nations. For this purpose it is willing to make use of all subversive doctrines, to whatever school of thought they may belong. Hence, although the creed of the leaders is professedly Socialism, they readily co-operate with Syndicalists, Anarchists, or revolutionaries of any brand, carrying on propaganda in Trade Unions and various workers' organizations; some are secretly in the ranks of the Communists. In fact members of _Charté_ have succeeded in penetrating into almost every subversive group, even as far afield as New Zealand, where the society has an agency in Wellington and disseminates the most violent revolutionary teaching and literature.

But whilst thus making use of the "proletariat" to further its ends, the point of view of _Clarté_ is fundamentally undemocratic--for the real grievances of the workers it has no use at all. The plan of this group--who were recently described in the French press as "the finest specimens of cannibals smeared with humanitarianism (les plus beaux spécimens de cannibales barbouillés d'humanitairerie)"--is to constitute a sort of International Hierarchy of Intellectual Socialists, whose influence is to make itself invisibly felt in literary, educational, and artistic circles all over the world. For the members of _Clarté_ are as careful as were the adepts of Weishaupt to preserve their incognito and not to be known as "Illuminati." Thus the public in our own country and elsewhere, reading the diatribes of certain well-known authors against the existing order of society, may vaguely wonder why men living amidst all the amenities of civilization should desire its destruction, but do not dream that all this is not the outcome of an individual brain but propaganda put out by a company which, having largely primed such writers with ideas, is able, owing to the high position of many of its leading members and its influence with the literary world, to ensure the success of any publication that will further its ends.

The organization of _Clarté_ thus approximates more nearly, to the system of Weishaupt than that of the other societies described in this chapter. Although in the strictest sense a secret society, it is in no sense occult and therefore possesses no ritual of its own, but, like the earlier Illuminati, recognizes the utility of working through Freemasonry. _Clarté_, in fact, forms an adjunct of the Grand Orient and owns a lodge under its jurisdiction in Paris. It would be interesting, however, to know whether the idea of the alliance with the Grand Orient occurred as an afterthought to the _Clarté_ group or whether the original inspiration of _Clarté_ emanated from an inner circle of the Grand Orient. We shall return to the question of this inner circle in a later chapter.

Such, then, are the principal secret societies at work in Great Britain, but amongst minor secret or semi-secret movements may be mentioned the strange sect the Faithists, said to have some affinity with the Druses, inhabiting a singularly unromantic London suburb, whose "Ancient Founder" is the author of a series of tracts urging man not to be misled by false Gods, but to worship "Jehovih the Creator only," and at the same time advocating nationalization as a cure for all social ills; or again The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, led by Gurdjieff and Uspenski which combines esoteric meditation with an extremely meagre diet and strenuous manual labour. It is interesting, by the way, to notice that the art of movement known as Eurhythmy--not to be confounded with the system of M. Dalcroze which is known in England only as Eurhythmics--forms an important part of the curriculum of the last society, as also of Herr Steiner's Order, of the Stella Matutina, and of the Russian Bolsheviks.[728]

The one question that presents itself to the judicial mind after examining all these movements, is inevitably: Are they of any real importance? Can a few hundreds, or even thousands, of men and women, drawn largely by curiosity or want of occupation into societies of which the very names are hardly known to the general public, exercise any influence on the world at large? It would certainly be an error to overestimate the power that each of these societies individually can wield; to do so would be, in fact, to play into the hands of the leaders, whose plan, from Weishaupt onwards, has always been to represent themselves as directing the destinies of the universe. This claim to power is the bait laid for neophytes, who are made to believe that "the Order will one day rule the world." But, whilst recognizing the folly of this pretension, we should be mistaken in underrating their importance, for the reason that they provide evidence of a larger organization in the background. The Stella Matutina may be only an obscure Fraternity, even the Theosophical Society with all its ramifications[729] may not be of great importance in itself, but will anyone with a knowledge of European affairs seriously maintain that the Grand Orient is a small or unimportant organization? And have we not seen that investigations into the smaller secret societies frequently lead back to this greater masonic power? Secret societies are of importance, because they are, moreover, symptomatic, and also because, although the work actually carried out in their lodges or councils may be of a trivial character, they are able by the power of association and the collective force they generate to influence public opinion and to float ideas in the outside world which may have far-reaching consequences.

At any rate, the fact that they exist finally disposes of the contention that secret societies of a subversive and even of an abominable kind are things of the past. These amazing cults, these strange perverted rites which we associate with the dark ages, are going on around us to-day. Illuminism, Cabalism, and even Satanism are still realities. In 1908 Monsieur Copin Albancelli stated that circumstances had afforded him the proof that--

certain Masonic societies exist which are Satanic, not in the sense that the devil comes to preside at their meetings, as that romancer of a Leo Taxil pretended, but in that their initiates profess the cult of Lucifer. They adore him as the true God, and they are animated by an implacable hatred against the Christian God, whom they declare to be an impostor. They have a formula which sums up their state of mind; it is no longer: "To the glory of the Great Architect of the Universe," as in the two lower Masonries; it is G∴ E∴ A∴ A∴ L∴ H∴ H∴ H∴ A∴ D∴ M∴ M∴ M∴, which means "Gloire et Amour à Lucifer! Haine! haine! haine! an Dieu maudit! maudit! maudit!" (Glory and Love for Lucifer! Hatred! hatred! hatred! to God, accursed, accursed, accursed!)

It is professed in these societies that all that the Christian God commands is disagreeable to Lucifer; that all that He forbids is, on the contrary, agreeable to Lucifer; that in consequence one must do all that the Christian God forbids and that one must shun like fire all that He commands. I repeat that with regard to all that, I have the proofs under my hand. I have read and studied hundreds of documents relating to one of these societies, documents that I have not permission to publish and which emanate from the members, men and women, of the group in question.[730]

I do not say that any society in England consciously practices this cult of Satan, but I too have seen dozens of documents relating to occult groups in this country which practise rites and evocations that lead to illness, moral perversion, mental derangement, and even in some cases to death. I have heard from the lips of initiates themselves accounts of the terrible experiences through which they have passed; some have even urged me to bring the matter before the attention of the authorities. But unfortunately no department exists for the investigation of subversive movements. Yet since all these movements are intimately connected with revolutionary agitation they are well worth the attention of Governments that desire to protect law, order, and public morality. The fact is that the very extravagance of their doctrines and practices seems to ensure their immunity. Nevertheless, whether the power at work behind them is of the kind we are accustomed to call "supernatural," or whether it is merely the outcome of the human mind, there can be no doubt of its potency for evil and of its very definite effects in the obliteration of all sense of truth and in sexual perversion.

In the opinion of an initiate who belonged for years to the Stella Matutina, the dynamic force employed known as "Kundalini" is simply an electro-magnetic force, of which the sex-force is a part, on which the adepts know how to play, and "the unseen hand behind all the seeming Spiritism of these Orders is a system of very subtle and cunning hypnotism and suggestion." Further, the aim of this group like that of all subversive Esoteric Orders, is, by means of such processes as eurhythmics, meditations, symbols, ceremonies, and formulas, to awaken this force and produce false "Illumination" for the purpose of obtaining "Spiritual Seership," which is at most clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc. The ceremonies of the Order are hypnotic, and by suggestion create the necessary mental and astral atmosphere, hypnotize and prepare the members to be the willing tools in the hands of the controlling adepts. The same initiate has communicated to me the following conclusions concerning the group in question, with the permission to quote them verbatim:

I have been convinced that we, as an Order, have come under the power of some very evil occult Order, profoundly versed in science both occult and otherwise, though not infallible, their methods being Black Magic, that is to say, electro-magnetic power, hypnotism, and powerful suggestion.

We are convinced that the Order is being controlled by some SUN Order after the nature of the Illuminati, if not by that Order itself.

The reason why they (the leaders of all such Orders) insisted so much upon the Church and Sacrament, especially before the initiation, is, I think, for the same reason as the use of the consecrated Host in Black Magic. The Christian consecration and the use of the sacraments renders the building or person more powerful as a material basis for black magic even as in white magic--"for the Great Good or the Great Evil." When the initiation is accomplished and the domination of the person complete, there is no further need for Church or Sacrament.

We are told at the Initiation: "There is nothing incompatible with your civil, moral, or religious duties in this obligation." We now are convinced that this Order is contrary absolutely to our civil, moral, and religious duties; which being so, our obligations are null and void.

We are told that all that has taken place in Russia and elsewhere is due to these International Occult Forces set in motion by Subversive Esoteric Lodges. Yet it is known that we have several branches of these same Esoteric Masonic Lodges carrying on their deadly work in our midst. England, as well as Europe, seems to be drifting along in a hypnotic sleep, and even our soundest politicians seem paralysed and all that they attempt is turned to foolishness. Is there no one in authority who understands these things and realizes the danger both to the country and to individuals from these forces working for disruption and world revolution?

How in the face of these declarations, coming from those inside the movement, can anyone maintain that Illuminism is dead and that secret societies present no danger to Christian civilization?

13

OPEN SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS

Although the sceptical reader who has reached this stage of the present work will perhaps be willing to admit that some connexion may be traced between hidden forces and open subversive movements, the objection he will still raise against the general thesis here set forth will probably be expressed somewhat in the following manner:

"It is quite possible that secret societies and other unseen agencies may have played a part in revolutions, but to attribute the continued revolt against the existing social order to these causes is absurd. Poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, and above all the inequalities of human life are quite sufficient to produce a revolutionary spirit without the aid of secret instigators. Social revolution is simply a rising of the 'have-nots' against the 'haves,' and requires no further cause to explain it."

Let it be at once admitted that the injustices here enumerated are real. The working classes throughout the nineteenth century had very genuine reasons for complaints. Wages were far too low, the rich sometimes showed themselves indifferent to the sufferings of the poor, employers of labour often made profits out of all proportion to the remuneration paid to the workers. Nor, in spite of the immense reforms introduced during the last hundred years, have all these grievances been redressed. The slums of our great cities still constitute a blot upon our civilization. Profiteering since the beginning of the war has been more flagrant than ever. "Rings" and combines provide fabulous wealth for individuals or groups at the expense of vast numbers of consumers. And in all classes of the community, just as before the French Revolution, people feast and dance whilst others live on the border-line of starvation.

But let us see how far the Socialist movement can be regarded as the spontaneous revolt of the "people" against this condition of things. Dividing the people after the manner of Marx into the non-revolutionary and the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find that the former category, by far the larger, combines with a strong respect for tradition a perfectly reasonable desire for social reform. Briefly it asks for adequate wages, decent housing, and a fair share of the good things of life. For State interference in the affairs of everyday life it feels nothing but abhorrence. The ideal of Communism as formulated by Lenin, wherein "the getting of food and clothing shall be no longer a private affair,"[731] would meet with stronger opposition from working men--and still more from working women, to whom "shopping" is as the breath of life--than from any other section of the population. Even such apparently benign Socialist schemes as "communal dining-rooms" or "communal kitchens" appeal less to the working-class mentality than to the upper-class mind that devises them.

Turning to the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find this individualistic instinct quite as strongly developed. It is not the Socialist idea of placing all wealth and property in the hands of the State, but the Anarchist plan of "expropriation," of plunder on a gigantic scale for the benefit of the revolutionary masses, which really appeals to the disgruntled portion of the proletariat. The Socialist intellectual may write of the beauties of nationalization, of the joy of working for the common good without hope of personal gain; the revolutinary working man sees nothing to attract him in all this. Question him on his ideas of social transformation, and he will generally express himself in favour of some method by which he will acquire something he has not got; he does not want to see the rich man's motor-car socialized by the State--he wants to drive about in it himself. The revolutionary working man is thus in reality not a Socialist but an Anarchist at heart. Nor in some cases is this unnatural. That the man who enjoys none of the good things of life should wish to snatch his share must at least appear comprehensible. What is not comprehensible is that he should wish to renounce all hope of ever possessing anything. Modern Socialist propagandists are very well aware of this attitude of the working classes towards their schemes, and therefore that as long as they explain the real programme they mean to put into operation, which is nothing but the workhouse system on a gigantic scale, they can meet with no success. As a life-long Socialist has frequently observed to me, "Socialism has never been a working-class movement; it was always we of the middle or upper classes who sought to instil the principles of Socialism into the minds of working men." Mr. Hyndman's candid confessions of the failures to enlist the sympathies even of slum-dwellers in his schemes of social regeneration bear out this testimony.

Less honest Socialist orators as the result of long experience have therefore adopted the more effectual policy of appealing to the predatory instincts of the crowd. From Babeuf onwards, Socialism has only been able to make headway by borrowing the language of Anarchy in order to blast its way to power.

Socialism is thus essentially a system of deception devised by middle-class theorists and in no sense a popular creed. Had the revolutionary movement of the past 150 years really proceeded from the people, it would inevitably have followed the line laid down by one of the two sections of the proletariat indicated above, that is to say, it would either have taken the form of a continuous and increasing agitation for social reforms which would have enlisted the sympathy of all right-thinking men and must therefore in the end have proved irresistible, or it would have followed the line of Anarchy, organizing brigandage on a larger and yet larger scale, until, all owners of wealth having been exterminated and their expropriators in their turn exterminated by their fellows, the world would have been reduced to a depopulated desert.

But the world revolution has followed neither of these lines. Always the opponent of sane social reforms which Socialists deride as "melioration" or as futile attempts to shore up an obsolete system, it has consistently disassociated itself from such men as Lord Shaftesbury, who did more to better the conditions of the working classes than anyone who has ever lived. Anarchy, on the other hand, has been used by them merely as a means to an end; for genuine revolutionary sentiment they have no use at all. In Russia the Anarchists became the first objects of Soviet vengeance. The cynical attitude of Socialists towards the revolutionary proletariat was illustrated by Mr. Bernard Shaw, who in December 1919 openly boasted that he had helped to organize the railway strike,[732] and two years later wrote about the miners' strike in the following terms:

A Socialist State would not tolerate such an attack on the community as a strike for a moment. If a Trade Union attempted such a thing, the old Capitalist law against Trade Unions as conspiracies would be re-enacted within twenty-four hours and put ruthlessly into execution. Such a monstrosity as the recent coal strike, during which the coal-miners spent all their savings in damaging their neighbours and wrecking the national industries, would be impossible under Socialism. It was miserably defeated, as it deserved to be.[733]

Now, if this had been written by the Duke of Northumberland in the _National Review_ instead of by Mr. Bernard Shaw in the _Labour Monthly_, one can imagine the outcry there would have been in the Socialist press. But the leaders of what is called democracy may always use what language they please in speaking of the people. "Our peasants," Maxim Gorky openly declared, "are brutal and debased, hardly human. I hate them."[734] It will be noticed that in descriptions of the French Revolution references to the savageries of the people are never resented by the Liberal or Socialist press; the persons of the leaders alone are sacred. It is clearly not the cause of democracy but of demagogy that these champions of "liberty" are out to defend.

The world-revolution is therefore not a popular movement but a conspiracy to impose on the people a system directly opposed to their real demands and aspirations, a system which, moreover, has proved disastrous every time an attempt has been made to put it into practice.

Russia has provided a further example of its futility. The fact that the more responsible leaders in this country do not advocate violence, does not affect the ultimate issue. Whilst Bolshevism sets out to destroy Capitalism at a blow, Socialism prefers a more gradual process. It is the difference between clubbing a man on the head and bleeding him to death--that is all.

The fact is that all Socialism leads to Communism in the long run[735] and therefore to disaster. The Bolshevist régime brought ruin and misery to Russia not because of the brutality of its methods, but because it was founded on the gigantic economic fallacy that industry can be carried on without private enterprise and personal initiative. The same theory applied by constitutional methods would produce precisely the same results. If the Socialists are ever allowed to carry out their full programme, England may be reduced to the state of Russia without the shedding of a drop of blood.

But how are we to explain the fact that in spite of the failure of Socialism in the past, in spite of the gigantic fiasco presented by Russia, in spite, moreover, of the declaration by the Bolsheviks themselves that Communism had failed and must be replaced by "a new economic policy," that is to say by a return to "Capitalism,"[736] there should still be a large and increasing body of people to proclaim the efficacy of Socialism as the remedy for all social ills? In any other field of human experiment, in medicine or mechanical invention, failure spells oblivion; the prophylactic that does not cure, the machine that cannot be made to work, is speedily relegated to the scrap-heap. What indeed should we say of the bacteriologist, who, after killing innumerable patients with a particular serum, were to advertise it as an unqualified success? Should we not brand such a man as an unscrupulous charlatan or at best as a dangerous visionary? If, moreover, we were to find that large bands of agents backed by unlimited funds, were engaged in pressing his remedy upon the public and carefully avoiding all reference to the fatalities it had caused, should we not further conclude that there was "something behind all this"--some powerful company "running" the concern with a view to advancing its own private interests?

Why should not the same reasoning be applied to Socialism? For not only has Socialism never been known to succeed, but all its past failures are carefully kept dark by its exponents. Who, then, stands to gain by advocating it? And further, who provides the vast sums spent on propaganda? If in reality Socialism is a rising of the "have-nots" against the "haves," how is it that most of the money seems to be on the side of the "have-nots"? For whilst organizations working for law and order are hampered at every turn for funds, no financial considerations ever seem to interfere with the activities of the so-called "Labour movement." Socialism, in fact, appears to be a thoroughly "paying concern," into which a young man enters as he might go into the City, with the reasonable expectation of "doing well." It is only necessary to glance at the history of the past hundred years to realize that "agitation" has provided a pleasant and remunerative career for hundreds of middle-class authors, journalists, speakers, organizers, and dilettantes of all kinds who would otherwise have been condemned to pass their lives on office-stools or at schoolmasters' desks. And when we read the accounts of the delightful treats provided for these "devoted workers" in the cause of the proletariat as given in the records of the First Internationale or the pages of Mrs. Snowden, we begin to understand the attractions of Socialism as a profession.[737]

But again I repeat: _Who provides the funds for this vast campaign_? Do they come out of the pockets of the workers or from some other mysterious reservoir of wealth? We shall return to this point in a later chapter.

How is it possible at any rate to believe in the sincerity of the exponents of equality who themselves adopt a style of living so different from that of the proletariat whose cause they profess to represent? If the doctrinaires of Socialism formed a band of ascetics who had voluntarily renounced luxury and amusement in order to lead lives of poverty and self-sacrifice--as countless really devoted men and women _not_ calling themselves Socialists have done--we should still doubt the soundness of their economic theories as applied to society in general, but we should respect their disinterestedness. But with very few exceptions Socialist Intellectuals dine and sup, feast and amuse themselves with as few scruples of conscience as any unregenerate Tories.

With people such as these it is obviously as futile to reason, as it would be to attempt to convince the agent of a quack medicine company that the nostrums he presses on the public will not effect a cure. He is very well aware of that already. Hence the efforts of well-meaning people to set forth in long, well-reasoned arguments the "fallacies of Socialism" produce little or no result. All these so-called "fallacies" have been exposed repeatedly by able writers and disproved by all experience, so that if based merely on ignorance or error they would long since have ceased to obtain credence. The truth is that they are not fallacies but lies, deliberately devised and circulated by men who do not believe in them for a moment and who can therefore only be described as unscrupulous charlatans exploiting the credulity of the public.

But if this description may be legitimately applied to the brains behind Socialism and to certain of its leading doctrinaires, there are doubtless thousands of honest visionaries to be found in the movement. A system that professes to cure all the ills of life inevitably appeals to generous minds that feel but do not reason. In reality many of these people, did they but know it, are simply social reformers at heart and not Socialists at all, and their ignorance of what Socialism really means leads them to range themselves under the banner of a party that claims a monopoly of ideals. Others again, particularly amongst the young intelligentsia, take up Socialism in the same spirit as they would adopt a fashion in ties or waistcoats, for fear of being regarded as "reactionaries." That in reality, far from being "advanced," the profession of Socialism is as retrogressive as would be a return to the side-whiskers and plaid trousers of the last century, does not occur to them. The great triumph of Mussolini was to make the youth of Italy realize that to be a Communist was to be a "back number," and that progress consisted in marching forward to new ideas and aspirations. The young men of Cabet's settlement discovered this sixty years ago when they formed themselves into a band of "Progressives" in opposition to the old men who still clung to the obsolete doctrine of Communism.

Socialism at the present moment is in reality less a creed than a cult, founded not on practical experience but on unreal theory. It is here we find a connexion with secret societies. M. Augustin Cochin in his brilliant essays on the French Revolution[738] has described that "World of the Clouds" of which the Grand Orient was the capital, peopled by the precursors of the French Revolution. "Whilst in the real world the criterion of all thought lies in putting it to the test," there in the World of the Clouds the criterion is opinion. "They are there to talk, not to do; all this intellectual agitation, this immense traffic in speeches, writings, correspondence, leads not to the slightest beginning of work, of real effort." We should be wrong to judge them harshly; their theories on the perfectibility of human nature, on the advantages of savagery, which appear to us "dangerous chimeras," were never intended to apply to real life, only to the World of the Clouds, where they present no danger but become, on the contrary, "the most fecund truths."

The revolutionary explosion might well have finally shattered these illusions but for the Grand Orient. We have already seen the identity of theory between French Masonry and French Socialism in the nineteenth century. It was thus that, although in France one experiment after another demonstrated the unreality of Socialist Utopias, the lodges were always there to reconstruct the mirage and lead humanity on again across the burning desert sands towards the same phantom palm-trees and illusory pools of water.

Whatever the manner in which these ideas penetrated to this country--whether through the Radicals of the last century, adorers of the Encyclopædist Masons of France, or through the British disciples of German Social Democrats from the time of the First Internationale onwards--it is impossible to ignore the resemblance between the theories not only of French but of modern British Socialism and the doctrines of illuminized Freemasonry. Thus the idea running through Freemasonry of a Golden Age before the Fall, when man was free and happy, and which through the application of masonic principles is to return once more, finds an exact counterpart in the Socialist conception of a past halcyon era of Liberty and Equality, which is to return not merely in the form of a regenerated social order, but as a complete Millennium from which all the ills of human life have been eliminated. This idea has always haunted the imagination of Socialist writers from Rousseau to William Morris, and leads directly up to the further theory--the necessity for destroying civilization.

I cannot find in Mr. Lothrop Stoddart's conception of the revolutionary movement as the revolt of the "Under Man" against civilization, the origin of this campaign. In reality the leaders of world-revolution have not been "Under Men," victims of oppression or of adverse fate, nor could they be ranged in this category on account of physical or mental inferiority. It is true that most revolutionary agitators have been in some way abnormal and that the revolutionary army has largely been recruited from the unfit, but the real inspirers of the movement have frequently been men in prosperous circumstances and of brilliant intellect who might have distinguished themselves on other lines had they not chosen to devote their talents to subversion. To call Weishaupt, for example, an "Under Man" would be absurd. But let us see what is the idea on which the plan of destroying civilization is ostensibly founded.

It will be remembered that Rousseau like Weishaupt held that the Golden Age of felicity did not end in the garden of Eden, as is popularly supposed, but was prolonged into tribal and nomadic life. Up to this moment Communism was the happy disposition under which the human race existed and which vanished with the introduction of civilization. Civilization is therefore the _fons et origo mali_ and should be done away with. Let no one exclaim that this theory died out either with Rousseau or with Weishaupt; the idea that "civilization is all wrong" runs all through the writings and speeches of our Intellectual Socialists to-day. I have referred elsewhere to Mr. H.G. Wells's prediction that mankind will more and more revert to the nomadic life, and Mr. Snowden has recently referred in tones of evident nostalgia to that productive era when man "lived under a system of tribal Communism."[739] The children who attend the Socialist Schools are also taught in the "Red Catechism" the advantages of savagery, thus:

Question. Do savages starve in the midst of plenty?

Answer. No; when there is plenty of food they all rejoice, feast, and make merry.[740]

That when there is not plenty of food they occasionally eat each other is not mentioned.

Here, then, is the theory on which this yearning for a return to nature is based. For it is quite probable that if a Golden Age ever existed it was Communistic; it is also true that certain primitive tribes have found it possible to continue the same system, for the simple reason that when and where the earth was very thinly populated it brought forth, without the artificial aid of agriculture, more than enough to supply each man's needs. There was therefore no need for laws to protect property, since every man could help himself freely to all that he required. If at the present time a dozen people were shipwrecked on a fertile island some miles in area, the institution of property would be equally superfluous; if, however, several hundred were to share the same fate, it would at once become necessary to institute some system of cultivation which in its turn would necessitate either the institution of property, by which each man would depend on his own plot of land for his existence, or a communal system, by which all would be obliged to work for the common good and force applied to those who refused to do their allotted share.

Peaceful Communism is thus simply a matter of population; the conditions under which men can sit in the sun and enjoy the fruits of the earth with little effort must be transformed with the multiplication of the human species into a system which recognizes private property, or a communal State which enforces compulsory labour by means of overseers with whips. It was perhaps an appreciation of this truth that impelled the practical exponents of Rousseau's doctrines, the Terrorists of 1793, to embark on their "plan of depopulation" by way of establishing Communism on a peaceful basis.

But our Intellectual Socialists deny this necessity on the ground that under the benign régime of Socialism all men would be good and happy and would work joyfully for the welfare of the community. The fact that this has not proved the case even in voluntary Communist settlements does not daunt them, because, as has been said, their creed is founded not on practical experiment, but on theory, and it is here that we again find the inspiration of Grand Orient Freemasonry. The assumption that under an ideal social order all human failings would vanish derives directly from the two masonic doctrines which the Grand Orient, under the influence of Illuminism, has brought to a _reductio ad absurdum_--the perfectibility of human nature and universal brotherhood. The whole philosophy of Socialism is built upon these false premises.

Indeed the actual phraseology of illuminized Freemasonry has now passed into the language of Socialism; thus the old formulæ of "the United States of Europe" and "the Universal Republic" have been adopted not only by Mrs. Besant and her followers[741] as the last word in modern thought, but have also reappeared as a brilliant inspiration under the pen of Mr. H.G. Wells in the slightly varied form of the "World State." It would be amusing, for anyone who had the time, to discover how many of the ideas of our so-called advanced thinkers might be found almost verbatim in the writings of Weishaupt, the _République Universelle_ of Anacharsis Clootz, and in the speeches of Grand Orient orators during the last century.

Moreover, the world-revolution is not only founded on the doctrines of illuminized Freemasonry, but has adopted the same method of organization. Thus, after the plan of the secret societies, from the Batinis onward, we shall find the forces of revolution divided into successive grades--the lowest consisting of the revolutionary proletariat, the _chair a révolution_ as Marx expressed it, knowing nothing of the theory of Socialism, still less of the real aims of the leaders; above this the semi-initiates, the doctrinaires of Socialism, comprising doubtless many sincere enthusiasts; but above these again further grades leading up to the real initiates, who alone know whither the whole movement is tending.

For the final goal of world-revolution is not Socialism or even Communism, it is not a change in the existing economic system, it is not the destruction of civilization in a material sense; the revolution desired by the leaders is a moral and spiritual revolution, an anarchy of ideas by which all standards set up throughout nineteen centuries shall be reversed, all honoured traditions trampled under foot, and above all the Christian ideal finally obliterated.

It is true that a certain section of the Socialist movement proclaims itself Christian. The Illuminati made the same profession, so have the modern Theosophists and Rosicrucians. But, as in the case of these secret societies, we should ask of so-called Christian Socialists: What do they means by Christ? What do they mean by Christianity? On examination it will be found that their Christ is a being of their own inventing, that their Christianity is a perversion of Christ's real teaching.

The Christ of Socialism invoked in the interests of Pacifism as the opponent of force and in the interests of class warfare as a Socialist, a revolutionary, or even an "agitator," bears no resemblance to the real Christ. Christ was not a Pacifist when He told His disciples to arm themselves with swords, when He made a scourge of cords and drove the money-changers from the Temple. He did not tell men to forgive the enemies of their country or of their religion, but only their private enemies. Christ was not a Socialist when He declared that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesseth." Socialism teaches that a man must never rest content as long as another man possesses that which he has not. Christ did not believe in equality of payment when He told the parable of the ten talents and the unprofitable servant. Socialism would reduce all labour to the pace of the slowest. Above all, Christ was not a Socialist when He bade the young man who had great possessions sell all that he had and give it to the poor. _What School of Socialism has ever issued such a command?_ On the contrary, Socialists are enjoined by their leaders not to give their money away in charity lest they should help by this means to prolong the existence of the present social system. The truth is that, as I showed in connexion with the fallacy of representing Christ as an Essene, there is no evidence to show that He or His disciples practised even the purest form of Communism. Christ did not advocate any economic or political system; He preached a spirit which if applied to any system would lead to peace among men. It is true that He enjoined His disciples to despise riches and that He denounced many of the rich men with whom He came into contact, but it must not be forgotten that His immediate mission was to a race that had always glorified riches, that had worshipped the golden calf, and by which wealth was regarded as the natural reward of godliness.[742] Christ came to teach men not to look for present reward in the form of increased material welfare, but to do good out of love to God and one's neighbour.

I do not doubt that in the past such men as Kingsley and J.F.D. Maurice sincerely imagined that they were following in the footsteps of the Master by describing themselves as Christian Socialists, but that the present leaders of Socialism in England are Christians at heart is impossible to believe in view of their attitude towards the campaign against Christianity in Russia. Never once have they or their allies, the Quakers, officially denounced the persecution not only of the priests but of all who profess the Christian faith in Russia.[743] Listen to this voice from the abyss of Russia:

We very much ask for prayer for the Church of Russia; it is passing through great tribulation and it is a question whether spiritual or earthly power will triumph. Many are being executed for not denying God.... Those placed by God at the helm need all the prayer and help of Christians all over the earth, because their fate is partly theirs too, for it is a question of faith triumphing over atheism, and it is a tug-of-war between those two principles.[744]

And again:

I look upon the persecution of the Russian Church as an effort to overthrow Christianity in general, for we are governed just now by the power of darkness, and all that we consider sinful seems to get the upper hand and to prosper.[744]

Yet it is for this power that the Socialist Party of Great Britain have for years been demanding recognition. Even the appeals for help from their fellow-Socialists in Russia have left them cold. "We would suggest," ran one such appeal--

1. That the British Labour Party issue an official protest against the Soviet Government's inhuman treatment of its political opponents in general and the political prisoners in particular.

2. That meetings of protest should be organized in the industrial towns of Great Britain.

3. That the British Labour Party make an official representation to the Soviet Government directly, urging the latter to put a stop to the persecutions of the Socialists in Russia.[745]

And it was of this régime that Mr. Lansbury wrote:

Whatever their faults, the Communist leaders of Russia have hitched their wagon to a star--the star of love, brotherhood, comradeship.[746]

The callous indifference displayed by British Socialists, with the honourable exception of the Social Democratic Federation,[747] towards the crimes of the Bolsheviks offers indeed a painful contrast to the attitude of the other Socialists of Europe. At the conference of the Labour and Socialist International at Hamburg in May 1923, a resolution was passed condemning the persecution by the Soviet Government. When the resolution was put to the congress, 196 voted for, 2 against it, and 39, including the 30 British delegates, abstained.

I ask, then: Why should the Socialists of Great Britain be differentiated from the Bolsheviks of Russia? In every question of importance they have always lent them their support. In the great war on Christianity they have acted as the advance guard by the institution of Socialist Sunday-schools, from which all religious teaching is excluded. Socialists are very anxious to disassociate these from the "Proletarian" Sunday-schools which teach atheism. But from ignoring the existence of God to denying it is but a step; moreover, it will be noticed that the Socialists have never issued any protests against the blasphemies of the Proletarian schools. The real attitude of the Socialist Party towards religion may perhaps be gauged by the notice, reproduced on page 341, which once appeared in its official organ the _Daily Herald_, of which Mr. Lansbury, widely advertised as a fervent Christian, was once editor and is now managing director.

It was to the party controlling this organ that 700 clergymen of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of Scotland saw fit to offer their congratulations by means of a memorial presented to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald in March 1923. Shall we yet see the scene of Brumaire 1793 repeated and a procession of prelates presenting themselves at Westminster to lay down their rings and crosses and declare that "henceforth there shall be no other worship than that of liberty and holy equality"?

Already the desecration of the churches has begun. The red flag was recently carried into the City Temple by a band of unemployed, although several of their number objected to its presence in the church. An attempt to sing "The Red Flag" was also suppressed by a section of the unemployed

themselves, who had apparently retained some sense ot decency.[748]

Weishaupt's design of enlisting the clergy in the work of world-revolution has been carried out according to plan. Those Catholic priests in Ireland who inflamed popular passions acted as the tools of the International Atheist conspiracy and found at last the movement turning against themselves. The Protestant clergymen who profess "Christian Socialism" are playing the same part. Doubtless without knowing it, they act as the agents of the Continental Illuminati and pave the way, as did the emissaries of Weishaupt, for the open attack on all forms of religion. It is not a mere accident that the blasphemous masquerades of the French Revolution have recently been repeated in Russia. The horrible incidents described in the press[749] were simply the outward manifestation of a continuous conspiracy of which evidence was seen some years ago in Portugal under the influence of the Carbonarios, led by Alfonso Costa, whose utterances at times bore a striking resemblance to those of Anacharsis Clootz. The late Duchess of Bedford thus described the war on religion which inaugurated the new Republic:

One of the most zealous enterprises of this great society [the Carbonarios] is, in their own words, to exterminate "the Christian myth" in the minds of the nation of Portugal. The little children in the schools have badges pinned into their clothes with the words "No God! No religion!" and a British tourist who made a journey throughout the country of Portugal met bands of innocent babes carrying banners, on which the inscription was "We have no need of God."[750]

Is it only a coincidence that last year a Socialist and Communist meeting in Trafalgar Square displayed a red banner bearing the motto: "No King, no God, no Law"?[751]

I repeat: It is not an economic revolution which forms the plan of the real directors of the movement, it is neither the "dictatorship of the proletariat" nor the reorganization of society by the Intelligentsia of "Labour"; it is the destruction of the Christian idea. Socialist orators may inveigh against corrupt aristocracy or "bloated Capitalists," but these are not in reality the people who will suffer most if the aim of the conspiracy is achieved. The world-revolution has always shown itself indulgent towards selfish and corrupt aristocrats, from the Marquis de Sade and the Duc d'Orléans onwards; it is the gentle, the upright, the benevolent, who have fallen victims to revolutionary fury.

Socialism with its hatred of all superiority, of noble virtues--loyalty and patriotism--with its passion for dragging down instead of building up, serves the purpose of the deeper conspiracy. If the Christian Intelligentsia can be destroyed or won over and the nation deprived of all its natural leaders, the world-revolutionaries reckon that they will be able to mould the proletariat according to their desires. This being so, the thing we now call Bolshevism forms only one phase of the movement which is carried on by countless different methods, apparently disconnected but all tending towards the same end. We have only to look around us in the world to-day to see everywhere the same disintegrating power at work--in art, literature, the drama, the daily press--in every sphere that can influence the mind of the public. Just as in the French Revolution a play on the massacre of St. Bartholomew was staged in order to rouse the passions of the people against the monarchy, so our modern cinemas perpetually endeavour to stir up class hatred by scenes and phrases showing "the injustice of kings," "the sufferings of the people," the selfishness of "aristocrats," regardles of whether these enter into the theme of the narrative or not.[752] And in the realms of literature, not merely in works of fiction but in manuals for schools, in histories and books professing to be of serious educative value and receiving a skilfully organized boom throughout the press, everything is done to weaken patriotism, to shake belief in all existing institutions by the systematic perversion of both contemporary and historical facts, whilst novels and plays calculated to undermine all ideas of morality are pressed upon the public as works of genius which, in order to maintain a reputation for intellect, it is essential to admire. I do not believe that all this is accidental; I do not believe that the public asks for the anti-patriotic or demoralizing books and plays placed before it; on the contrary, it invariably responds to an appeal to patriotism and simple healthy emotions. The heart of the people is still sound, but ceaseless efforts are made to corrupt it.

This conspiracy has long been apparent to Continental observers. Some years before the war, Monsieur de Lannoy, a member of an anti-masonic association in France, at a conference on "the influence of judaeo-masonic sects in the theatre, in literature, in the fashions," showed how "orders of things which appear to have no connexion with each other are skilfully bound up together and directed by a single methodical movement towards a common end. This common end is the paganization of the universe, the destruction of all Christianity, the return to the loosest morals of antiquity."[753] Robison saw in the indecent dress of the period of the Directory the result of Weishaupt's teaching, and traces to the same cause the ceremony which took place in Notre Dame when a woman of loose morals was held up to the admiration of the public.[754] The same glorification of vice has found exponents amongst the modern Illuminati in this country. In _The Equinox--the Journal of Scientific Illuminism_, it is proposed that prostitutes should be placed on the same level as soldiers who have served their country and be honoured and pensioned by the State.[755] The community of women was not an idea that originated with the Russian Bolsheviks, but one that has run through all the revolutionary movements of the past.

The attempt to pervert all conceptions of beauty in the sphere of art serves to pave the way for moral perversion. In the _New York Herald_ two years ago there appeared a circular protesting against the so-called Modernistic cult in art as "world-wide Bolshevist propaganda." The circular went on to declare:

This aims to overthrow and destroy all existing social systems, including that of the arts. This modernistic degenerate cult is simply the Bolshevist philosophy applied in art. The triumph of Bolshevism therefore means the destruction of the present æsthetic system, the transportation of all æsthetic values, and the deification of ugliness.

The whole propaganda of the movement was said to be organized by "a coterie of European art-dealers"--elsewhere described as German--who had flooded the market with the works of artists who began as "a small group of neurotic egomaniacs in Paris styling themselves worshippers of Satan, the God of Ugliness." Some of these men were suffering from the "visual derangement" of the insane, whilst "many of the pictures exhibited another form of mania. The system of this is an incontrollable desire to mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these abominations, but what the circular describes as the "Machiavellian campaign organized for the unloading of these works. Editions de luxe ... were published and sold by the picture dealers; ...every crafty device known to the picture trade was resorted to in order to discredit and destroy the heretofore universally accepted standards of aesthetics."[756]

This process of reversing all accepted standards may also be brought about by subtler methods. We have already seen that occult practices may lead to the obliteration of all sense of truth and of normal sexual instincts. Under the influence of so-called occult science, which is, in reality, simply powerful suggestion or self-hypnotism, all a man's natural impulses and inhibitive springs of action may be broken; he will no longer react to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, or right or wrong, which, unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not only his conscious deeds but his subconscious mental processes may pass under the control of another, or become entirely deranged.

Much the same consequences may result from the Freud system of Psycho-Analysis, which, particularly by its insistence on sex, tends to subordinate the will to impulses of a harmful kind. An eminent American neuro-psychiatrist of New York has expressed his opinion on this subject in the following words:

The Freud theory is anti-Christian and subversive of organized society. Christianity teaches that the individual can resist temptation and Freudism teaches that the matter of yielding to or resisting temptation is one for which the individual is not wilfully responsible. Freudism makes of the individual a machine, absolutely controlled by subconscious reflexes.... It would of course be difficult to prove that psycho-analysis has been evolved as a destructive propaganda measure, but in one sense the point is immaterial. Whether conscious or unconscious, it makes for destructive effect.[757]

In general, the art of the conspiracy is not so much to create movements as to capture existing movements, often innocuous and even admirable in themselves, and turn them to a subversive purpose. Thus birth control, which--if combined with the restriction of alien immigration and carried out under proper direction--would provide a solution to the frightful problem of over-population, can without these provisos become a source of national weakness and demoralization. It is easy to see how a limitation of the native population would serve the cause of England's enemies by reducing her fighting forces and by making room for undesirable aliens. That the birth-control campaign may also be used for evil purposes is suggested by the fact that it has not been confined to our own overcrowded island, but has been carried on in France, where under-population has long constituted a tragedy. In 1903 and 1904 the "Ligue de la Régéneration Humaine," founded by Monsieur Paul Robin, in its organ _L'Émancipateur_ issued not only instructions on "the means how to avoid large families," but also pamphlets on "free love and free maternity."[758] The campaign of race-suicide was thus combined with the undermining of morality; legal families were to be limited and illegal births encouraged. This was quite in accord with the doctrines of the Grand Orient, in whose Temples, Monsieur Copin Albancelli points out, the principle of "la libre maternité"--known in this country as "the right to motherhood"--was advocated.

It is curious to notice that the apparently innocent invention of Esperanto receives support from the same quarter. This is not surprising since we know that the idea of a universal language has long haunted the minds of Freemasons. I have myself seen a document emanating from a body of French Masons stating that Esperanto is directly under the control of the three masonic powers of France--the Grand Orient, the Grande Loge Nationale, and the Droit Humain.

That it is largely used for promoting Bolshevism has been frequently stated. In July 1922, M. Bérard, Minister of Education, issued a circular "to the heads of all French Universities, academies, and colleges, calling on them not to help in any way in the teaching of Esperanto on the ground that Bolsheviks use it as one of their dangerous forms of propaganda."[759] A correspondent points out to me that another universal language, Ido, is used for propaganda by the Anarchists, and that several journals distributed by revolutionary societies, written in Ido, are "frankly and baldly Anarchical." The writer adds:

Last week I received a copy of _Libereso_ (Liberty), monthly organ of the Anarchist Section of the "Emancipating Star"--"Cosmopolitan Union of Labour-class Idists." It commands carrying out Anarchistic principles to their extreme limits; commends "La Ruzo" (ruse); is sarcastic regarding Socialism and Democracy.... It contains an appeal for help (in money) for the Anarchists imprisoned in Russia ... written by Alexander Berkmann and signed by him with Emma Goldmann and A. Schapiro.

Here, then, we have a revolutionary movement which is anti-Socialist and even anti-Bolshevist, which tends to prove the opinion I have already expressed, that Bolshevism is only one phase of the world-conspiracy. But if we explain this by the old antagonism between the opposing revolutionary camps of Anarchy and Socialism, how are we to account for the fact that the same destructive purpose animates people who are neither Anarchist nor Socialist, but can only be ranged in the category of extreme reaction? Of this phase of the movement Nietzsche provides the supreme example. In his imprecations against "the Crucified," the advocate of autocracy and militarism rivals the most infuriated of revolutionary Socialists. The whole spirit of perversion is contained in the description of Nietzsche by his friend Georges Brandes: "His thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: 'This thing passes for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This is regarded as good. Is it not rather evil?'" What is this but Satanism? The case of Nietzsche is not to be explained away by the fact that he died raving mad, since a number of apparently sane people still profess for him unbounded admiration, and whilst deriding Socialism and even attacking Bolshevism join in the war against Christian civilization. The conspiracy therefore exists apart from so-called democratic circles.

Not long ago I picked up an Italian novel by an anti-Socialist containing precisely the same diatribes against "Christian-bourgeois society" that are to be found in Anarchist and Bolshevist literature. "The family," says the author, "is the kernel of contemporary society and its base. Whoever would really reform or subvert must begin by reforming and subverting the family.... The family ... is the principal path of all unhappiness, of all vice, of all hypocrisy, of all moral ugliness, ..." and he goes on to show that the two countries which have proved themselves the sanest and the strongest are Germany and America, because they have advanced by long strides towards free love.[760]

The writer of these words may be of no importance, but they should be noted because they are symptomatic and help us to locate certain centres of infection.

It is impossible to observe all these miscellaneous movements going on all around us without being struck by the similarity of aim between them; each seems to form part of a common plan, which, like the separate pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, convey no meaning, but when fitted together make up a perfectly clear design. That there is somewhere in the background a point of contact is suggested by the fact that we find members of the different groups playing a double and a treble rôle, the same name occurring in the list of patrons in a Birth Control paper and in a revolutionary secret society, amongst the exponents of Psycho-Analysis and the members of an Irish Republican Committee.

With the open as with the secret forces the great method of warfare is the capture of public opinion. A hidden influence behind the press contributes powerfully to this end. Some of the subtlest disintegrating propaganda during the last seven years has emanated from the so-called "Capitalist press." The _Daily Herald_ is only the brass band of the Revolution. It is to the journals inspired and patronized by the Intelligentsia that we must turn to find the doctrines of Illuminism set forth with the most persuasive eloquence.[761]

More than eighty years ago a Frenchman endowed with extraordinary prophetic instinct foretold not only the danger that would one day come from Russia, but that the press would facilitate the destruction of civilization:

When our cosmopolitan democracy, bearing its last fruits, shall have made of war a thing odious to whole populations, when the nations calling themselves the most civilized on earth shall have finished enervating themselves in their political debaucheries, ... the floodgates of the North will open on us once again, then we shall undergo a last invasion not of ignorant barbarians but of cunning and enlightened masters, more enlightened than ourselves, for they will have learnt from our own excesses how we can and must be governed.

It is not for nothing that Providence piles up so many inactive forces in the East of Europe. One day the sleeping giant will arise and force will put an end to the reign of words. In vain, then, distracted equality will call the old aristocracy to the help of liberty; the weapon grasped again too late and wielded by hands too long inactive will have become powerless. Society will perish for having trusted to words void of sense or contradictory; then the deceitful echoes of public opinion, the newspapers, wishing at all costs to keep their readers, will push [the world] to ruin if only to have something to relate for a month longer. They will kill society to live upon its corpse.[762]

To-day the newspapers, no longer the echoes of public opinion but its supreme directors, throw open their columns to every form of disintegrating doctrine and close them to arguments that could effectually arrest the forces of destruction.

What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the subversive movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is there one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest--the circle of the _real Initiates_?

14

PAN-GERMANISM

We have seen in the course of this book that the idea of a secret power working for world-revolution through both open movements and secret societies, is not a new one, but dates from the eighteenth century. In order to appreciate the continuity of this idea, let us recapitulate the testimonies of contemporaries, some of which have been already quoted in their context, but which when collected together and placed in chronological order make up a very remarkable chain of evidence.

In 1789 the Marquis de Luchet warned France of the danger of the Illuminati, whose object was world-domination.[763] In consequence of this "gigantic project" de Luchet foresees "a series of calamities of which the end is lost in the darkness of time, like unto those subterranean fires of which the insatiable activity devours the bowels of the earth and which escape into the air by violent and devastating explosions."[764]

In 1794 the Duke of Brunswick in his manifesto to the German lodges said:

A great sect arose, which, taking for its motto "the good and happiness of man," worked in the darkness of the conspiracy to make the happiness of humanity a prey for itself. This sect is known to everyone: its brothers are known no less than its name.... The plan they had formed for breaking all social ties and of destroying all order was revealed in their speeches and acts.... Indomitable pride, thirst of power, such were the only motives of this sect: their masters had nothing less in view than the thrones of the earth, and the government of the nations was to be directed by their nocturnal clubs.[765]

In 1797 Montjoie, writing of the Orléaniste conspiracy, to which in an earlier work he had attributed the whole organization of the French Revolution in its first stages, observed:

I will not examine whether this wicked prince, thinking he was acting in his personal interests, was not moved by that _invisible hand_[766] which seems to have created all the events of our revolution in order to lead us towards a goal that we do not see at present, but which I think we shall see before long.[767]

In 1801 Monsignor de Savine "made allusions in prudent and almost terrified terms to some international sect ...a power superior to all others ...which has arms and eyes everywhere and which governs Europe to-day."[768]

In 1817 the Chevalier de Malet declared that "the authors of the Revolution are not more French than German, Italian, English, etc. They form a particular nation which took birth and has increased in the dark amidst all civilized nations with the object of subjecting them all to its domination."[769]

In 1835 the Carbonaro, Malegari, wrote to another member of the Carbonari:

We form an association of brothers in all points of the globe, we have desires and interests in common, we aim at the emancipation of humanity, we wish to break every kind of yoke, yet there is one that is unseen, that can hardly be felt, yet that weighs on us. Whence comes it? Where is it? No one knows, or at least no one tells. The association is secret, even for us, the veterans of secret societies.[770]

In 1852 Disraeli wrote:

It was neither parliaments nor populations, nor the course of nature, nor the course of events, that overthrew the throne of Louis Philippe ...the throne was surprised by the Secret Societies, ever prepared to ravage Europe.... Acting in unison with a great popular movement they may destroy society, as they did at the end of the last century.[771]

In 1874 Père Deschamps, after his exhaustive study of secret societies, thus propounded the question:

We have now to ask ourselves whether there is anything but an identity of doctrines and personal communications between the members of the different sects, whether there is really a unity of direction which binds together all the secret societies, including Free Masonry. Here we touch on the most mysterious point of the action of secret societies, on that which these national Grand Orients who declare themselves independent of each other and sometimes even excommunicate each other conceal most carefully beneath a veil.[772]

Finally Deschamps is led to the conclusion that there is "a secret council which directs all masonic societies,"[773] that there are secret lairs where the chiefs of the sects agree together on their work of destruction.[774]

It would be easy to multiply quotations of this kind taken from many different sources. Whether the men who expressed these opinions were, as we are frequently told, suffering from delusions or not, the fact remains that the idea of a hidden hand behind world-revolution has existed for at least 135 years. And when we compare these utterances with Monsieur Copin Albancelli's description of an inner circle secretly directing the activities of the Grand Orient, and with the conclusions reached by members of other secret societies, that such a circle exists behind all occult and masonic societies of a subversive kind, we are necessarily led to enquire: is there one circle or rather one Power behind both open and secret organizations working for the overthrow of the existing social order and Christian civilization? If so, what is this power?

Now, to leave speculation for the moment and come to known facts, everyone who has seriously studied these matters is aware that there are at the present moment five principal organized movements at work in the world with which ordered government has to contend, that may be summarized as follows:

1. Grand Orient Freemasonry. 2. Theosophy with its innumerable ramifications. 3. Nationalism of an aggressive kind, now represented by Pan-Germanism. 4. International Finance. 5. Social Revolution.

It will be seen that, with the exception of the fourth, these movements are those of which I have endeavoured to trace the course throughout the earlier part of this book. It is a highly significant fact that it was only when I had reached this stage of my work I discovered there were independent investigators who had arrived at precisely the same conclusions as myself.

The problem that now confronts us is therefore this: if there is indeed one power directing all subversive movements, is it one of the five movements here enumerated or is it yet another power more potent and more invisible? In order to discover this, it is necessary to consider whether these movements, although apparently divergent in their ultimate purpose, have nevertheless any ideas or any aims in common. One fundamental point of similarity will certainly be found between them. All desire to dominate the world and to direct it along lines and according to rules of their own devising; more than this, each desires to direct it solely for the benefit of one class of people--social, intellectual, or national as the case may be--to the entire exclusion of every human being outside that class. Thus in reality each aspires to the dictatorship of the world.

Besides this, it will be noticed that not only these principal movements, but also the minor subversive movements described in the last chapter, have in the main (1) a pro-German tendency--none, at any rate, are pro-French nor do they encourage British patriotism, (2) all contain a Jewish element--none, at least, are "anti-Semite," and (3) all have a more or less decided antagonism to Christianity. If then, there is a single power behind them, is it the Pan-Germanic Power? Is it the Jewish Power? Or is it the Anti-Christian Power? Let us examine each of these possibilities in turn.

Viewed under the aspect of exaggerated Nationalism, the spirit of Pan-Germanism is nothing new. The dream of world-domination has haunted the imagination of many races from the time of Alexander the Great to Napoleon I, but nowhere has the plan been carried out by the Machiavellian methods which have characterized Prussian foreign policy and diplomacy from the days of Frederick the Great onwards. It is not Prussian militarism that constitutes the crime of modern Germany. Militarism in the sense of courage, patriotism, discipline, and devotion to duty is a splendid thing. But the spirit of Pan-Germanism differs from the British conception of patriotism in that it overrides the rights of all other peoples and seeks to establish its domination over the whole world. Under German domination every German would be free and every other human being a slave. England, whilst seeking conquests, has, on the other hand, always allowed the inhabitants of conquered territories to develop along their own lines and has made use of legislation largely to protect them from each other. The preference of the native of India for an English judge to one of his own race is evidence of this fact. But it is further the abandonment of all principle, the acceptance of the doctrine that everything is allowable--lying, treachery, calumny, and bad faith--in order to achieve its end, that has placed Germany outside the comity of nations. Robison describes the system of the Illuminati as leading to the conclusion that "nothing would be scrupled at, if it could be made appear that the Order would derive advantage from it, because the great object of the Order was held as superior to every consideration."[775] Change the word Order to State, and one has the whole principle of modern German Imperialism.

Now, it is interesting to notice that the founders of German Illuminism and of German Imperialism drew certain of their ideas from the same source. Both Weishaupt and Frederick the Great were earnest students of Machiavelli--and both out-did their master. This form of Machiavellism, carried to a point probably never dreamt of by the Italian philosopher, has run through the whole struggle of Prussia for supremacy and at the same time through each outbreak of world revolution in which Prussian influence has played a part. Thus the Ems telegram in 1870, the false report that tricked Russia into mobilization in 1914,[776] the violation of treaties and of all the laws of civilised warfare during the recent war, were the direct outcome of doctrines that may be found in embryo in _The Prince_. So also the most striking characteristic of the French Revolution under the inspiration of Weishaupt's emissaries and the agents of Prussia, and of the present revolutionary movement inaugurated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is not so much its violence as its Machiavellian cunning. The art popularly known to-day as _camouflage_--of dressing-up one design under the guise of something quite different, of making black appear white by glorifying the most ignoble actions, of making white appear black by holding up all honourable traditions to contempt and ridicule, in a word _perversion_--has been reduced to a system by the secret directors of world revolution. It is here that we can detect the non-proletarian character of the movement. The working-man of all countries is the least Machiavellian of beings; his weakness lies in the fact that he is too inarticulate, that he does not know how to put his case even when he has a good one, still less to make a bad one appear plausible. It was not until world revolution was taken over by the faction described by Bakunin as "the German-Jew Company" that it reassumed its Machiavellian character and gradually became the formidable organization it is to-day.

A few extracts from _The Prince_ will show how closely both the Prussians and the Terrorists of France and Russia have followed Machiavelli's manual for despots:

"He who usurps the government of any State is to execute and put in practice all the cruelties which he thinks material at once, that he may have no occasion to renew them often," etc.[777] (Vide the German principle of "frightfulness" to be exercised against the inhabitants of invaded territory and the plan of the French and Russian Terrorists in suppressing "counter-revolutionaries.")

"It is of such importance to a prince to take upon him the nature and disposition of a beast; of all the whole flock he ought to imitate the lion and the fox."[778](Vide Frederick the Great and the demagogues of France and Russia.)

"A prince ... who is wise and prudent, cannot or ought not to keep his parole, when the keeping of it is to his prejudice, and the causes for which he promised removed."[779] (Vide Germany's doctrine of the scrap of paper and the promises of the Bolshevist Trade Delegation in London to refrain from propaganda.)

"Because the whole multitude which submits to your government is not capable of being armed, if you be beneficial and obliging to those you do arm, you may make the bolder with the rest, for the difference of your behaviour to the soldier binds him more firmly to your service," etc.[780](Vide the insolent behaviour permitted to officers of the German Imperial Army and the feeding of the Red Army in Russia at the expense of the rest of the population.)

"The prince ... is obliged ... at convenient times in the year to entertain the people by feastings and plays and spectacles of recreation ... and give them some instance of his humanity and magnificence."[781] (Vide the important part played by "spectacles" in the French Revolution and by the theatre and opera in Soviet Russia. Always the same plan of "_panem ei circenses_!")

Just after the fall of Napoleon I a French writer published a book describing the "methodic perversity" of the revolutionary leaders and the Revolution as the beginning of a Machiavellian régime.[782] How did this system come to be established in France unless under the guidance of Weishaupt's emissaries and the agents of Frederick the Great and of the Illuminatus Frederick William II?

Germany was well able, however, to defend herself against the devastating doctrines of Illuminism. Always the home of secret societies, she became by the end of the nineteenth century the spiritual home of Socialism. Yet although this might appear to present a danger to German Imperialism, no country has remained so free as Germany from serious agitation. It has been well said that the Germans are theoretically more Socialistic than other nations, but they are far less revolutionary.

The truth is that the rulers of Germany have always known that they could count not merely on the servility of the people but on their ardent national spirit. A strong vein of patriotism ran through all the secret societies even of the most subversive variety, and it was the German Student Orders, whence the Illuminati drew their disciples, that became also the recruiting-ground for the German Imperialist idea. Instead of combating subversive forces, German Imperialism adopted the far more skilful expedient of enlisting them in its service.

It was thus that in Germany Freemasonry became a powerful aid to Prussian aggrandizement. From 1840 onwards the word of command to all the lodges went out from Berlin,[783] and in the revolution of 1848 the Freemasons of Germany showed themselves the most ardent supporters of German unity under the ægis of Prussia. Later, Bismarck with superb ingenuity enlisted not only Freemasons and members of secret societies but Socialists and democrats in the same cause. Lassalle and Marx contributed powerfully to the cause of pan-Germanism. Dammer, who succeeded Lassalle as head of the Socialist party, instructed his successor Fritsche that "in the meetings which took place in Saxony, whilst putting forward Socialist claims, they must not fail to demand the unity of Germany under the domination of Prussia. Fritsche was personally to render an account to Bismarck of the results obtained at these meetings."[784]

Even as far afield as Italy, Bismarck succeeded in imposing the policy of German autocracy on men who were ostensibly marching in the vanguard of "liberty." "I believe in the unity of Germany," Mazzini wrote to Bismarck in 1867, "and I desire it as I desire that of my own country. I abhor the empire and supremacy that France arrogates to herself over Europe."[785]

Before 1870 Freemasonry everywhere on the Continent helped the cause of Germany. "The Occult Power preached pacifism and humanitarianism in France by means of French Freemasonry whilst it preached patriotism in Germany by means of German Freemasonry."[786] So although throughout the nineteenth century the rulers of Germany permitted the dissemination of ideas antagonistic to religion, until by the dawn of the following century the very idea of God was rooted out of the minds of many German children, the Imperial Government was careful that nothing should be allowed to weaken patriotism. Indeed, the Pan-German obsession into which German patriotism became transformed under the influence of such men as Treitschke and Bernhardi was, no less than revolutionary Socialism, fortified by irreligion because founded on the law of force and the absence of all moral scruple. It is thus not "militarism" in the accepted sense that has rendered Germany a menace to the world, but the Machiavellian plan of using for export doctrines sternly repressed within her own borders.

I shall not enlarge here on the crime of the German Imperial Staff in sending Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks to Russia, because I have already dealt at length with this question in a controversy that appeared in the _Morning Post_ two years ago.[787] But whilst acknowledging the fair and courteous line of argument adopted by my German opponent, with which on certain points I found myself completely in agreement. I was obliged to recognize that the bar to any real understanding between us lay in the impossibility of persuading him to recognize the principle that all means are not justifiable in order to obtain one's ends. This is how he expresses himself on the subject:

If Mrs. Webster ... reproaches Germany for having employed seditious propaganda in the countries of the Allies, it may simply be brought to mind that all is fair in love and war. In a war, in a fight concerning life and death, one does not look at the weapons which one takes, nor at the values which are destroyed by using the arms. The only adviser [sic] is, first of all, the success of the fight, the salvation of one's independence.[788]

Until Germany abandons this Machiavellian doctrine it will be impossible to treat her as a civilized Power.

But Herr Kerlen accuses England of pursuing the same Machiavellian policy of encouraging sedition abroad. Undoubtedly England did propagate Pacifism in Germany and other enemy countries and hoped to bring about a political revolution, that is to say, a rising of the German people against the rulers who had led them into war. (It should be remembered that all the friends of Germany in this country always declared that the German people did not want the war and were dragged into it unwillingly by the military caste.) But is there any evidence to show that England ever attempted to engineer a social revolution, to undermine morality and all belief in ordered government, in a word to promote Bolshevism in Germany or elsewhere? Herr Kerlen cites the sympathy accorded in this country to the Kerensky revolution. But England, largely through the influence of the Liberals, had always entertained an exaggerated idea of "Tzarist tyranny," and honestly sympathized with all efforts, however misguided, to "liberate" the Russian people. Further, throughout the war the Tzar and Tzarina had been ceaselessly represented as faithless to the Allies--a story that we now know to have been an infamous calumny circulated doubtless by enemy agents. This idea even obtained credence in Conservative circles, misled by false information on the situation in Russia. One must have lived through the spring of 1917 in London to realize how completely not only the public but the authorities were deluded. What else could be expected when the opinion of Socialists was accepted on the matter? I know from personal experience that two of the most important Government departments were completely mistaken even on the subject of Bolshevism, with the result that measures were not taken which might have checked its spread into this country.

In a word, then, the essential difference between the attitude of Germany and England to Russia was that whilst England imagined that the Kerensky revolution would be for the good of Russia as well as for the advantage of the Allies, Germany deliberately introduced into Russia what she knew to be a poison.

Always faithful to the maxim of _divide et impera_, Germany, after bringing Russia to ruin, has at last succeeded in causing dissensions between the Allies. This policy she pursued unremittingly throughout the war. Thus whilst on one hand she was assuring the French that "the English would fight to the last breath of the last Frenchman," General Ludendorff was instructing the Imperial Chancellor that: "We must again and again rub in the sentence in Kuhlmann's speech to the effect that the question of Alsace-Lorraine is the only one which stands in the way of peace. And we must lay special emphasis on the fact that the English people are shedding their blood for an Imperialistic war-aim."[789]

So skilfully was this propaganda carried on after the war had ended that whilst English officers returning to England from the occupied areas were declaring that the friendliness of the Germans convinced them that Germany was really our friend and that we should have an "entente" with her rather than with France, French officers returning to France said that the Germans had assured them that they were their best friends, that England was the real enemy, and that it would be better to break the Entente and form an alliance with Germany. At the same time no less than three lines of propaganda concerning the causes of the war were going out from Germany, one laying all the blame on the English, one on the French, and one on the Jews, and pamphlets embodying these conflicting theories were despatched broadcast to likely subjects in the countries of the Allies.[790]

The greatest triumph for Imperial Germany lay in her success in enlisting the very elements amongst the Allies which might most be expected to oppose her. Although there was no country in the world where monarchy was so adored, militarism so universally admired, where rank and birth played so important a part, and the working classes, though cared for, so rigidly kept in subjection, Germany from the time of Bismarck onwards has always been the "spiritual home" of British Socialists, democrats, and pacifists, just as in France she has always found her principal allies in the masonic lodges. And this although the German Socialists and Freemasons have never attempted to use their influence in favour of the masonic and Socialist ideal of universal brotherhood and world-peace, but, on the contrary, at every crisis have thrown in their lot with the military party. Thus before the Franco-Prussian War, whilst French Freemasons of the Loge Concordia and the Socialists of the First Internationale were urging their brothers to rely on German Socialism to avert a conflict, the Prussian lodges were shouting Hoch! to the national colours and chanting the praises of King William and "the Prussian sword," and the German Social Democrats were applauding the cause of German unity.[791]

Exactly the same thing happened before the recent war, when Jaurès assured his fellow-Socialists that at the first sign of conflict he had only to communicate with Berlin in order to enlist German Socialism in the interests of peace; yet on the declaration of war the German Socialists voted solidly for war credits, whilst the British Socialists opposed participation in the war and even in some instances expressed sympathy with Germany. And let it never be forgotten, it was not Socialist Germany but Imperial Germany that won the allegiance of our so-called democrats.

In spite of this betrayal by the Socialists of Germany, in spite of the fact that they have contributed nothing to the cause of International Socialism or of world-peace, the British "Labour" Party never until its accession to office wavered in its policy of publicly advocating the cause of Germany. With the exception of the Social Democratic Federation, every Socialist body in this country has proclaimed pro-German sentiments, and _Justice_ alone, of all Socialist organs, has expressed its sympathy for the sufferings of France. In fact, any Socialist who dared to champion the cause of France immediately lost his influence and position in Socialist circles. As to the _Daily Herald_, had it been edited in Berlin it could not more faithfully have supported German interests. When Alsace Lorraine was restored to France, it published an article showing how deeply the inhabitants of this province resented being transferred from the German Empire to the French Republic[792]; when a general strike threatened this country, it seized the opportunity to come out with an appeal in enormous capitals to revise the Versailles Treaty; in the matter of reparations its efforts to let Germany off altogether have been, as it itself observed, "unceasing." "The plain fact is," it declared on December 17, 1921, "that these fantastic reparation demands cannot be met; and that every payment by which Germany attempts to meet them will only work further havoc to our own commerce and our own industry. We have urged that ceaselessly for three years. To-day even the Premier begins to see that we were right, that the interests of this country demand the scrapping of _the whole bad business of 'making Germany pay_.'"[793]

Indeed, when the interests of Germany were concerned, this paper, which Lenin has described as "our own organ," but which might still more truly be claimed by Ludendorff and Stinnes, was quite ready to throw Socialism to the winds and plead the cause of capital. At the very moment that it was advocating the Labour policy of a capital levy on all fortunes exceeding £5,000 in this country, the _Daily Herald_ waxed almost tearful over the iniquity of France in attempting to touch the pockets of German multi-millionaires whose profits, it went on to explain elaborately, were not nearly as huge as might appear in view of the decline in the purchasing power of the mark. The decline in the purchasing power of the pound had, however, never been taken into account when assessing the profits of British employers of labour.[794]

We have only to follow point by point the policy of the British Labour Party since the war to recognize that whilst the measures it advocated might be of doubtful benefit to the workers, there could be no doubt whatever of the benefit they would confer on Germany. With a million and a quarter unemployed and large numbers of the working classes unable to find homes, the professed representatives of Labour have persistently clamoured for the removal of restrictions on alien immigration and alien imports. So although through the Trade Unions the British worker was to be rigorously protected against competition from his fellow-Briton, no obstacles were to be placed in the way of competition by foreign, and frequently underpaid, labour. That this glaring betrayal of their interests should not have raised a storm of resentment amongst the working classes is surely evidence that the Marxian doctrine "the emancipation of the working classes must be brought about by the working classes themselves"[795] has so far led to no great results. Emerson truly observed: "So far as a man thinks, he is free." The working classes can never be free until they learn to think for themselves instead of allowing their thinking to be done for them by the middle-class exploiters of Labour.

The hand of Germany behind Socialism must be apparent to all those who do not deliberately shut their eyes to the fact, and it is significant to notice that the nearer Socialism approaches to Bolshevism the more marked this influence becomes. Thus although certain Socialist groups, such as the Social Democratic Federation in England and the Socialist Party in France, have not become Germanized, the avowed Communists in all the Allied countries are strongly pro-German. This is the case even in France, where the Bolsheviks find fervent supporters in the group led by Marcel Cachin, Froissart, and Longuet, grandson of Karl Marx.

The organization of the Bolshevist movement has indeed throughout owed a great deal of its efficiency to German co-operation, provided not only by the Socialist but by the Monarchist elements in Germany. It is necessary in this connexion to understand the dual character of the German Monarchist party since the ending of the war. The great majority of its adherents, animated by nothing more reprehensible than the spirit of militarism and an aggressive form of patriotism that clings to the old formula of _Deutschland über alles_, are probably strangers to any intrigues, but behind this mass of honest Imperialists, and doubtless unknown to a great number, there lurk those sinister organizations the Pan-German secret societies.

Many of these, as for example the _Ostmarkenverein_, ostensibly instituted for the defence of German interests on the Russian frontier, existed before the war; indeed, there is little doubt that they have continued without a break since the days of the Tugendbund and have always preserved their masonic and "illuminized" character. But since the beginning of the Great War, and still more since the Armistice, their numbers have increased until in 1921 they were estimated to run into three figures. Moreover, as in the time of Weishaupt, Bavaria is still a centre for secret-society intrigue, and it was here that Escherich founded the _Einwohnerwehr_ sometimes known as the _Orgesch_ or Organization Escherich, with Munich as its headquarters. The Orgesch was followed by the formidable murder club known to all the world as the Organization C or "Consul," named after its founder, the famous Captain Ehrhardt, whose nickname was "_der Herr Consul_." During the year 1921 no less than 400 political assassinations were reported in Germany and said to be the work of secret societies. Amongst the crimes attributed to the initiative of Organization C were the murders of Herr Erzberger and the attempt on the life of Herr Scheidemann. Eighty persons arrested for complicity in the murder of Herr Rathenau were also said to be members of the same society.[796]

But as in the case of all secret societies, the visible leaders were not the real hierarchy; behind this active body there existed an inner circle organised on masonic lines, the Druidenorden, a name unknown to the public, and behind this again another and still more secret circle which appears to be nameless. It is these inner rings which, whilst remaining Monarchist in Germany, work for other ends abroad, and are connected with the world-revolutionary movement.

This alliance between the two extremes of ardent Monarchism and revolutionary Socialism existed at the beginning of the war or even earlier, and, as is now well known, it was the Jewish Social Democrat, Israel Lazarewitch, alias Helphandt alias Parvus, who arranged with the German General Staff for the passage of Lenin from Switzerland to Russia, accompanied by Karl Radek, the Austrian Jew deserter, and a number of other Jews.

Now, Switzerland has been for hundreds of years a centre of revolutionary and secret-society intrigue. As early as the sixteenth century the Pope, writing to the Kings of France and Spain, warned them that Geneva was "un foyer éternel de révolution," and Joseph de Maistre, quoting this letter in 1817, declared Geneva to be the metropolis of the revolutionaries, whose art of deception he describes as "the great European secret."[797] Elsewhere, a year earlier, he had referred to Illuminism as the root of all the evil at work. It is now known that at the moment de Maistre wrote these words an inner ring of revolutionaries, claiming direct descent from Weishaupt and even from an earlier sect existing at the end of the fifteenth century, profited by the fall of Napoleon I to reconstruct its organization and took up its headquarters in Switzerland with branch offices in London and Paris. The same secret ring of Illuminati is believed to have been intimately connected with the organization of the Bolshevist revolution, although none of the leading Bolsheviks are said to have been members of the innermost circle, which is understood to consist of men belonging to the highest intellectual and financial classes whose names remained absolutely unknown. Outside this absolutely secret ring there existed, however, a semi-secret circle of high initiates of subversive societies drawn from all over the world and belonging to various nationalities--German, Jewish, French, Russian, and even Japanese. This group, which might be described as the active ring of the inner circle, appears to have been in touch with, if not in control of, a committee which met in Switzerland to carry out the programme of the Third Internationale.

It was thus in Switzerland that at the same time high initiates of Pan-German secret societies foregathered and that an active centre of pro-German, anti-Entente, and even Bolshevist propaganda was established. These Germans, although Monarchists themselves, co-operated with the secret revolutionary forces in stirring up trouble in the countries of the Allies. At the same time the conferences of the Second Internationale, attended by members of the British I.L.P. took place in Switzerland, and at one of these--the Berne Conference of 1919--the delegates were entertained by a mysterious "American" millionaire, John de Kay, living himself in great style, paying for press service at the rate of 2,000 francs a day, lavishing money on the conference, and at the same time subsidizing a Pacifist and Defeatest paper named _La Feuille_.

It is impossible, then, to ignore the role of Germany in the present outbreak of world revolution. In the British White Paper on Bolshevism in Russia we find it stated by an Englishman who had been through the whole of the Revolution in that country that:

The Germans initiated disturbances in order to reduce Russia to chaos. They printed masses of paper money to finance their schemes; the notes, of which I possess specimens, can be easily recognized by a special mark.[798]

What has Germany to say to all this? Simply that the promotion of Bolshevism was a military "necessity" in order to bring about the downfall of her opponents, but that the propaganda utilized by her was in reality of Jewish origin, and that Jewry, not Germany, was the real author of world revolution.

It is easy to see how such a theory can be made to serve the cause of Pan-Germanism. For if Germany can persuade us that the Jews alone were responsible for the war and were also the sole authors of Bolshevism, we shall naturally be led to the conclusion that Germany is, after all, innocent of the crimes attributed to her, and that our only safety lies in forgoing reparations, restoring her to her former power, and coalescing with her against a common enemy. We shall therefore do well to accept with extreme caution advice on the Jewish question emanating from German sources, and to test the sincerity of the spirit in which it is offered by considering the relations which have hitherto existed between the Germans and the Jews.

Now, Germany has long been the home of modern "anti-Semitism." Although in every country and at every period, but more particularly in the East of Europe during the last century, the Jews have suffered from unpopularity, it was Germany that organized this aversion into a definite plan of campaign. If in Russia, Galicia, and Poland the Jews have met with sporadic violence at the hands of the peasants, in Germany they have been systematically held up by the authorities to hatred and contempt. Luther, Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Treitschke, successively inveighed against the Jewish race. Jews were denied admission to masonic lodges and to the rank of officers in the army, whilst society excluded them up to the outbreak of war.

Yet the extraordinary fact remains that of all nations the Germans have always been the favourites of the Jews. Throughout the whole movement for the unification of Germany under the ægis of Prussia, Jews played a leading part, and in the recent war Germany found in them some of her most valuable allies. As Maximilian Harden recently pointed out: "The services of the Jews to Germany during the war were enormous. The patriotism of the Jews was beyond reproach, in many cases even ludicrous and offensive in its intensity." And in spite of "anti-Semitism," Harden declares: "There is a strong affinity between the German and the Jew."[799] To the Ashkenazim Germany even more than Palestine has appeared the Land of Promise. Thus some years before the war Professor Ludwig Geiger, leader of the Liberal Jews of Berlin, denounced "Zionist sophisms" in the words: "The German Jew who has a voice in German literature must, as he has been accustomed to for the last century and a half, look upon Germany alone as his fatherland, upon the German language as his mother-tongue, and the future of that nation must remain the only one upon which he bases his hopes."[800]

How are we to explain this unrequited devotion? Simply by the German policy of enlisting every dynamic force in her service. She has known how to use the Jews just as she has known how to use the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Socialists for the purpose of Pan-Germanism. From Frederick the Great, who employed the Jew Ephraim to coin false money, to William II, who kept in touch with Rathenau by means of a private telephone wire, the rulers of Germany have always allowed them to co-operate in their schemes of world-domination. As the allies of Bismarck, who used them freely to fill his war-chests, the Jews directed the power of the secret societies in the interests of Germany; in 1871 the Jew Bloechreider acted as adviser to the new German Empire as to the best method of wresting indemnities from France. And Germany, whilst heaping insults on the Jews, nevertheless fulfils certain conditions essential to Jewish enterprise. Unlike England and France, she has never allowed herself to be seriously weakened by democratic ideas, and therefore to the Jews--as to British believers in autocracy--she represents the principle of stability.

Moreover, Germany as the home of militarism offers a wide field for Jewish speculation. We have only to couple together an aphorism of Mirabeau's with one of Werner Sombart's to perceive the bond of union between the two races, thus: "War is the national industry of Prussia" and "Wars are the Jews' harvests." As long ago as 1793 Anacharsis Clootz, the apostle of universal brotherhood and defender of the Jewish race, declared that if Germany were to be prevented from going to war the Jews must be persuaded to withdraw their support from her military adventures:

War could not begin or last in Germany without the activity, the intelligence, and the money of the Jews. Magazines and munitions of all kinds are provided by Hebrew capitalists and all the subaltern agents of military provisionment are of the same nation. We have only to come to an understanding with our brothers, the Rabbis, to produce astonishing, miraculous results.[801]

Mr. Ford, the American motor-car manufacturer, appears to have arrived at much the same conclusion expressed in the words recently attributed to him: "We don't need the League of Nations to end war. Put under control the fifty most wealthy Jewish financiers, who produce wars for their own profit, and wars will cease."[802]

On another occasion Mr. Ford is reported to have said that the Jews who voyaged with him in the Peace ship in 1915 "went out of their way to convince" him of "the direct relations between the International Jew and the war": they "went into details to tell me the means by which the Jews controlled the war--how they had the money, how they had cornered all the basic materials needed to fight the war," etc.[803]

Without in any way absolving Germany from the crime of the war, it is necessary to take this secondary factor into consideration if peace between the nations is to be established. For as long as the lust of war lingers in the hearts of the Germans and the lust of gain at the price of human suffering lingers in the hearts of the Jews, both races will remain necessary to each other and the hideous nightmare of war will continue to brood over the world.

There is then a great deal of truth in the Socialist phrase "Capitalists' Wars," although not in the sense they attribute to it. For it will be noticed that the Capitalists who are most instrumental in making wars are precisely those whom the Socialists are always careful to shield from blame. The following incident will illustrate this point.

At a meeting of the Social Democratic Federation Mr. Adolphe Smith moved a resolution appealing to the organized workers of Great Britain--

Not to permit themselves in the supposed interests of their fellow-workers in other countries, to be used by sinister financial and militarist influences merely to weaken the Entente nations in the present critical situation, and urging them to keep careful watch against such manoeuvres on the part of pro-German international financiers, who were able to exercise considerable reactionary influence among the wealthy and official classes in this country.[804]

Mr. Hyndman added that "the most serious danger by which we were threatened was from the most powerful group of capitalists in Europe headed by Hugo Stinnes and backed by Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the militarist party in Germany." This resolution was opposed by a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and eventually withdrawn.

The connexion between German Imperialism, International Finance, Illuminism, Bolshevism, and certain sections of British Socialism is thus apparent. Is Germany then the secret power behind the thing we call Bolshevism? Are Illuminism and Pan-Germanism one and the same thing? To this hypothesis two objections present themselves: firstly, that the spirit of Illuminism and Bolshevism existed, as we have seen in earlier chapters of this book, long before modern Germany came into existence; and secondly, that Germany herself is not entirely free from the contagion. For although the danger of Bolshevism in Germany has been doubtless greatly exaggerated in order to prevent the Allies from pressing their demands for disarmament and reparations, nevertheless Bolshevism under its illuminated name of Spartacism cannot be regarded as a movement entirely staged for the deception of Europe. Moreover, just as in the countries of the Allies it has shown itself, under the guise of Pacifism, savagely anti-national and pro-German, so in Germany, as also in Hungary, it turned Pacifism to the opposite purpose by professing sympathy at moments with the Allies.

It is clear, then, that besides Pan-Germanism there is another power at work, a power far older, that seeks to destroy all national spirit, all ordered government in every country, Germany included. What is this power? A large body of opinion replies: the Jewish power.

15

THE REAL JEWISH PERIL

In considering the immense problem of the Jewish Power, perhaps the most important problem with which the modern world is confronted, it is necessary to divest oneself of all prejudices and to enquire in a spirit of scientific detachment whether any definite proof exists that a concerted attempt is being made by Jewry to achieve world-domination and to obliterate the Christian faith.

That such a purpose has existed amongst the Jews in the past has been shown throughout the earlier chapters of this book. The conception of the Jews as the Chosen People who must eventually rule the world forms indeed the basis of Rabbinical Judaism.

It is customary in this country to say that we should respect the Jewish religion, and this would certainly be our duty were the Jewish religion founded, as is popularly supposed, solely on the Old Testament. For although we do not consider ourselves bound to observe the ritual of the Pentateuch, we find no fault with the Jews for carrying out what they conceive to be their religious duties. Moreover, although the Old Testament depicts the Jews as a favoured race--a conception which we believe to have been superseded by the Christian dispensation, whereby all men are declared equal in the sight of God--nevertheless it does contain a very lofty law of righteousness applicable to all mankind. It is because of their universality that the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, as also many passages in the Psalms, in Isaiah, and the minor prophets, have made an undying appeal to the human race. But the Jewish religion now takes its stand on the Talmud rather than on the Bible. "The modern Jew," one of its latest Jewish translators observes, "is the product of the Talmud."[805] The Talmud itself accords to the Bible only a secondary place. Thus the Talmudic treatise Soferim says: "The Bible is like water, the Mischna is like wine, and the Gemara is like spiced wine."

Now, the Talmud is not a law of righteousness for all mankind, but a meticulous code applying to the Jew alone. No human being outside the Jewish race could possibly go to the Talmud for help or comfort. One might look through its pages in vain for any such splendid rule of life as that given by the prophet Micah: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" In the Talmud, on the contrary, as Drach points out, "the precepts of justice, of equity, of charity towards one's neighbour, are not only not applicable with regard to the Christian, but constitute a crime in anyone who would act differently.... The Talmud expressly forbids one to save a non-Jew from death, ... to restore lost goods, etc., to him, to have pity on him."[806]

How far the Talmud has contributed to the anti-social tendencies of modern Judaism is shown by the fact that the Karaites living in the south of Russia, the only body of Jews which takes its stand on the Bible, and not on the Talmud,--of which it only accepts such portions as are in accordance with Bible teaching--have always shown themselves good subjects of the Russian Empire, and have therefore enjoyed equal rights with the Russian people around them. Catherine the Great particularly favoured the Karaites.

Thus even the Jews are not unanimous in supporting the Talmud; indeed, as we have already seen, many Jews have protested against it as a barrier between themselves and the rest of the human race.

But it is in the Cabala, still more than in the Talmud, that the Judaic dream of world-domination recurs with the greatest persistence. The Zohar indeed refers to this as a _fait accompli_, explaining that "the Feast of Tabernacles is the period when Israel triumphs over the other people of the world; that is why during this feast we seize the Loulab [branches of trees tied together] and carry it as a trophy to show that we have conquered all the other peoples known as 'populace' and that we dominate them."[807] God is, however, asked to accord these other peoples a certain share of blessings, "so that occupied with this share they shall not participate nor mingle with the joy of Israel when he calls down blessings from on high." The situation may thus be compared with that of a king who, wishing to give a feast to his special friends, finds his house invaded by importunate governors demanding admittance. "What then does the king do? He orders the governors to be served with beef and vegetables, which are common food, and then sits down to table with his friends and has the most delicious dishes served."[808]

But this is nothing to the feasting that is to take place when the Messianic era arrives. After the return of the Jews from all nations and parts of the world to Palestine, the Messiah, we are told in the Talmud, will entertain them at a gorgeous banquet, where they will be seated at golden tables and regaled with wine from Adam's wine-cellar. The first course is to consist of a roasted ox named Behemoth, so immense that every day it eats up the grass upon a thousand hills; the second of a monstrous fish Leviathan; the third of a female Leviathan boiled and pickled; the fourth of a gigantic roast fowl known as Barjuchne, of which the egg alone was so enormous that when it fell out of the nest it crushed three hundred tall cedars and the white overflowed threescore villages. This course is to be followed up by "the most splendid and pompous Dessert" that can be procured, including fruit from the Tree of Life and "the Pomegranates of Eden which are preserved for the Just."

At the end of the banquet "God will entertain the company at a ball"; He Himself will sit in the midst of them, and everyone will point Him out with his finger, saying: "Behold, this is our God: we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."[809]

The eighteenth-century commentator, whose summary of these passages we quote, goes on to observe:

But let us see a little after what manner the Jews are to live in their ancient Country under the Administration of the Messiah. In the First Place, the strange Nations, which they shall suffer to live, shall build them Houses and Cities, till them Ground, and plant them Vineyards; and all this, without so much as looking for any Reward of their Labour. These surviving Nations will likewise voluntarily offer them all their Wealth and Furniture: And Princes and Nobles shall attend them; and be ready at their Nod to pay them all Manner of Obedience; while they themselves shall be surrounded with Grandeur and Pleasure, appearing abroad in Apparel glittering with Jewels like Priests of the Unction, consecrated to God....

In a word, the felicity of this Holy Nation, in the Times of the Messiah, will be such, that the exalted Condition of it cannot enter into the Conception of Man; much less can it be couched in human Expression. This is what the Rabbis say of it. But the intelligent reader will doubtless pronounce it the Paradise of Fools.[810]

It is interesting to notice that this conception of the manner in which the return to Palestine is to be carried out has descended to certain of the modern colonists. Sir George Adam Smith, after watching Zionism at work in 1918, wrote:

On visiting a recently established Jewish colony in the north-east of the land, round which a high wall had been built by the munificent patron, I found the colonists sitting in its shade gambling away the morning, while groups of _fellahin_ at a poor wage did the cultivation for them. I said that this was surely not the intention of their patron in helping them to settle on land of their own. A Jew replied to me in German: "Is it not written: The sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and vinedressers?" I know that such delinquencies have become the exception in Jewish colonization of Palestine, but they are symptomatic of dangers which will have to be guarded against.[811]

The fellahin may, however, consider themselves lucky to be allowed to live at all, for, according to several passages in the Cabala, all the _goyim_ are to be swept off the face of the earth when Israel comes into its own. Thus the Zohar relates that the Messiah will declare war on the whole world and all the kings of the world will end by declaring war on the Messiah. But "the Holy One, blessed be He, will display His force and exterminate them from the world."[812] Then:

Happy will be the lot of Israel, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, has chosen from amongst the _goyim_ of whom the Scriptures say: "Their work is but vanity, it is an illusion at which we must laugh; they will all perish when God visits them in His wrath." At the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, will exterminate all the _goyim_ of the world, Israel alone will subsist, even as it is written: "The Lord alone will appear great on that day."[813]

The hope of world-domination is therefore not an idea attributed to the Jews by "anti-Semites," but a very real and essential part of their traditions. What then of their attitude to Christianity in the past? We have already seen that hatred of the person and teaching of Christ did not end at Golgotha, but was kept alive by the Rabbis and perpetuated in the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu. The Cabala also contains passages referring both to Christ and to Mohammed so unspeakably foul that it would be impossible to quote them here.

But it will be urged: the Jews of Western Europe to-day know nothing of the Cabala. This may be so, yet imperceptibly the Cabala has moulded the mind of the Jew. As a modern Jewish writer has declared:

[Kabbalism] has contributed to the formation of modern Judaism, for, without the influence of the Kabbala, Judaism to-day might have been one-sided, lacking in warmth and imagination. Indeed, so deeply has it penetrated into the body of the faith that many ideas and prayers are now immovably rooted in the general body of orthodox doctrine and practice. This element has not only become incorporated, but it has fixed its hold on the affections of the Jews and cannot be eradicated.[814]

It is thus not in the law of Moses thundered from Sinai, not in the dry ritual of the Talmud, but in the stupendous imaginings of the Cabala, that the real dreams and aspirations of Jewry have been transmitted through the ages. Belief in the coming Messiah may burn low, but faith in the final triumph of Israel over the other nations of the world still glows in the hearts of a race nurtured on this hope from time immemorial. Even the free-thinking Jew must unconsciously react to the promptings of this vast and ancient ambition. As a modern French writer has expressed it:

Assuredly sectarian Freethinkers swarm, who flatter themselves on having borrowed nothing from the synagogue and on hating equally Jehovah and Jesus. But the modern Jewish world is itself also detached from any supernatural belief, and the Messianic tradition, of which it preserves the cult, reduces itself to considering the Jewish race as the veritable Messiah[815].

Some colour is lent to this statement by an article which recently appeared in the Jewish press, in which it is explained that, according to the teaching of the "Liberal Jewish Synagogue," the beautiful passages in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah concerning "the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief," usually supposed by Christians to relate to the promised Messiah, are interpreted to modern Jewish youth as relating to Israel and signifying that Israel's "sufferings were caused by the sins of other nations," who thus "escaped the suffering they deserved." Consequently "Israel has suffered for the sake of the whole world[816]." How this amazing pretension can be maintained in view of the perpetual denunciations of the Israelites throughout the whole of the Old Testament is difficult to imagine. On their entry into Canaan they were distinctly told by Moses that the Lord their God had not given them "this good land" on account of their righteousness or the uprightness of their hearts[817]; long afterwards Daniel declared that all Israel had transgressed the law of God[818]; Nehemiah showed that on account of their rebellion and disobedience they had been delivered into the hands of their enemies[819]. Isaiah spoke of the iniquities of Judah in burning words:

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors!... Wash your, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, etc.[820]

Thus even the Word of God itself is powerless to mitigate the immense megalomania of the Jewish race. It is doubtful indeed whether by the majority of Jews the Bible is now regarded as divinely inspired. "The ten commandments which _we_ gave to mankind[821]" is a phrase typical of the manner in which Israel now arrogates to itself the sole authorship of the Scriptures. The deification of humanity by the Freemasons of the Grand Orient finds its counterpart in the deification of Israel by the modern Jew.

It is here that we must surely see the cause of much of the suffering the Jews have endured in the past. No one of course would justify the cruelty with which they have frequently been treated; nevertheless to maintain there was no provocation on the part of the Jews would be absurd. A race that has always considered itself entitled to occupy a privileged position amongst the nations of the world must inevitably meet with resentment, and in a primitive age or population resentment is apt to find a vent in violence shocking to the civilized mind. Moreover, to represent the Jews as a gentle long-suffering people, always the victims but never the perpetrators of violence, is absolutely contrary to historic fact. In the dark ages of the past the Jews showed themselves perfectly capable of cruelties not only towards other races but towards each other. One of the first pogroms recorded in the Christian era was carried out by the Jews themselves. The Jewish historian Josephus describes the reign of "lawlessness and barbarity" that was inaugurated about the middle of the first century A.D. by the band of assassins known as the Sicarii, who infested the country round Jerusalem and, by means of little daggers that they wore concealed beneath their garments, "slew men in the daytime and in the midst of the city, especially at the festivals when they mixed with the multitude." During one night raid on the small town of Engaddi they massacred more than seven hundred women and children.[822] And Josephus goes on to say:

Somehow, indeed, that was a time most fertile in all manner of wicked practices among the Jews, insomuch that no kind of villainy was then left undone; nor could anyone so much as devise any bad thing that was new if he wished. So deeply were they all infected, both privately and publicly, and vied with one another who should run the greatest lengths in impiety towards God, and in unjust actions towards their neighbours, men in power oppressing the multitude, and the multitude earnestly endeavouring to destroy men in power.[823]

It is futile then to maintain as do the Jews and their friends--for the pro-Jew is frequently _plus royaliste que le roi_--that all the faults of the modern Jew are to be attributed to bitterness engendered by persecution. Judaism has always contained an element of cruelty[824] which finds expression in the Talmud. It is from the Talmud, not from the Mosaic law, that the inhuman methods of Jewish slaughtering are derived.[825] The Talmud likewise gives the most horrible directions for carrying out capital punishment, particularly with regard to women, by the methods of stoning, burning, choking, or slaying with the sword. The victim condemned to be burnt is to have a scarf wound round his neck, the two ends pulled tightly by the executioners whilst his mouth is forced open with pincers and a lighted string thrust into it "so that it flows down through his inwards and shrinks his entrails."[826]

It will be said that all this belongs to the past. True, the practice here described may be considered obsolete, but the spirit of cruelty and intolerance that dictated it is still alive. One has only to study the modern Jewish press to realize the persecution to which Jews are subjected from members of their own race should they infringe one fraction of the Jewish code.

If, then, "the modern Jew is the product of the Talmud," it is here that we must see the principal obstacle to Jewish progress. It is said that Isaac Disraeli, the father of Lord Beaconsfield, gave as his reason for withdrawing from the Synagogue that Rabbinical Judaism with its unyielding laws and fettering customs "cuts off the Jews from the great family of mankind."[827] Such a system is indeed absolutely incompatible not only with Christian teaching but with the secular ideas of Western civilization. The attitude it adopts towards women would be in itself sufficient to justify this assertion. The Jewish daily prayer, "Blessed be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, that Thou has not made me a woman!"[828] is a ludicrous anachronism in the present age. According to the Talmud a service can take place in the Synagogue only if ten persons are present, which number ensures the presence of God in the assembly. Drach explains however that these persons must all be men. "If then there were nine men and a million women there could be no assembly, for the reason that women are nothing. But there arrives [on the scene] only one small boy of thirteen years and a day, at once there can be a holy assembly and, according to our Doctors, it is permitted to God to be present[829]."

When therefore we say that we must respect the Jewish religion we cannot, if we know anything about it, mean that we respect that portion of it which is founded on the Rabbinical traditions of the Talmud and the Cabala, but only that ethical law set forth in the Old Testament, to which right-living Jews have faithfully adhered and which is largely in accord with Christian teaching.

Let us not forget that Rabbinical Judaism is the declared and implacable enemy of Christianity. Hatred of Christianity and of the person of Christ is not a matter of remote history, nor can it be regarded as the result of persecution; it forms an integral part of Rabbinical tradition which originated before any persecution of the Jews by Christians had taken place, and has continued in our country long after all such persecution has ended.

It is here that we cannot fail to detect the origin of much of that virulent anti-Christian teaching that is being disseminated in our midst to-day. This teaching will be observed to follow three lines, of which the course has been traced throughout this book. These consist in desecrating the Christian tradition by declaring that Christ was either (_a_) a myth, (_b_) a purely human teacher endowed with superior virtue and knowledge of natural laws, (_c_) a crazy fanatic[830] or a malefactor. The first two theories are, as we have seen, those held by secret societies; the last is essentially Jewish. It is true that there is now a movement amongst the more enlightened Jews to recognize Jesus as a great teacher; so far, unfortunately, this is met by bitter hostility from the rest, and in the current Jewish press contemptuous and even blasphemous references to Christ and the Christian faith frequently occur. The fact that here in England, for nearly three hundred years, the Jews have been allowed to dwell in peace and carry out their religious rites unmolested, that they have been admitted to society, to masonic lodges, and to all offices of State and have met with increasing tolerance and favour, has done nothing to moderate that hatred of Christianity inculcated throughout nineteen centuries of Rabbinical teaching. Thus, for example, under the heading of "What Christianity has Meant," we read in a modern Jewish periodical:

We are thinking of what Christianity as an institution has meant to us Jews. The twenty centuries of its existence have been coeval with the long-drawn tragedy of the Jew's dispersal among the nations.... What kindliness and consideration we have received at the hands of Christianity has for the most part been tendered with the lure of the baptismal font. To the extent to which Christianity's embodiment, the Church, has been puissant has the Jewish tragedy deepened. Only when and where the Church has been weak has life been tolerable for the Jew.... Hatred of the Jew, anti-Jewish outbursts and anti-Semitic campaigns, are traceable to nothing so surely as to antipathy to the Jew which has been inbred by Christianity.... There is thus precious little about which the Jew has for rejoicing and gladness in the institution of Christianity, etc.[831]

The most cursory study of history would reveal the falseness of this contention. Antipathy to the Jew began long before the Christian era; in Egypt, Persia, and Rome he became, whether just or not, the object of suspicion to rulers. The reason given by Pharaoh for oppressing the Israelites was that if they were allowed to grow too powerful they might join themselves to the enemy in time of war[832]; the Emperors of Rome regarded them as a turbulent element; Mohammed declared: "Their aim will be to abet disorder on the earth, but God loveth not the abettors of disorder."[833] Meanwhile, the antipathy shown by the "people" in every country was mainly based on economic grounds. It was not simply the possession of wealth--which according to the Socialist creed should justify any amount of hatred--but the manner in which it was acquired and the arrogance with which it was displayed that roused popular feeling against the Jews. An Arab Fakih, Abu Ishak of Elvira, thus warned his master of the growing power of the Jews in Spain in the middle of the eleventh century A.D.:

The Jews, contemptible outcasts, have become great lords, and their pride and arrogance know no bounds.... Take not such men for thy ministers, but abandon them to curses, for the whole earth crieth out against them--ere long it will quake and we shall all perish. Turn thine eyes to other lands and behold how the Jews are treated as dogs, and kept apart....

I came to Granada, and there I beheld the Jews reigning. They had parcelled out the provinces and the capital between them: everywhere one of these accursed ruled. They collected the taxes, they made good cheer, they were sumptuously clad, while your garments, O Moslems, were old and worn-out. All the secrets of state were known to them; yet is it folly to put trust in traitors! While believers ate the bread of poverty, they dined delicately in the palace.... How can we thrive if we live in the shade and the Jews dazzle us with the glory of their pride?[834]

In mediæval France the chief cause for complaint against the Jews is that of not working with their hands but of enriching themselves by "excessive usury." In the fifteenth century the Strasbourg preacher Geyler asks: "Are the Jews above the Christians? Why will they not work with their hands?... practising usury is not working. It is exploiting others whilst remaining idle."[835] Such quotations as these might be multiplied _ad infinitum_.

To attribute the persecution of the Jews to Christianity is therefore ludicrous. That in a less enlightened age the Church should have adopted rigorous measures--although no more rigorous than their own laws demanded--against those Jews who practised magic and witchcraft must appear deplorable to the modern mind, but so must many other phases of mediæval life. Why then hark back perpetually to the past? If the Jews were persecuted in a less enlightened age, so were many other sections of the community. Catholics were persecuted, Protestants were persecuted, men were placed in the stocks for minor offences, scolding women were ducked in the village pond. But if all these cruelties of the dark ages are to be remembered and perpetuated on the plan of a tribal blood-feud, what peace can there be for the world? The disastrous results of this tendency were seen in the Irish Intellectuals, nourished from infancy on the story of Ireland's wrongs, who, instead of sanely facing present problems, unhinged their minds by brooding on historic grievances, thereby sealing their own doom and plunging their country into ruin. So, too, the enraged Feminists, harking back to injustices that had long ceased to exist, embittered their lives by proclaiming themselves the eternal enemies of Man. Emerson, the prophet of sanity, declared: "The only ballast I know is a respect to the present hour." It is for lack of this ballast that the Jews have become victims of a fanaticism in which Christians from a mistaken idea of kindness have frequently encouraged them. In reality nothing is more cruel than to encourage in the minds of a nervous race the idea of persecution; true kindness to the Jews would consist in urging them to throw off memories of past martyrdom and to enter healthfully into the enjoyment of their present blessings, which are the direct outcome of Christian civilization.

Let us consider what Christianity has in reality done for the Jews. If so much is to be said about the persecutions they have endured, what of the extraordinary indulgence shown them as the result of Christian respect for the Bible? For hundreds of years Christian school children have been brought up on Old Testament history and Christian congregations have listened sympathetically to the story of Israel's sufferings and hopes of final restoration. All the support lent to Zionism arose from this tradition. Christianity, then, so reviled by the Jews, has been their greatest protection. If Christianity goes, the whole theory that the Jews were once the Chosen People goes with it as far as Gentiles are concerned, and the Jewish race, divested of its halo of divine favour, will have to be judged on its own merits.

In our own country, the Chosen People theory has in fact been carried to the point of superstition--a superstition immensely advantageous to the Jews--which consists in interpreting the passage of Scripture containing the promise made to Abraham, "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curseth thee," as meaning that favour shown to the Jews--who form merely a fraction of the seed of Abraham--brings with it peculiar blessings. In reality it would be easier to show by history that countries and rulers who have protected the Jews have frequently met with disaster. France banished the Jews in 1394 and again in 1615, and did not readmit them in large numbers till 1715-19, so that they were absent throughout the most glorious period in French history--the _Grand Siècle_ of Louis XIV--whilst their return coincided with the Regency, from which moment the monarchy of France may be said to have declined. England likewise banished the Jews in 1290, and it was during the three and a half centuries they remained in exile that she was known as "Merrie England." The fact that their return in force in 1664 was followed the next year by the Great Plague and the year after by the Great Fire of London would not appear to indicate that the Jews necessarily bring good fortune to the land that protects them. The truth is, of course, that kindness to any portion of the human race brings its own reward in the form of moral improvement in the individual or nation that performs it, but no more benefit attaches to philanthropy when exercised towards the Jew than towards the Chinaman.

I would urge, then, that the Jewish problem should be approached neither in the spirit of superstitious pro-Semitism nor in the bitter spirit of "anti-Semitism," but with a sanity worthy of an enlightened age. To quote again the words of Bernard Lazare, let us enquire what part "the Jew, considering his spirit, his character, the nature of his philosophy and his religion," may now be taking "in revolutionary processes and movements." Is there, then, any evidence that there exists amongst Jewry to-day an organized conspiracy having for its objects world-domination and the destruction of Christianity such as the famous _Protocols of the Elders of Zion_ suggest?[836]

The theory of a Jewish world-conspiracy does not, of course, rest on the evidence of Protocols. To judge by the pæans of joy that rang through the press after the publication of the _Times_ articles, one would imagine that with the so-called "refutation" of this one document the whole case against the Jews had collapsed and that the "anti-Semites" must be for ever silenced. But the arguments of the Jews and their friends go further than this; not only do they claim that there is no Jewish conspiracy, but no world-plot of any kind. This contention they had indeed maintained from the beginning, and Mr. Lucien Wolf, in his earliest "refutation" of the Protocols, derided the exponents of the secret-society danger as vehemently as he derided the perfidious author of the Jewish Peril. It will in fact always be noticed that references to the Illuminati meet with almost as much resentment from the Jewish press as allusions of a directly "anti-Semitic" character. Barruel, who refused to incriminate the Jews, and de Malet, who never referred to them at all, are denounced by Mr. Lucien Wolf no less as scaremongers than Gougenot des Mousseaux or Chabauty. To suggest that any Hidden Hand has ever been at work in the world is to raise immediately a storm of Jewish protest.

Yet intelligent Jews must be well aware that, whether secret societies have contributed as much to past revolutions as these writers believed, their existence and their very real influence is not a matter of surmise but of historical fact. No one ever warned the British public more distinctly of the danger they presented or of the role the Jews were playing in them than Disraeli, whose famous words have been quoted so frequently in this connexion: "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." What is this but a clear recognition of the Hidden Hand? Why, then, is Disraeli not included with Barruel, Robison, de Malet, and Des Mousseaux in Mr. Wolf's list of scaremongers? Is it because Disraeli pointed the moral that, Jews being so dangerous, they should be employed?

* * * * *

If, then, leading Jews persist in villifying everyone who reiterates the warnings uttered by so eminent a member of their race, it is inevitable that they should come to be suspected of having some interest in suppressing further revelations.

Setting all such evidence as the Protocols completely aside, let us examine the reasons for believing in the exisence of a Jewish world-conspiracy. Now, we know for certain that the five powers before referred to--Grand Orient Masonry, Theosophy, Pan-Germanism, International Finance, and Social Revolution--have a very real existence and exercise a very definite influence on the affairs of the world. Here we are not dealing with hypothesis but with facts based on documentary evidence. We know in each case the names of many of the leaders, their methods of organization, their centres of direction, and the aims they are pursuing. But with regard to the Jewish power we cannot proceed with the same certainty. We cannot cite the names of the leaders or the centres of direction, we cannot produce documentary evidence as to their methods of organization or their final aims. The very existence of such a power, in the sense of a united and organized body of Jews working for the destruction of Christianity and the existing social system, is still a matter of speculation and not of known fact. Investigations into the activities of such groups as the B'nai B'rith, Poale Zion, the Jewish Bund, and the Weltverband (or Jewish International Union of Socialists), might however throw much light on this question. The custom of printing their pidgin German, known as Yiddish, in Hebrew characters provides the Jews with a more or less secret code by means of which their ideas and aspirations are concealed from the great mass of the Gentiles.

Whether then the Jewish power is unified or not, Jews are to be found co-operating with, if not directing, all the five powers of which the existence is known. Thus Jews have long played a leading part in Grand Orient Masonry[837] and predominate in the upper degrees. As we have already seen, Freemasonry is always said to be subversive in Roman Catholic countries. It will also be noticed that in countries where Freemasonry is subversive, Jews are usually less conspicuous in the revolutionary movement than in countries where Freemasonry is either non-existent or constitutional. Thus in France the masonic peril is much more generally recognized than the Jewish peril; in Italy the Freemasons have been banned by Mussolini, but the Jews are not regarded by him as a particular danger; in Portugal it was the Freemasons rather than the Jews who made the recent revolutions. In Hungary, however, the revolutionaries were principally both Jews and Freemasons. On the other hand, in England, Germany, and America, where Freemasonry is not subversive, the Jewish question is more apparent. All this would suggest that either Freemasonry is the cover under which the Jews, like the Illuminati, prefer to work, so that where the cover is not available they are obliged to come out more into the open, or that Grand Orient Masonry is the directing power which employs Jews as agents in those countries where it cannot work on its own account.

The preponderance of Jews in the ranks of "Aurora" has already been indicated, as also the influence of the Jewish Cabala in the teaching of Theosophy and Rosicrucianism. But it is important that the latter point should be further emphasized in connexion with the craze for occultism that is spreading through society. Ragon has said: "The Cabala is the key of all occult sciences"; therefore in this field of experiment the Gentile must always be at a disadvantage with the Jew. Indeed Mr. Waite, who certainly cannot be suspected of "anti-Semitism," goes so far as to suggest that the gift of ceremonial magic was "the answer of Jewry to Christendom as a counter-blast" to "centuries of persecution."[838] It would be well if every Gentile who has been tempted to dabble in occultism were to realize this source of inspiration.

The rôle of Jews in social revolution and particularly in Bolshevism hardly needs comment. Yet since the Jewish press has chosen to deny this last and very obvious fact and still persists in setting down to prejudice or "anti-Semitism" a mere statement of facts, it may be well to quote here a few official statements on the subject which admit of no denial.

First of all, it must be remembered that the founder and patron saint of Bolshevism was the Jew Karl Marx, and that it was the Anarchist Bakunin, not the Duke of Northumberland, who described him and his following in the Internationale as "the German-Jew Company" and the "red bureaucracy." It was therefore not surprising that when the "red bureaucracy," avowedly founded on the doctrines of Marx, came to be set up in Russia, it should have been largely led by Jews. This is what the official British White Paper has to say on the matter:

_Extract from Report from the Netherlands Minister at Petrograd on the 6th of September_, 1918, _forwarded by Sir M. Findlay, at Christiania, to Mr. Balfour_:

I consider that the immediate suppression of Bolshevism is the greatest issue now before the world, not even excluding the war which is still raging, and unless, as above stated, Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form or another over Europe and the whole world, as it is organized and worked by Jews who have no nationality, and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things.*[839]

Mr. Alston to Lord Curzon, quoting statement from British Consul at Ekaterinburg, January 23, 1919:

The Bolsheviks can no longer be described as a political party holding extreme communistic views. They form a relatively small privileged class which is able to terrorize the rest of the population because it has a monopoly both of arms and of food supplies. This class consists chiefly of workmen and soldiers, and includes a large non-Russian element, such as Letts and Esthonians and Jews; the latter are specially numerous in higher posts.

Lord Kilmarnock to Lord Curzon, quoting information given by Frenchman from Petrograd, February 3, 1919:

The Bolsheviks comprised chiefly Jews and Germans, who were exceedingly active and enterprising. The Russians were largely anti-Bolshevik, but were for the most part dreamers, incapable of any sustained action, who now, more than ever before, were unable to throw off the yoke of their oppressors.*[839]

Mr. Alston to Lord Curzon, forwarding Report from Consul at Ekaterinburg of February 6, 1919:

From examination of several labourer and peasant witnesses, I have evidence to the effect that very smallest percentage of this district were pro-Bolshevik, majority of labourers sympathizing with summoning of Constituent Assembly. Witnesses further stated that Bolshevik leaders did not represent Russian working classes, most of them being Jews.

The Rev. B.S. Lombard to Lord Curzon, March 23, 1919:

I have been for ten years in Russia, and have been in Petrograd through the whole of the revolution.... [I] had ample opportunity of studying Bolshevik methods. It originated in German propaganda, and was, and is being, carried out by international Jews. The Germans initiated disturbances in order to reduce Russia to chaos. They printed masses of paper money to finance their schemes, the notes, of which I possess specimens, can be easily recognized by a special mark.

As one of the results, the writer adds:

All business became paralysed, shops were closed, Jews became possessors of most of the business houses, and horrible scenes of starvation became common in the country districts.

In Hungary (where, as has been said, Socialism had been propagated by Jews in the masonic lodges[840]) the outbreak of Bolshevism was conducted under the auspices of the same race. To quote again an official document on this question, the Report on Revolutionary Activities issued by a Committee of the New York Legislature, headed by Senator Lusk[841]:

There was no organized opposition to Bela Kun. Like Lenin, he surrounded himself with commissars, having absolute authority. Of the thirty-two principal commissars, twenty-five were Jews, which was about the same proportion as in Russia. The most prominent of these formed a directorate of five: Bela Kun, Bela Varga, Joseph Pogany, Sigmund Kunfi, and one other. Other leaders were Alpari and Samuely, who had charge of the Red Terror, and carried out the torturing and executing of the bourgeoisie, especially the groups held as hostages, the so-called counter-revolutionists and peasants.[842]

The same Report publishes a list of seventy-six men prosecuted by the Committee on the charge of criminal anarchy in America at the beginning of 1920, of which the overwhelming majority are seen by their names to be Jewish.[843]

These names speak for themselves and are published without comment on the obvious nationality of the majority of the persons concerned. So far indeed does the Lusk Committee appear to have been removed from "anti-Semitism," that nowhere in its vast Report, running to 2008 pages, is attention drawn to the preponderance of Jews concerned in the revolutionary movement, except in the one passage on Hungary quoted above. The Lusk Report must therefore be regarded as an absolutely impartial statement of facts.

In view of these official data, how is it possible for the Jewish press to pretend that a connexion between Jews and Bolshevism is a malicious invention of the "anti-Semites"? That all Jews are not Bolsheviks and that all Bolsheviks are not Jews is of course obvious; but that Jews are playing a preponderating part in Bolshevism it is absurd to deny.

An attempt has been made to show that Jews have suffered as much as the rest of the population in Russia under Bolshevism and that the Jewish religion has met with the same hostility as the Christian faith. Doubtless many Jews have suffered in Russia, since human violence, once allowed to go unchecked, is liable to express itself in various unexpected ways, and the resentment of the Russian "proletariat" towards the Jews was bound to break out under Lenin as under the Tzar. Again, a campaign against Christianity inevitably led in Russia, as in France, to a campaign against all forms of religion, and the Jewish Bolsheviks, being atheists themselves, were doubtless as ready as Lambert of the French Revolution to turn against the believers in the faith they had abandoned.

Yet that the Jewish religion suffered to the same extent as Christianity, or that any organized campaign was conducted against it by the Government, is effectually disproved by the lamentations of professing Jews on the death of Lenin.[844] Indeed, as is generally recognized, the fall of the Soviet Government must mean the downfall of the Jews from the position of privilege they now occupy.

That in our own country Jews are playing a part in the background of Bolshevism is again evident. The _Patriot_ recently published a series of articles giving inside information on the organization of the revolutionary movement in Great Britain, where it was stated the whole plot was directed by a group of twelve men. This group in turn was controlled by three of its members. These three men, as the key revealed, were all Jews, so also was "the fiend in human form whose psychological perversion produced this plot,"[845] and who was one of a group in America consisting of four Jews and a Jewess which controlled an outer revolutionary group of eighteen.[846] The Irish Republican Brotherhood also maintained close relations with a ring of revolutionary Jews in America. Incidentally, it is curious to notice that the language employed in some of the correspondence that has passed between members of an inner group bears a strong resemblance to that of Weishaupt and his fellow-Illuminati.

Jewish influence in the less extreme forms of Socialism in this country is no less apparent. If the Labour Party is solidly pro-German, it is also solidly pro-Jewish. Whilst loudly proclaiming pacifism and pressing for the reduction of armaments, it has never uttered a word of protest against the employment of British troops to defend Jewish interests against the Arabs in Palestine. The blessed word Mesopotamia may be freely mentioned in connexion with the withdrawal of troops from military adventures, but never the word Palestine. Again, the free admission of aliens and particularly of Jews into this country has always been one of the principal planks in the Labour platform. Even the Jewish capitalist meets with indulgence at the hands of our Socialist Intellectuals, who whilst inveighing against British owners of property, never include Jewish millionaires in their diatribes.

This may perhaps throw some light on the question frequently propounded: How can one believe that Jews advocate Socialism since they stand to lose everything by it? The fact remains that many Jews do advocate it. After the recent accession of the Labour Party to office the _Jewish World_ observed:

The result of the General Election in England is regarded as very gratifying by the Hebrew and Yiddish press. The Hebrew journals in Palestine, as well as the Hebrew and Yiddish organs in Europe and America, express satisfaction at the return to Parliament of men who have repeatedly assured the public of their intention to adhere to the Balfour declaration.[847]

A further reason is advanced by the _Jewish Courier_ for rejoicing at the downfall of the Conservative Government, namely, that "the election results have wiped out anti-Semitic remnants in England," for "the Conservative Government does include several members who are far from favourably disposed towards Jews."[848] The indulgence shown to the Jews and the honours piled on them by Conservative statesmen therefore availed nothing to the Conservative cause, and the welfare of the whole country was subordinated to the interests of the Jews alone.

It is difficult at first to understand how the programme of the "Labour" Party, even when combined with ardent pro-Semitism, could however be in accord with the interests of the Jews, who have never displayed any hostility towards the Capitalist system which Socialism sets out to destroy. Indeed, we find the same Jewish paper which rejoiced at the advent of the present Government to office offering birthday congratulations to the richest Jew in this country, whose wealth, it goes on to observe with some complacency, "amounts to no less than £12,000,000 sterling, and is constantly increasing, apart from the interest that it brings, by the huge profits of the concerns in which he is interested."[849]

It would seem, then, that in the eyes of Jewry all capitalists are not to be regarded as monsters who should be mercilessly expropriated.

But in considering the war on Capitalism it is essential to bear in mind that capitalists are of two kinds: national industrial capitalists--largely Gentiles and usually men of brains and energy who have built up flourishing businesses--and international loan-mongering capitalists, principally, though not exclusively, Jews, who live by speculation. Whilst to the former, social unrest may prove fatal, to the latter any disturbances may provide opportunities for profit. As M. Georges Batault has well expressed it:

From the strictly financial point of view, the most disastrous events of history, wars or revolutions, never represent catastrophes; the manipulators of money and the wary business men can make profit out of everything, provided they know beforehand and are well-informed.... It is certain that the Jews dispersed over all the surface of the earth ... are particularly favourably situated in this respect.[850]

It is significant to notice that the capitalists most attacked by the Socialists and Pacifists are not those who make profit out of wars and revolutions, but those who contribute to the prosperity of the country and provide work for millions of people. Here, then, the Jews and the Socialists seem to find a point of agreement. It is evident, at any rate, that many rich Jews consider that they have nothing to fear from the threatened Capital Levy and other features of expropriation. Are we not irresistibly reminded of the passage in the Protocols--where incidentally the Capital Levy is specifically mentioned--"Ours they will not touch, because the moment of attack will be known to us and we shall take measures to protect our own"?

But let us consider further how the Socialist plan for "the nationalization of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange" might be reconciled even with the interests of Jewish Industrial Capitalists. The more we examine this magic formula which is to transform the world into a Paradise for the workers, the more we shall see that it approximates to the system of Super Capitalism, of which, as Werner Sombart has shown, the Jews were the principal inaugurators. Socialists are fond of explaining that "Capitalism" began with the introduction of steam; in reality, of course, Capitalism, in the sense of wealth accumulated in private hands, has always existed since the first savage made his store of winter food. What Socialists really mean by Capitalism is the modern system of Industrialism, which tends to concentrate all the means of production and distribution in the hands of individuals or groups, who, if they happen to be unscrupulous, are able by systematic sweating of the worker and bleeding of the consumer to conduct operations on so large a scale as to crush all competition by the home worker or the small tradesman.

Obviously, however, with the growing demand of the workers for better conditions of life and the increasing support lent to them by enlightened public opinion this possibility cannot continue indefinitely, and unless a violent convulsion takes place the time will come when great industrial magnates will have to content themselves with moderate profits on their outlay. Thus although at first sight it might appear that the Super-Capitalist must desire to maintain the existing order of things, if he is far-seeing he must realize that profiteering under present conditions must soon cease.

It is therefore conceivable that even the Jewish Industrial Capitalist may see in the nationalization of industry a preferable alternative to the limitation of profits under private enterprise. The same financial acumen and skill in management which has enabled him to control rings and trusts in the past would ensure him a place at the head of nationalized industries, which in effect would be nothing but gigantic trusts nominally under State control but really, like all State enterprises, in the hands of a few men. Under Socialism the position of these trusts would be rendered impregnable. For whilst under the present system any individual or group may set out to break a trust, no such competition would be possible in a State where private enterprise had been made illegal. The men in control of nationalized industries would therefore be able to exercise absolute authority both over the worker and the consumer. Further, if the worker can be persuaded to accept the ultimate scheme of Communism, which is compulsory labour in return for no monetary remuneration, but merely a daily ration of food and the other necessaries of life whenever State officials decide that he requires them, the directors of Labour, like the overseers in a slave plantation, will be able, as in Russia, to impose any conditions they please.

The Jews may well hope to occupy these posts, not only because of their aptitude for organization on so large a scale, but because their international relations would facilitate the sale or barter of goods between countries. The cohesion which exists amongst them would speedily lead to the monopolization of all the higher posts by members of their race.

It is idle to dismiss such a possibility as a chimera. This is what happened in Russia and is happening in Germany to-day. Here, then, we may find perhaps the inner meaning of a remark attributed to a prominent member of the Labour Party, that under Socialism a certain well-known Jewish capitalist might well be worth £10,000 a year. Lenin expressed much the same idea when he said that the Russian Soviet Republic might require a thousand first-class specialists "to direct the work of the people," and that "these greatest 'stars' must be paid 25,000 roubles each," or even four times that sum, supposing it were necessary to employ foreign specialists for the purpose.[851]

But the Jewish capitalists doubtless see further that in England, as in Russia, this condition of things would be merely a temporary phase, and that the institution of Socialism by dispossessing the present Gentile owners of wealth and property would pave the way for a Jewish and German plutocracy. In Russia wealth has not been altogether destroyed; it has simply changed hands, and a class of new rich has sprung up which meets with no hostility from the professed advocates of equality. Those Jews who see in the Christian Intelligentsia the main obstacle to their dream of world-power, therefore naturally find in the promoters of class-warfare their most valuable allies. For the Christian Intelligentsia is the sole bare to the enslavement of the proletariat; most of the movements to redress the wrongs of the workers, from Lord Shaftesbury's onwards, have arisen not amongst the workers themselves, but amongst the upper or middle classes[852]; once these were swept away an iron bureaucracy would have the workers at their mercy. I do not say this is the plan, but I do say that such a hypothesis provides a reason for the otherwise unaccountable indulgence displayed by Socialists everywhere towards wealthy Jews and at the same time for the huge funds the Socialists appear to have at their disposal.

If big financiers are not at their back, I repeat: where does all the money come from? It seems unlikely that it can be derived from the British owners of wealth and property whom the Socialists are openly out to dispossess; the only body of financiers which can therefore be suspected of contributing towards this end is the body known as "International Finance," which is mainly, though not exclusively, Jewish.

The influence of the Jews in all the five great powers at work in the world--Grand Orient Masonry, Theosophy, Pan-Germanism, International Finance, and Social Revolution--is not a matter of surmise but of fact. Let us now examine what part they are playing in the minor subversive movements enumerated in an earlier chapter.

Freud, the inventor of the most dangerous form of Psycho-Analysis, is a Jew. In this connexion the eminent American neuro-psychiatrist before quoted writes:

Not only the Freud theory of psycho-analysis but a considerable quantity of pseudo-scientific propaganda of that type has for years been emanating from a group of German Jews who live and have their headquarters in Vienna. From its inception, psycho-analysis has been in Jewish hands. There are not half a dozen physicians in the whole world, recognized as authorities in this field, whose names are identified with this movement who are not Jews. This may have been an accident, but nevertheless it is a fact.[853]

I have already referred in an earlier chapter to the question of degenerate art defined in a circular to the _New York Herald_ as "the deification of ugliness."[854] The originators of this cult are here described as a group of Satan worshippers in Paris, and the dealers by whom the movement was propagated as "Germans," but we note amongst the lenders to the exhibition at which these "works of art" were displayed several Jewish names. Of one well-known Jewish artist a critic has written:

Were these works the product of a man who had imperfect control over his material, who, in stumbling towards the light, dwelt inevitably upon much darkness, who sought for beauty and found ugliness, who looked for purity and found filth--even then one might be silent and hope for better things to come. But here, apparently, unless my whole reading is ludicrously wrong, he delights in deformity and glories in degradation.... He brings to the world of art a new gospel, a black gospel, a gospel in which everything is to be inverted and distorted. Whatsoever things are hideous, whatsoever things are of evil report, whatsoever things are sordid: if there be any unhealthiness or any degradation: think on these things.

What better résumé could be given of that tendency to perversion denounced by the prophet Isaiah in the words: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness"? An organ of the Jewish press, with that sense of solidarity which always rallies Jews to the defence of their compatriots however culpable, immediately detects in the critic's expression of opinion the insidious work of "anti-Semitism." A more enlightened Jew, Mr. Frank L. Emanuel, however, having come to the support of the Gentile critic, the Jewish journal is obliged to admit the justice of his contention that "it is lamentable to think of the undue proportion of young Jews" who "have joined the Revolutionary or sham 'Modern Art' movement in this country."

The same influence will be noticed in the cinema world, where, as has already been pointed out, history is systematically falsified in the interests of class hatred, and everything that can tend, whilst keeping within the present law, to undermine patriotism or morality is pressed upon the public. And the cinema trade is almost entirely in the hands of the Jews.

In the drug traffic Jews are playing a prominent part both here and in America. An eminent New York doctor writes to me as follows:

Members of the Federal narcotic squad attached to the Treasury Department and having the function of enforcing the provisions of the Harrison Act have long been convinced that there is a direct relationship between Radicalism and narcotism. From seven to ten years ago this was thought to be a manifestation of pan-German propaganda. Activity was and still is greater on the part of the distributors and pedlars than is to be accounted for by the large profits, according to their story. Curiously enough, the traffic largely stopped for several weeks following the signing of the Armistice.

In one instance, seven regularly licensed physicians of the "East Side," all Jews, were arrested in succession during the summer of 1920 for illegitimate use of narcotic prescriptions, and every office raided had large quantities of Radical literature. Such associations are not uncommon.

As to the distribution, a recent investigation by _Hearst's Magazine_ definitely revealed the fact that the illegitimate distributors were almost invariably of the Jewish race, and that the pedlars were exclusively Jewish and Italian.

Enough, then, has been said to show that, whether as agents or as principals, Jews are playing a part in all subversive movements. A Christian Jew, no renegade to his race but deeply concerned for their future development, said recently to the present writer: "The growing materialism amongst Jews has made them the most destructive force in the world. The only hope for them is to accept Christianity. At present they are the greatest danger that Christian civilization has to face."

The recognition of all these facts does not of course imply the belief that all Jews are destructive. Undoubtedly there are good and loyal Jews--particularly in France, where the Sephardim predominate--who have absolutely identified themselves with the country of their adoption, and are sincerely opposed to Bolshevism. But these isolated individuals carry little weight compared to the massed forces of subversive Jewry. The same thing was observed in America, where a report privately communicated to the present writer in 1923 stated:

It appears not without significance that Radical literature is never anti-Semitic, but, on the contrary, manifestoes issued by the Executive Committee of the Communist Party are often emphatically pro-Jewish. So far as I know, there is not one exclusively Jewish organization in the United States which is openly and consistently fighting Radicalism. Conservative Judaism loyal to the United States and its institutions as conceived by its founders is unorganized and inarticulate.

When, therefore, the Jewish press protests at the injustice of associating Jews with Bolshevism it may be legitimately answered: What has Jewry done collectively to disassociate itself from Bolshevism?[855] What official protests has the Jewish press uttered against any subversive movement except when Jewish interests were threatened?[856] Has it not, on the contrary, denounced all patriotic efforts to oppose the forces of destruction whenever such efforts necessitated the exposure of the corrupt elements in Jewry?

But these tactics have not been confined to the Jewish press alone. The general press of this country, over which the Jews exercise an increasing control, has followed the same policy. This process of penetration began long ago on the Continent. As early as 1846 an English missionary to the Jews in Berlin wrote:

Independently of the fifteen exclusively Jewish journals of Germany, four of which have made their appearance since the beginning of the present year, the daily political press of Europe is very much under the dominion of the Jews; as literary contributors, they influence almost every leading Continental newspaper, and as controversy seems to be their native air, and they bring into the field mental energies of no ordinary stamp, they find no lack of employment, and if any literary opponent ventures to endeavour to arrest the progress of Judaism to political power, he finds himself held up to public notice, and exposed to attack after attack in most of the leading journals of Europe. Such ... was the lot of a Roman Catholic priest of Prague, who lately wrote a pamphlet entitled _Guter Rath für Zeit der Noth_, directed against the advancing power of Judaism. And such is my conviction of the extent of the participation the Jews take in the everyday literature of Germany, that I never pass by a crowded reading-room, but what I think I see standing behind the scenes a Jew, causing new ideas to rise and stir, and develop themselves in the unsuspecting mind of the Gentile.[857]

Do we not see the same methods being pursued with still greater vigour to-day? It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is hardly a periodical in this country with the exception of _The Patriot_ that dares to speak out freely on questions in which the interests of Jews are involved.

The fact is that the whole educational as well as the whole political and social world is permeated with Jewish influence. Every man in public life, every modern politician, to whatever party he belongs, seems to find it _de rigueur_ to have his confidential Jewish adviser at his elbow, just as in the Middle Ages a prince had his Jewish doctor always at hand to mix his potions and ensure him long life. This appears to be owing not only to the utility of the Jew in financing projects, but to the almost universal belief in the superior intelligence of the Jewish race which the Jew has succeeded in implanting in the Gentile mind.

But the time has come to ask: Is the Jew really the super-man we have been taught to consider him? On examination we shall find that in the present as in the past his talents are displayed principally along two lines--financial and occult. Usurers in the Middle Ages, financiers to-day, the Jews have always excelled in the making and manipulating of wealth. And just as at the former period they were the great masters of magic, so at the present time they are the masters of the almost magical art of gaining control over the mind both of the individual and of the public.

Yet in the realms of literature, philosophy, painting, sculpture, politics, and even science, Jews will be found frequently occupying the second or third ranks, and only very seldom the first. Heine may be cited as a poet of the first order, Spinoza as a philosopher, Disraeli as a statesman, but it would be difficult to prolong the list. On the stage and in music alone can the Jews be said to have proved absolutely the equals of their Gentile competitors. The fact is that the Jew is not usually a man of vast conceptions, nor is he endowed with great originality of mind; his skill consists rather in elaborating or in adapting other men's ideas and rendering them more effectual. Thus the most important inventions of modern times have not been made by Jews, but have been frequently improved by them. Neither James Watt, Stephenson, Marconi, Edison, Pasteur, nor Madame Curie were of the Jewish race, and the same might be said of nearly all the greatest men who have lived since the dawn of our civilization. Napoleon was not a Jew, nor was Shakespeare, nor Bacon, nor Sir Isaac Newton, nor Michael Angelo, nor Leonardo da Vinci, nor Galileo, nor Dante, nor Descartes, nor Molière, nor Emerson, nor Abraham Lincoln, nor Goethe, nor Kant, nor even Machiavelli. Thrown on their own resources, what civilization were the Jews able to create? Whilst Egypt, Greece, and Rome have left immortal monuments, what monuments has Palestine bequeathed to the world?[858]

The Jews, then, provide a high average of cleverness, but have they ever during the last two thousand years produced one mighty genius? Moreover, against this high average of intelligence must be set an equally high average of mental derangement. On this point we have the evidence of the _Jewish Encyclopædia_:

The Jews are more subject to diseases of the nervous system than the other races and peoples among which they dwell. Hysteria and neurasthenia appear to be most frequent. Some physicians of large experience among Jews have even gone so far as to state that most of them are neurasthenic and hysterical. Tobler claims that all the Jewish women in Palestine are hysterical; and Raymond says that in Warsaw, Poland, hysteria is very frequently met with among both Jewish men and Jewish women. The Jewish population of that city alone is almost exclusively the inexhaustible source for the supply of hysterical males for the clinics of the whole Continent (_L'Etude des Maladies du Système Nerveux en Russie_). As regards Austria and Germany, the same neurotic taint of the Jews has been emphasized by Krafft, Ebbing, etc.... In New York it has been shown by Collins that among 333 cases of neurasthenia which came under his observation, more than 40 per cent, were of Jewish extraction, etc.[859]

The same American neuro-psychiatrist already quoted attributes the predominance of Jews in the revolutionary movement in America largely to this cause:

Anarchists have been developed largely from the criminal classes, and a belief in anarchy, _per se_, is a psychopathic manifestation. A student of anarchy, therefore, would not only be obliged to cover the field of criminology, but its more significant and important background, psycho-pathology. Some anarchists are actually insane, while others show marked psychological deficiencies. Under our laws as they are now framed, they cannot be restrained unless they commit acts of violence.

As it is, our asylums are filled with this class, and that introduces another phase of the matter. Our asylum insane are largely recruited from the Jewish race, at least recruited in tremendous disproportion to their number in the population. The fact that the revolutionary movement is so largely made up of Jewish elements furnishes an interesting confirmation of what I have said.

The _Jewish World_, recently commenting on the "generally admitted" fact that "the percentage of mental disorders among Jews is much greater than among non-Jews," asks: "Is the cause inherent, that is to say, is there a racial disposition towards degeneracy, or is it the result of the external conditions and causes?" The writer goes on to refer to an article in the _Zukunft_ which supports the view that the terrible experiences of the Jews in the Middle Ages have affected their nervous system, and therefore that the cause of mental derangement amongst them "is not due to racial disposition, is not an ethnic principle, but is the result of the tragic lot of the Jewish people."[860] It might perhaps be traced more surely to the habit of brooding on that tragic lot. At any rate, it is curious to notice that the two symptoms recognized in the first stages of "general paralysis of the insane," the mania that one is the object of persecution and "exalted ideas" (known in France as the _folie des grandeurs_), are the two obsessions that the Talmud and the Cabala with their dreams of world-domination under an avenging Messiah have inculcated in the mind of the Jew.

But whatever are the causes of this neurosis, it is surely undesirable that a race which exhibits it should be allowed to control the destinies of the British Empire or indeed of any country. If "all the Jewish women in Palestine are hysterical," presumably many of their menkind suffer from the same disability, which certainly does not promise well for the luckless Arab who is to live beneath their sway. How much of the trouble that has occurred already in Palestine may be attributed to this cause it is impossible to know. The increasing number of Jews in positions of authority in England presents, however, a far greater subject for alarm. Jews and Arabs are at any rate both Semites and may be expected to have certain ideas in common, but to place a highly civilized Aryan race under Semitic control is another matter. The time has come for every Briton to ask himself whether he seriously desires to see the traditions of his country, those great traditions of honour, integrity, and justice which have made the name of England great, replaced by Oriental standards. I do not say that there are no honourable and upright Jews, but I do maintain that the spirit of fair play which is the essence of the British character is not the characteristic of the Jewish race in general. The complete absence of this spirit shown in the attempts of agitators to suppress free speech during elections cannot be attributed to English working-men--whose "sporting" instinct is highly developed--and testifies to the alien character of the so-called Labour movement. If England loses the spirit of fair play, she will have lost her most priceless national heritage.

Conservatism, which has always stood for these great traditions, allows itself to be hypnotized by the memory of Disraeli and accepts his dictum that "the natural tendency of the Jews is to Conservatism"--hence the advisability of placing Jews in control of its interests. The late Mr. Hyndman saw further when he warned us that "those who are accustomed to look upon all Jews as essentially practical and conservative, as certain, too, to enlist on the side of the prevailing social system, will be obliged to reconsider their conclusions."[861] The causes of the recent _débâcle_ of the Conservative Government are still obscure, but the fact remains that it was precisely at a moment when Conservative organization had passed largely into Jewish hands that Conservatism met with the most astounding disaster in the whole of its history. If the manner in which Conservative propaganda was conducted at this moment was an example of Jewish efficiency, it might be well to consider whether on a future occasion the task should not be confided into the hands of simple Britons.

_The only effectual way of combating Socialism is to show up the alien influences behind it_. As long as the working man believes it to be the outcome of a genuine British labour movement, he will turn a deaf ear to all warnings and anti-Socialist propaganda will merely serve to drive more recruits into the Socialist camp. But let him once suspect that he is being made the tool of foreign intrigue, and all his national feeling will assert itself. We have only to ask him whether he wants his work taken from him by the import of alien goods, his housing accommodation appropriated by alien immigrants, finally to make him understand who are the people behind the scenes advocating a policy so disastrous to his true interests, in order to gain his support. The Secret Service has overwhelming evidence on this last point, which under a Conservative Government might have been made public, but unseen influences in high places have ordained its suppression. The slogan "Britain for the Britons," that would form the strongest counterblast to the false slogans of Socialism, has been barred from Conservative platforms and the very word "alien" avoided lest it should offend Jewish susceptibilities. Thus out of deference to the Jews, Conservatism allows its most powerful weapon to rust in its armoury.

In reality these tactics avail nothing to the Conservative cause. The great weight of Jewry will never be thrown into the scale of true Conservatism; only in so far as Conservatism abandons its patriotic traditions and compromises with the forces of Internationalism will it win any considerable Jewish support. We have but to follow the commitments on current politics in the Jewish press in order to realize that the only standard by which the Jews judge of any political party is the measure in which it will confer exclusive advantages on their own race. The Jewish question, therefore, does not turn on whether the Jews shall be accorded everywhere equal rights with the rest of mankind, but whether they shall be placed above the law, whether they shall be allowed to occupy everywhere a privileged position.[862] Nothing less will satisfy them, and any attempt to oppose this claim will always be met by them with the cry of "persecution." Further, this position of privilege represents to a section of Jewry merely a stage on the road to world-domination. For if, as we have seen by documentary evidence, this plan has always existed in the past, is it likely that it has been abandoned at the very moment which seems most propitious for its realization? The trend of present events and the tone of the Jewish press certainly do not warrant any such conclusion.

To sum up, then, I do not think that the Jews can be proved to provide the sole cause of world-unrest. In order to establish this contention we should be obliged to show the Jews to have been the authors of every past social convulsion in the history of modern civilization, to discover their influence behind the heretical sects of Islam, as behind the Bavarian Illuminati and the Anarchists of Russia. In the absence of any such conclusive evidence we must therefore recognize the existence of other destructive forces at work in the world.

But this is not to underrate the importance of the Jewish peril. Although the existence of an inner circle of Masonic "Elders" remains problematical, Jewry in itself constitutes the most effectual Freemasonry in the world. What need of initiations, or oaths, or signs, or passwords amongst people who perfectly understand each other and are everywhere working for the same end? Far more potent than the sign of distress that summons Freemasons to each other's aid at moments of peril is the call of the blood that rallies the most divergent elements in Jewry to the defence of the Jewish cause.

The old complaint of the French merchants already quoted would thus appear to be justified, that "the Jews are particles of quicksilver, which at the least slant run together into a block." One must therefore not be deceived by the fact that they often appear disunited. There may be, and indeed is, very little unity amongst Jews, but there is immense solidarity. A Jew named Morel, referring to the persecution of the converted Rabbi Drach by the Jews, observes:

What can the wisest measures of the authorities of all countries do against _the vast and permanent conspiracy of a people_ which, like a network as vast as it is strong, stretched over the whole globe, brings its force to bear wherever an event occurs that interests the name of Israelite?[863]

It is this solidarity that constitutes the real Jewish Peril and at the same time provides the real cause of "anti-Semitism." If in a world where all patriotism, all national traditions, and all Christian virtues are being systematically destroyed by the doctrines of International Socialism one race alone, a race that since time immemorial has cherished the dream of world-power, is not only allowed but encouraged to consolidate itself, to maintain all its national traditions, and to fulfil all its national aspirations at the expense of other races, it is evident that Christian civilization must be eventually obliterated. The wave of anti-Jewish feeling that during the last few years has been passing over this country has nothing in common with the racial hatred that inspires the "anti-Semitism" of Germany; it is simply the answer to a pretension that liberty-loving Britons will not admit. Those of us who, sacrificing popularity and monetary gain, dare to speak out on this question have no hatred in our hearts, but only love for our country. We believe that not only our national security but our great national traditions are at stake, and that unless England awakens in time she will pass under alien domination and her influence as the stronghold of Christian civilization will be lost to the world.

CONCLUSION

We have now followed the course of associations working throughout nineteen centuries to undermine social and moral order and above all Christian civilization. We have also seen that although on the one hand the unholy spirit of destruction and on the other the natural spirit of revolt against oppression have always existed independently of any organization, it is to secret societies using and organizing these forces that the revolutionary movement has owed its success. Further, we have considered the possibility that behind both open and secret subversive societies there may exist a hidden centre of direction, and finally we have observed that at the present time many lines of investigation reveal a connexion between these groups and the Grand Orient, or rather with an invisible circle concealed behind that great masonic power. At the same time this circle is clearly not French in character since everywhere the activities of World Revolution are directed against France and England but seldom against Germany and never against the Jews. It would not be an exaggeration to say that no subversive movement in the world to-day is either pro-French, pro-British, or "anti-Semitic." We must conclude then that if one Power controls the rest it is either the Pan-German Power, the Jewish Power or what we can only call Illuminism.

This last hypothesis is one that deserves serious consideration. In the light of our present knowledge it does not appear impossible that if an inner circle of World Revolution exists it consists of a purely International group of men whose aim is that of Weishaupt--the destruction of the present system of society. That such an aim can be seriously entertained is shown by the fact that it is openly proclaimed by a whole school of writers and thinkers ranging from gentle Idealists to ferocious Anarchists who, whilst widely differing as to methods and the ultimate ends to be attained, are agreed on the common purpose expressed by Rabaud de Saint-Étienne in the words: "Everything, yes, everything must be destroyed, since everything must be re-made."

It is idle to say that so insane a project can present no danger to the world; the fact remains that an increasing number of people regard it with perfect equanimity. The phrase: "All civilizations have passed away; ours will doubtless pass away likewise," is continually to be heard on the lips of apparently sane men and women who, whether they advocate such an eventuality or not, seem prepared to accept it in a spirit of complete fatalism and to put up no resistance. The point they ignore is that when civilization existed only in isolated spots on the earth's surface it might pass away in one spot only to spring to life in another, but now that civilization is world-wide the dream of a return to nature and the joys of savagery conjured up by Rousseau and Weishaupt can never be realized. Yet if civilization in a material sense cannot be destroyed, it is none the less possible to take the soul out of it, to reduce it to a dead and heartless machine without human feelings or divine aspirations. The Bolsheviks continue to exist amidst telephones, electric light, and other amenities of modern life, but they have almost killed the soul of Russia. In this sense then civilization may pass away, not as the civilizations of the ancient world passed away, leaving only desert sands and crumbling ruins behind them, but vanishing imperceptibly from beneath the outward structure of our existing institutions. Here is the final goal of world revolution.

If, then, one inner circle exists, composed of Illuminati animated by a purely destructive purpose it is conceivable that they might find support in those Germans who desire to disintegrate the countries of the Allies with a view to future conquests, and in those Jews who hope to establish their empire on the ruins of Christian civilization--hence the superb organization and the immense financial resources at the disposal of the world revolutionaries. On the other hand it may be that the hidden centre of direction consists in a circle of Jews located in the background of the Grand Orient, or perhaps, like the early nineteenth-century Illuminati, located nowhere but working in accord and using both Pan-Germans and Gentile Illuminati as their tools.

On this point I think it would be dangerous at present to dogmatize. But that the problem is capable of elucidation I have no doubt whatever. If the Secret Services of the world had chosen to co-ordinate and make public the facts in their possession the whole plot might long since have been laid bare. A "Department for the Investigation of Subversive Movements" should have had a place in every ordered government. This might have been created by the recent Conservative Government in England, but the same mysterious influence that protected the enemy during the Great War has throughout prevented disclosures that would have enlightened the country on the real nature of the peril confronting it. In the present state of European politics the only course open to those who would save civilization is to act independently of governments, and form a counter-organization in each country with unofficial bureaux of information maintaining relations with each other, yet each retaining its national character.

As far as this country is concerned I am convinced that only a great national movement can save us from destruction--a movement in which men of all classes and above all of the working-class will take part. Fascismo triumphed in Italy, because it was not, as it has been absurdly represented, a reactionary movement, but because it was essentially democratic and progressive, because by appealing to the noblest instincts in human nature, to patriotism and self-sacrifice, it rallied all elements in a disorganized and disunited nation around the standard of a common cause.

One cannot bring about any great movement without first kindling a sacred fire in the hearts of men; one cannot move masses of people merely by appealing to self-interest; they must have a cause to fight for, a cause that is not entirely their own. Socialism, whilst enlisting a large proportion of its following by appealing to their baser instincts, has nevertheless, by its false ideals and promises, been able to kindle a fire in many generous hearts, and to persuade deluded enthusiasts that they are working for the welfare of humanity. The only way to combat Socialism is to create counter enthusiasm for a true ideal.

Yet even Mussolini found that a purely secular ideal was not enough, and that the spirit of religious fervour was necessary to defeat the spirit of materialism and destruction. For behind the concrete forces of revolution--whether Pan-German, Judaic, or Illuminist--beyond that invisible secret circle which perhaps directs them all, is there not yet another force, still more potent, that must be taken into account? In looking back over the centuries at the dark episodes that have marked the history of the human race from its earliest origins--strange and horrible cults, waves of witchcraft, blasphemies, and desecrations--how is it possible to ignore the existence of an Occult Power at work in the world? Individuals, sects, or races fired with the desire of world-domination, have provided the fighting forces of destruction, but behind them are the veritable powers of darkness in eternal conflict with the powers of light.

APPENDIX

I

JEWISH EVIDENCE ON THE TALMUD

The denunciation of the Talmud by the Jew Pfefferkorn in 1509 and the ex-Rabbi Drach in 1844 have been quoted in the course of this book. Graetz however, in his _History of the Jews_, quotes an earlier incident of this kind.[864] In the thirteenth century a converted Jew and former Talmudist Donin who, on his baptism, assumed the name of Nicholas, presented himself before the Pope, Gregory IX, "and brought charges against the Talmud, saying that it distorted the words of Holy Writ, and in the Agadic portions of it there were to be found disgraceful representations of God," that it contained many gross errors and absurdities, further that "it was filled with abuse against the founder of the Christian religion and the Virgin. Donin demonstrated that it was the Talmud which prevented the Jews from accepting Christianity, and that without it they would certainly have abandoned their state of unbelief." Again "he stated that the Talmudical writings taught it was a meritorious action to kill the best man among the Christians[865] ... that it was lawful to deceive a Christian without any scruple; that it was permitted to Jews to break a promise made on oath." These Graetz describes as lying charges.

The Jews were accordingly ordered by the Pope to hand over all their copies of the Talmud to the Dominicans and Franciscans for examination, and if their judgment should corroborate the charges of Nicholas Donin, they were to burn the volumes of the Talmud (June 9, 1239).

In France Graetz goes on to relate that "the priest-ridden and weak-minded Louis IX"--that is to say, Saint Louis--pursued the same course. "The Talmud was put on its trial. Four distinguished Rabbis of North France were commanded by the King to hold a public disputation with Nicholas, either to refute the imputations levelled against the Talmud, or to make confession of the abuse against Christianity and the blasphemies against God that it contained."

It is impossible to imagine a fairer decision, and the queen-mother, Blanche de Castille, was careful to assure the first witness summoned that if the lives of the Rabbis were in danger she would protect them and that he was only required to answer the questions that would be asked of him. Now, there would have been nothing simpler than for the Rabbis to admit honestly that these offensive passages existed, that they had been written perhaps in moments of passion in a less enlightened age, that they recognized the indelicacy of insulting the religion of the country in which they lived, and that therefore such passages should henceforth be deleted. But instead of adopting this straightforward course, which might have put an end for ever to attacks on the book they held sacred, the Rabbis proceeded to deny the existence of the "alleged blasphemous and immoral expressions" and to declare that "the odious facts related in the Talmud concerning a Jesus, the son of Pantheras, had no reference to Jesus of Nazareth, but to one of a similar name who had lived long before him." Graetz, who admits that this was an error and that the passages in question did relate to the Jesus of the Christians, represents the Rabbis as being merely "misled" on the question. But the King, who was not misled by the Rabbis, ordered all copies of the Talmud to be burnt, and in June 1242 these were committed to the flames.[866]

The Talmud, however, continued to exist, and it was not until 1640 that, as we have already seen, the offending passages against Christ were expunged by the Rabbis as a measure of expediency. Now that they have been replaced, no further attempt is made to deny that they refer to the founder of Christianity. As far as I am aware they are not included in any English translation of the Talmud, but may be found in an English version of Dr. Gustav H. Dalman's book, _Jesus Christus im Talmud_ (1891).

II

THE "PROTOCOLS" OF THE ELDERS OF ZION

Contrary to the assertions of certain writers, I have never affirmed my belief in the authenticity of the Protocols, but have always treated it as an entirely open question.[867] The only opinion to which I have committed myself is that, whether genuine or not, the Protocols do represent the programme of world revolution, and that in view of their prophetic nature and of their extraordinary resemblance to the protocols of certain secret societies in the past, they were either the work of some such society or of someone profoundly versed in the lore of secret societies who was able to reproduce their ideas and phraseology.

The so-called refutation of the Protocols which appeared in the _Times_ of August 1922, tends to confirm this opinion. According to these articles the Protocols were largely copied from the book of Maurice Joly, _Dialogues aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu_, published in 1864. Let it be said at once that the resemblance between the two works could not be accidental, not only are whole paragraphs almost identical, but the various points in the programme follow each other in precisely the same order. But whether Nilus copied from Joly or _from the same source whence Joly derived his ideas_ is another question. It will be noticed that Joly in his preface never claimed to have originated the scheme described in his book; on the contrary he distinctly states that it "personifies in particular a political system which has not varied for a single day in its application since the disastrous and alas! too far-off date of its enthronement." Could this refer only to the government of Napoleon III, established twelve years earlier? Or might it not be taken to signify a Machiavellian system of government of which Napoleon III was suspected by Joly at this moment of being the exponent? We have already seen that this system is said by M. de Mazères, in his book _De Machiavel et de l'influence de sa doctrine sur les opinions, les moeurs et la politique de la France pendant la Révolution_, published in 1816, to have been inaugurated by the French Revolution, and to have been carried on by Napoleon I against whom he brings precisely the same accusations of Machiavellism that Joly brings against Napoleon III. "The author of _The Prince_," he writes, "was always his guide," and he goes on to describe the "parrot cries placed in the mouths of the people," the "hired writers, salaried newspapers, mercenary poets and corrupt ministers employed to mislead our vanity methodically"--all this being carried on by "the scholars of Machiavelli under the orders of his cleverest disciple." We have already traced the course of these methods from the Illuminati onwards.

Now precisely at the moment when Joly published his _Dialogues aux Enfers_ the secret societies were particularly active, and since by this date a number of Jews had penetrated into their ranks a whole crop of literary efforts directed against Jews and secret societies marked the decade. Eckert with his work on Freemasonry in 1852 had given the incentive; Crétineau Joly followed in 1859 with _L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Révolution_, reproducing the documents of the Haute Vente Romaine; in 1868 came the book of the German anti-Semite Goedsche, and in the following year on a higher plane the work of Gougenot Des Mousseaux, _Le Juif, le Judaïsme, et la Judaïsation des Peuples Chrétiens_. Meanwhile in 1860 the _Alliance Israëlite Universelle_ had arisen, having for its ultimate object "the great work of humanity, the annihilation of error and fanaticism, the union of human society in a faithful and solid fraternity"--a formula singularly reminiscent of Grand Orient philosophy; in 1864 Karl Marx obtained control of the two-year-old "International Working Men's Association," by which a number of secret societies became absorbed, and in the same year Bakunin founded his _Alliance Sociale Démocratique_ on the exact lines of Weishaupt's Illuminism, and in 1869 wrote his _Polémique contre les Juifs_ (or _Etude sur les Juifs allemands_) mainly directed against the Jews of the _Internationale_. The sixties of the last century therefore mark an important era in the history of the secret societies, and it was right in the middle of this period that Maurice Joly published his book.

Now it will be remembered that amongst the sets of parallels to the Protocols quoted by me in _World Revolution_, two were taken from the sources above quoted--the documents of the Haute Vente Romaine and the programme of Bakunin's secret society, the _Alliance Sociale Démocratique_. Meanwhile Mr. Lucien Wolf had found another parallel to the Protocols in Goedsche's book. "The Protocols," Mr. Wolf had no hesitation in asserting, "are, in short, an amplified imitation of Goedsche's handiwork"[868] and he went on to show that "Nilus followed this pamphlet very closely." The Protocols were then declared by Mr. Wolf and his friends to have been completely and finally refuted.

But alas for Mr. Wolfe's discernment! The _Times_ articles came and abolished the whole of his carefully constructed theory. They did not, however, demolish mine; on the contrary, they supplied another and a very curious link in the chain of evidence. For is it not remarkable that one of the sets of parallels quoted by me appeared in the same year as Joly's book, and that within the space of nine years no less than four parallels to the Protocols should have been discovered? Let us recapitulate the events of this decade in the form of a table and the proximity of dates will then be more apparent:

1859. Crétineau Joly's book published containing documents of Haute Vente Romaine (parallels quoted by me).

1860. _Alliance Israëlite Universelle_ founded.

1864. _1st Internationale_ taken over by Karl Marx.

" _Alliance Sociale Démocratique_ of Bakunin founded (parallels quoted by me). " Maurice Joly's _Dialogue aux Enfers_ published (parallels quoted by _Times_).

1866. 1st Congress of Internationale at Geneva.

1868. Goedsche's _Biarritz_ (parallels quoted by Mr. Lucien Wolf).

1869. Gougenot Des Mousseaux's _Le Juif_, etc.

" Bakunin's _Polémique contre les Juifs_.

It will be seen, then, that at the moment when Maurice Joly wrote his _Dialogues_, the ideas they embodied were current in many different circles. It is interesting, moreover, to notice that the authors of the last two works referred to above, the Catholic and Royalist Des Mousseaux and the Anarchist Bakunin, between whom it is impossible to imagine any connexion, both in the same year denounced the growing power of the Jews whom Bakunin described as "the most formidable sect" in Europe, and again asserted that a leakage of information had taken place in the secret societies. Thus in 1870 Bakunin explains that his secret society has been broken up because its secrets have been given away,[869] and that his colleague Netchaïeff has arrived at the conclusion that "in order to found a serious and indestructible society one must take for a basis the policy of Machiavelli."[870] Meanwhile Gougenot Des Mousseaux had related in _Le Juif_, that in December 1865 he had received a letter from a German statesman saying:

Since the revolutionary recrudescence of 1848, I have had relations with a Jew who, from vanity, betrayed the secret of the secret societies with which he had been associated, and who warned me eight or ten days beforehand of all the revolutions which were about to break out at any point of Europe. I owe to him the unshakeable conviction that all these movements of "oppressed peoples," etc., etc., are devised by half a dozen individuals, who give their orders to the secret societies of all Europe. The ground is absolutely mined beneath our feet, and the Jews provide a large contingent of these miners....[871]

These words were written in the year after the _Dialogues aux Enfers_ were published.

It is further important to notice that Joly's work is dated from Geneva, the meeting-place for all the revolutionaries of Europe, including Bakunin, who was there in the same year, and where the first Congress of the _Internationale_ led by Karl Marx was held two years later. Already the revolutionary camp was divided into warring factions, and the rivalry between Marx and Mazzini had been superseded by the struggle between Marx and Bakunin. And all these men were members of secret societies. It is by no means improbable then that Joly, himself a revolutionary, should during his stay in Geneva have come into touch with the members of some secret organization, who may have betrayed to him their own secret or those of a rival organization they had reason to suspect of working under the cover of revolutionary doctrines for an ulterior end. Thus the protocols of a secret society modelled on the lines of the Illuminati or the Haute Vente Romaine may have passed into his hands and been utilized by him as an attack on Napoleon who, owing to his known connexion with the Carbonari, might have appeared to Joly as the chief exponent of the Machiavellian art of duping the people and using them as the lever to power which the secret societies had reduced to a system.

This would explain Maurice Joly's mysterious reference to the "political system which has not varied for a single day in its application since the disastrous and alas! too far-off date of its enthronement." Moreover, it would explain the resemblance between all the parallels to the Protocols from the writings of the Illuminati and Mirabeau's _Projet de Révolution_ of 1789 onwards. For if the system had never varied, the code on which it was founded must have remained substantially the same. Further, if it had never varied up to the time when Joly wrote, why should it have varied since that date? The rules of lawn tennis drawn up in 1880 would probably bear a strong resemblance to those of 1920, and would also probably follow each other in the same sequence. The differences would occur where modern improvements had been added.

Might not the same process of evolution have taken place between the dates at which the works of Joly and Nilus were published? I do not agree with the opinion of the _Morning Post_ that "the author of the Protocols must have had the _Dialogues_ of Joly before him." It is possible, but not proven. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine that anyone embarking on such an elaborate imposture should not have possessed the wit to avoid quoting passages verbatim--without even troubling to arrange them in a different sequence--from a book which might at any moment be produced as evidence against him. For contrary to the assertions of the _Times_ the _Dialogues_ of Joly is by no means a rare book, not only was it to be found at the British Museum but at the London Library and recently I was able to buy a copy for the modest sum of 15 francs. There was therefore every possibility of Nilus being suddenly confronted with the source of his plagiarism. Further, is it conceivable that a plagiarist so unskilful and so unimaginative would have been capable of improving on the original? For the Protocols are a vast improvement on the _Dialogues_ of Joly. The most striking passages they contain are not to be found in the earlier work, nor, which is more remarkable, are several of the amazing prophecies concerning the future which time has realized. It is this latter fact which presents the most insuperable obstacle to the _Times_ solution of the problem.

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_)

Adamites, the, 31

Additional Degrees, the 132-148

Akhnaton (see Ikh-naton)

Albigenses, the, 74-76

Alemanus (or Datylus), 85

_Aliance Sociale Démocratique_, 268, 295

Alsace, Jews of, 247

Alta Vendita (or Haute Vente Romaine), 266

Altotas, 174, 200

Amaury, King of Jerusalem, 50

Amèlie, Queen of Portugal, 283

_Amis Réunis_ (Loge des), 165, 170, 236

Ampthill, Lord, 287

Anabaptists, 180

Ancient Masonry, 304

Anderson's Constitutions, 129, 148

Anna of Courland, 165

Anthroposophical Society, 316

Antin, Duc d', 137 note, 145, 148, 155, 162

Antitacts, 31

Architecture, Gothic, 111

Aristobulos, 28

Athanasius, Kircher, 86

Ashkenazim, 247

Ashmole, Elias, 102, 122

Asiatic Brethren, 169

Assassins, the 44-48, 113

Ba'al Shems, 181, _et seq_.

Babeuf, 252

Bacon, Francis, 97, 119

Bacon, Roger, 143

Bakunin, Michel, 268, 384

Baldwin II, 49

Balsamo, Joseph (see Cagliostro)

Baphomet, 64, 72

Barbusse, H., 321

Baron, André, 188

Barruel, Abbé, vi, ix, 121, 147, 254, 382

Barthou, Monsieur, 203, 204

Bavaria, Duke of, 86

Bela Kun, 386

Belgium, Freemasonry in, 282

Belle-Isle, Maréchal de, 173

Bérage, Chevalier de, 139

Berckheim, François Charles de, 258, _et seq._

Besant, Mrs. Annie, 297, _et seq._

Bielfeld, Baron de, 152

Bismarck, Prince von, 356, 357, 366

Blanc, Louis, 268

Blavatsky, Madame, 298, _et seq._

Bode, Christian, 211, 233-234, 236, 255

Bogomils, 63, _et seq._

Bolshevism, 357, _et seq._, 384, _et seq._

Bordeaux Jews of, 246, 247

Bourbon, Duc de, 136, 137

Bourbon, Duchesse de, 295

Brinvilliers, Marquise de, 93

Bruce, Robert, 111, 112, 142

Brunswick, Duke of, 154, 191, 252, _et seq._, 350

Bullock, 314

Buonarotti, 252

Bussell, Dr. F. W., 50, 128

Cabala, the ancient, 111 -- the Jewish, 6, _et seq._; origins of, 7 _et seq._; 71, 78, 81, 85, 86, 106, 107, 109, 110, 119, 124, 166, 181, 228, 318, 371, _et seq._

Cabalists, the Christian, 15, 85 -- the Jewish, ch. viii.

Cagliostro, 174, 191, 233, 235

Cainites, 30, 76

Cambacérès, Prince, 255

Carbonari, 266, 342, 351

Carlos, King of Portugal, 283

Carpocratians, the, 30, 31

Carvajal, 178

Catherine de Medicis, 79

Chambers, Ephraim, _Cyclopædia_, 161

Charles VI, King of France, 246

Charles Edward, Prince, 153, 154

Charter of Larmenius, 66, 135, 157

Chefdebien d'Armisson, Marquis de, 171, 234, 236, 256

Choiseul, Duc de, 172

"Christians of St. John" (see Mandæans)

Clarté, 321, 322

_Clavicules de Solomon_, 166

Clement V, 51, 53, 54, 59

Clement XII, 138

Coat-of-Anns of Grand Lodge, 123

_Codex Nasaræus_, 71

Co-Masonry, 301, _et seq._, 319

Compagnonnages, 108

Condorcet, Marquis de, 162, 171

_Confessia Fraternitatis_, 87

Copin Albancelli, Monsieur, 278, _et seq_.

Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, 86

Cossé Brissac, Duc de, 150

"Council of the Emperors of the East," 149

Court de Gebelin, 171

Crémieux, Adolphe, 268

Croix, Madame de la, 194

Cromwell, Oliver, 125, 126, 179

Crowley, Aleister, 314, 315

Crypto-Jews, 178

D'Alembert, 161

Danton, 245

Darazi, Ismail, 43

Dar ul Hikmat, 40, 113

D'Aumont, Pierre, 111

Deraismes, Maria, 296

Derwentwater, Lord, 134

Dasmoulins, Camille, 245

Diderot, 160, 161

Disraeli, Benjamin, (Earl of Beaconsfield), 383

Drach, P.L.B., 11, 12, 14, 15, 402

Druses, 43, 44, 284

Duchanteau, 234

Eckhoffen, Baron von, 169

Edward II, 55, 111

Egyptian Rite, 174

_Einwohnerwehr_, 362

Eliphas Lévi, 60, 62, 65, 68, 77, 79, 83, 310

Elymas the sorcerer, 29

Emden, 186

Encausse, Dr. Gérard (see Papus)

_Encyclopédie_, 160-165

Engel, Leopold, 311

Ephrain, 249

_Ernst und Folk_, 191-195

Esperanto, 346

_Essai sur la Secte des Illuminés_, 240, _et seq_., 258

Essenes, the, 23-27, 110

Euchites, 76

Fabré Palaprat, 67, 68, 135

Falk, Hayyim Samuel Jacob, 185, _et. seq._

_Fama Fraternitatis_, 86

Fare, Monseigneur de la, 247

Fascismo, 282

Fatimites, 40

Felkin, Dr. R., 313-316

Fénélon, 144

Flamel, Nicholas, 85

Fleury, Cardinal, 137, 138

Florence, Secret Society at, 190, 191

Fludd, Robert, 84, 97, 121

Frank, Jacob (alias Baron von Offenbach), 182

Frankists, 182

Frederick the Great, 152, 156, 163-165, 206, 213, 366 -- and Freemasonry, 152, 156, 159, 160 -- and Voltaire, 157, 158

Freemasonry, origins of, ch. v -- Grand Lodge Era of, ch. vi -- Modern, ch. xi -- British, 103, 126-131, 285-293 -- Grand Orient, 149, 273-285 -- -- and the Cabala, 105-110, 123 -- -- and the Essenes, 110 -- -- and the Roman Colelgia, 101, 108 -- -- and the _compagnonnages_, 110 -- in Belgium, 282 -- in Spain, 283 -- in Portugal, 283 -- in Hungary, 284 -- in Turkey, 284 -- and Templarism, 110-117, 138-142 -- and Rosicrucianism, 98, 119-122 -- and the Catholic Church, 272, 288 -- and women, 294-296 -- in Germany, 356 -- in France, 273-285

Galcerandus de Teus, 68

Gassner, 175

"German Union," 236

Gilles de Rais, 77-79

Ginsburg, Dr. Christian, 23-26

Gleichen, Baron de, 165, 189, 190

Gnostics, 27-32

Gobel, Archbishop, 249

Godefroi de Bouillon, 49, 139

Goldsmid, Aaron, 187

"Goose and Gridiron," 127, 128

Gordon, Lord George, 194

Goudchaux, Juliet, 193

Gougenot des Mousseaux, 10, 11, 381

Grand Chapitre Général de France, 150

Grand Orient, 149, 160, 171, 273, _et seq_., 303, 304, 323, 352, 384

Grand Orient of Italy, 284

Granjo, Dr. Antonio, 283

Great Rebellion, 178

Grégoire, Abbé, 69

Hakim, 43

Hamburg, Grand Lodge of, 133-152

"Harnouester," Lord, 145

Hartmann, Franz, 316

Hasan and Husein, 35

Hasan Saba (The Old Man of the Mountain), 44-48

Hashishyin (see Assassins)

Hasidim, 182, _et. seq._

Heguerty, Squire, 134

Heilprin (Joel ben Uri), 182

Heindl, Max, 317

Helvétius, 162

Heredom, 112

Hertz, David Moses, 169

Herz, Henrietta, 230

Hesse, Prince Charles of, 125, 129, 154, 171

Heydon, John, 97

Hiram Abiff, 106-108, 110, 164

Hiram, King of Tyre, 106

_Hiram or the Grand Master Key_, 130

Hiramic legend, 106, 107, 110, 217

Holbach, Baron d', 162

Horos, Mme, 314

Hugues de Pavens, 49, 66, 67

Hundt, Baron von, 153, 154, 157

"Idealists," 265

Ikhnaton (or Akhnaton), 6, 297

Illuminati, Bavarian, ch. ix and x, 350 -- Modern Order of, 311

_Illuminés d'Avignon_, 166

_Illuminés, French_ (_Martinistes_), 165-176, 233, 310

_Illuminés Théosophes_, 166

_In Eminenti_, Papal Bull, 138

Innes, B., 314

Institute for Harmonius Development of Man, 323

International Bureau for Masonic Affairs, 320

Israel of Podolia (Ba'al Shem Job), 182

"Italian Order," 133, 191

Jachin and Boaz, 107, 111; pamphlet so-called, 130, 131

Jacques du Molay, 51, 52, 56, 110, 147, 164

James II, 126

Jeanne d'Arc, 77

Jechiel, Rabbi, 85

Jesuits, 125, 197, 414

Jesus Christ, Birth of, 17 -- and Rabbis, 17, 18

Jews, the, xi, xii; ch. xv -- as Cabalists, 6-16, 78-82, 85, 86, 166-168, ch. viii -- and magic, 29, 78-82, 175, 178, 181, 182, 184-188, 384 -- and medicine, 81, 82 -- and Jesus Christ, 17-23, 68, 86, 374 -- and Christianity, 374, 378-380 -- and Freemasonry, 108-110, 122-124, 130, 169, 277, 280, 284, 384 -- in France, 246, _et seq._, 365, _et seq._ -- and Germany, 365-368

Johannism, 68-71, 157

Johnson (alias Leucht or Becker), 155, 158

Karmath (Hamdan), 38

Karmathites, 38-40

Kay, John de, 365

Kilmarnock, Lord, 153

Kilwinning, Lodge of, 112

Knigge, Baron von, alias Philo, 210-211, 234, 266

Knight Kadosch, 147, 159, 164, 280

Knights of the East, 149

Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, 59, 116

Knights Templar (see Templars)

Knorr , Baron von Rosenroth, 86

Kollowrath-Krakowski, Comte Leopold de, 236

Kölmer, 199

Koran, 22

Krishnamurti, 301, 305

Kropotkine , Peter, Prince, 268

Kuentz, R., 318

"Kundalini," 325

Labour Party, the, 360, 362, 368, 389

Lacorne, 149, 163

Lafayette, 162, 236

Lamballe, Princesse de, 295

Lambert, Alexandre, 250, 251

Lanze, the Illuminatus, 235

Larménie, Jacques de (see Charter of Larmenius)

Lazare, Bernard, 122, 177

Leadbeater, Mr., 301, 308

"Leon, the Jew," 175

_Le Secret des Francs-Maçons_, 131

_Les Francis-Maçons écrasés_, 131, 169

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 191, 229

Levellers, the, 180

_Libres Penseurs_, Lodge of the, 296

Lippe-Bückeburg, Graf von, 152

Little, Robert Wentworth, 310

Lima, Magalhaes, 283

Lodge "Theodore de Bon Conseil," 205, 228

Loge des Neuf Lœurs, 236, _et seq._

_Loi Chapelier_, 206

_L'Ordre des Francs-Maçons trahi_, 131

Luchet, Marquis de, 169, 239, _et seq._, 350

Luciferians, the, 63, 64, 76

Lulli, Raymond, 85

Luria, Isaac, 78

Luther, Martin, and the Jews, 21

Machiavelli, 354, 355

Mackenzie, Kenneth, 90, 189

_Maçonnerie d'Adoption_, 295

_Maçonnique Mixte Internationale, Ordre_, 296, 301, _et seq._

Magic, branches of, 84

Magicians, 172-176

Maitland, Edward, 310

Manasseh ben Israel, 123, 179

Mandaites (see Mandæans)

Mandæans, 70, 71

Manes (Cubricus), 33, 107

Manicheism, 32, _et seq._, 74, 75

Marat, 245

Marcosians, 31

Maria Theresa, 183

Marie Antoinette, 164, 195, 283

Marotti, Abbé, 209

Marschall, Baron von, 153, 156

Martin, Dr. George, 296

Martines de Pasqually, 165, 166, 310

_Martinistes_ (see _Illuminés, French_)

Mary, Mother of Jesus, 22

Marx[D], Karl, 385

Maskeline, Chevalier, 134

Mathers, M., 312-314

Mauvillon, 210

Mayas, 4, 119

Meakin, 316

Melchisedeck Lodges, 169

Mendelssohn, Moses, 191, 229

"Mercaba, The," 123

Mesmer, 175

Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de, 89, 90, 155, 203-205, 230, 236, 241-243; his _Histoire de la Monarchie Prussienne_, 205

Momoro, 249

Monotheism, 5

Morley, Lord, 160

Moses de Leon, 9, 28

Mounier, vii, 227

Mount Moriah, 106

Mussolini, 405

Mysteries, Eleusinian, 5, 32

_Nathan der Weise_, 191

Nazarenes, 71

Nazarites, 71

Nazoreans, 70

Necklace, Affair of, 234

_New Atlantis_, 119

"New Saints, The," 182

_Nishmat Hayim_, 81, 179

Nizam ul Mulk, 45

Nizzachon (see Sepher Nizzachon)

Olcott, Colonel, 298

Omar Khayyam, 45

Ophites, the, 30

_ Ordre du Temple_ (modern), 65, 116, 135, 136, 150, 156, 300

Ordre de Saint-Lazare, 136

Orléans, Phillippe, Duc d' (the Regent), 135, 136

Orléans, Louis Phillippe Joseph (Duc de Chartres), 149, 150, 159, 160, 193, 194, 244

Osiris, 16, 107

_Ostmarkenverein_, 362

Pan-Germanism, 353, _et seq._

_Pantheisticon_, Toland's, 129

Papus (Dr. Gérard Encausse), 162, 310

Paracelsus, 85, 86

Paris, Comte de, 194

"Parvus," alias Helphandlt (Israel Lazarewitch), 363

Paulicians, the, 63

Pepys, Samuel, 181

Pernetti, Dom, 166

Pfefferkorn, 86

_Philalèthes_, 171, 234

Phillippe le Bel, 51, 57, 59, 147

Philo (of Alexandria), 28

"Philo" (see Knigge)

Pico della Mirandola, 85, 93

Pike, Albert, 160

Poale Zion, 383

Pompadour, Marquise de, 173

Portugal, Freemasonry in, 283, 384 -- Carbonarios of, 342

Pott, Mrs., 96, 119

Prelati, 77

Prie, Marquise de, 136

_Protocols of the Elders of Zion_, 381, and Appendix II

Proudhon, 268

Psycho-analysis, 345, 393

Pythagoras, 6

Ragon (François), 65, 122, 310

Rainsford, General, 168, 234

Ramsay, Andrew M., Chevalier, 136, 137, 161, 163

Ranking, Dr., 73

Raymond, Comte de Tripoli, 50, 75

Reuchlin, 86

Richelieu, Cardinal, 85

Richter, Samuel, alias Sincerus Renatus, 169

_Rit Primitif_, 171, 175

Rite of Perfection, 145, 159, 167

Rite of Swedenborg, 166

Robison, 212, 254, see also Preface vi-viii

Roman Catholic Church, 288

Rosenkreutz, Christian, 87, 88, 91, 316, 319

Rose-Croix, degree of, 112, 142-145, 157, 164, 166-169, 202, 235, 277

Rosicrucians, 84-98, 119-122, 168; Brothers of the Golden and Rosy Cross, 169; modern Rosicrucians, 310, _et seq._

Rosy Cross, Brothers of (see Rosicrucians)

Royal Arch Degree, 132, 133, 277

Sabians (see Mandæans)

Sade, Marquis de, 78, 246

St. Bernard, 49

"Saint-Germaine, Comte de," 172-175, 234, 306

St. John the Baptist, 70

St. John, the Evangelist, 72, 73 -- Gospel of, 31, 69, 73, 74, 188 -- Knights and Brethren of, 169

Saladin, 49

Salisbury Cathedral, 111

Salonica, lodges of, 284

Sand, George, 207

Satanael, 72

Satanism, 63, 76-84, 324-326

Savalette de Lange, 170, 171, 190, 234, 237

Savine, Monsignor de, 257, 351

Schem Hamphorasch (see _Tetragrammaton_)

Schroeder, 190

Schroepfer, 172

Scottish Rite (or Ancient and Accepted Rite), 132, 142, 145, 159, 277

Seal of Solomon, 189

Sephardim, 246-247

Sepher Nizzachon, 86

Sepher Toldoth Jeschu (see _Toledot Yeshu_)

_Sepher Yetzirah_, 7, 313

Shabbethai, Zebi, 181, 183

Shiahs, 36, 37

Simon ben Jochai, 8

Simon Magus, 29

Sixtus IV, 85

Socialism, ch. xiii -- and Freemasonry, 273-275

Solomon, 106, 109

Solomon, Temple of, 49, 106-108, 110, 113, 271

Spedalieri, Baron, 310

Sprengel, Anna, 311-313

Star, five-pointed, 111

Star in the East, Order of, 301, 307

Steiner, Rudolf, 316-318

Stella Matutina, 316, 319, 325

"Stricte Observance," Order of the, 135, 154, 233

Sunnis, 36

Swedenborg Emmanuel, 166

Switzerland, Masonic Congress in, 287 -- a centre of revolution, 364

Syed Ameer Ali, 35, 113, 309

Talmud, the, 6, 71, 80, 183, 369, _et seq._

Taxil, Léo, 76, 324

Templars (see Knights Templar)

Templar tradition in Freemasonry, 110, _et seq._

Temple of Solomon (see Solomon)

Templo, Rabbi Jacob Jehuda Leon, 123

_Tetragrammaton_, 21, 27, 167, 176, 181, 185, 313, 352

Theosophy, 297, _et seq._

Theosophical Society, 300, 307, _et seq._

_Toledot Yeshu_ (or Sepher Toldoth Jeschu), 20, 68, 71, 86, 299, 300

Trans-Himalayan Brotherhood, 299

Tschoudy, Baron, 139, 140

Tugendbund, 265

"United States of Europe," 275, 336

"Universal Republic," 275, 336

Valentinians, the, 31, 32

Vaughan, Thos., 316

Vehmgerichts, 117

Voltaire, 79, 152, 153, 156, 162, 213

Vulliaud, Monsieur Paul, 7, 8

Waechter, Baron de, 190

Waite, Mr. A. E., 91, 96, 113, 133, 315

Westminster Abbey, 111

Weishaupt, Adam, ch. ix, 255-257, 311

Wilhelmsbad, Congress of, 233

Willermoz, 166, 171

William of Orange, 180

Winstanley, Gerard, 180

Witches, 81

Witt Doehring, 265

Wolf, Lucien, 123, 381

Women Masons, 295 (see also "Co-Masonry" and "_Maçonnerie Mixte_")

Woodford, Rev. A. F. A., 311

Young Turk Movement, 284

Zaddikim, 181

Zerdascht, 14

_Zohar, The_, 8, 9, 81, 182, 183, 371, 373

Zoharites, 182

Zoroastrians, 14, 201

FOOTNOTES

[1] _Moniteur_ for the 14th Fructidor, An II.

[2] Seth Payson, _Proofs of the Real Existence and Dangerous Tendency of Illuminism_ (Charleston, 1802), pp. 5-7.

[3] Ibid., p. 5 note.

[4] Quoted in the Life of John Robison (1739-1805) by George Stronach in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, Vol. XLIX. p. 58.

[5] _Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, Vol. VII, pp. 538, 539 (1815).

[6] _Freemasonry, its Pretensions Exposed_ ... by a Master Mason, p. 275 (New York. 1828).

[7] _Mémoires sur le Jacobinisme_, II. 195 (1818 edition).

[8] Barruel, op. cit., II. 208.

[9] Ibid., II. 311.

[10] I use the word "anti-Semitism" here in the sense in which it has come to be used--that is to say, anti-Jewry, but place it in inverted commas because it is in reality a misnomer coined by the Jews in order to create a false impression. The word anti-Semite literally signifies a person who adopts a hostile attitude towards all the descendants of Shem--the Arabs, and the entire twelve tribes of Israel. To apply the term to a person who is merely antagonistic to that fraction of the Semitic race known as the Jews is therefore absurd, and leads to the ridiculous situation that one may be described as "anti-Semitic and pro-Arabian." This expression actually occurred in _The New Palestine_ (New York), March 23, 1923. One might as well speak of being "anti-British and pro-English."

[11] Augustus le Plongeon, _Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches_, p. 53 (1909)

[12] Ibid., pp. 56, 58.

[13] Adolf Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 45 (1894).

[14] J.H. Breasted, _Ancient Times: a History of the Early World_, p. 92 (1916).

[15] This word is spelt variously by different writers thus: Cabala, Cabbala, Kabbala, Kabbalah, Kabalah. I adopt the first spelling as being the one employed in the _Jewish Encyclopædia_.

[16] Fabre d'Olivet, _La Langue Hébraïque_, p. 28 (1815).

[17] "According to the Jewish view God had given Moses on Mount Sinai alike the oral and the written Law, that is, the Law with all its interpretations and applications."--Alfred Edersheim, _The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah_, I. 99 (1883), quoting other Jewish authorities.

[18] _Solomon Maimon: an Autobiography_, translated from the German by J. Clark Murray, p. 28 (1888). The original appeared in 1792.

[19] Alfred Edersheim, _The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah_, II. 689 (1883).

[20] "There exists in Jewish literature no book more difficult to understand than the Sepher Yetzirah."--Phineas Mordell in the _Jewish Quarterly Review_, New Series, Vol. II. p. 557.

[21] Paul Vulliaud, _La Kabbale Juive: histotre et doctrine_, 2 vols. (Émile Nourry, 62 Rue des Écoles, Paris, 1923). This book, neither the work of a Jew nor of an "anti-Semite," but of a perfectly impartial student, is invaluable for a study of the Cabala rather as a vast compendium of opinions than as an expression of original thought.

[22] "Rab Hanina and Rab Oschaya were seated on the eve of every Sabbath studying the Sepher Ietsirah; they created a three-year-old heifer and ate it."--Talmud treatise Sanhedrim, folio 65.

[23] Koran, Sura LXXXVII. 10.

[24] Zohar, section Bereschith, folio 55, and section Lekh-Lekha, folio 76 (De Pauly's translation, Vol. I. pp. 431, 446).

[25] Adolphe Franck, _La Kabbale_, p. 39; J. P. Stehelin, _The Traditions of the Jews_, I. 145 (1748).

[26] Adolphe Franck, op. cit., p. 68, quoting Talmud treatise Sabbath, folio 34, Dr. Christian Ginsburg, _The Kabbalah_, p. 85; Drach, _De l'Harmonie entre l'Église et la Synagogue_, I. 457.

[27] Adolphe Franck, op. cit., p. 69.

[28] Dr. Christian Ginsburg (1920), _The Kabbalah_, pp. 172, 173.

[29] Vulliaud, op. cit., I. 253.

[30] Ibid., p. 20, quoting Theodore Reinach, _Historie des Israelites_, p. 221, and Salomon Reinach, _Orpheus_, p. 299.

[31] _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article on Cabala.

[32] Adolphe Franck, op. cit., p. 288.

[33] Vulliaud, op. cit., I. 256, quoting Greenstone, _The Messiah Idea_, p. 229.

[34] H. Loewe, in an article on the Kabbala in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, says: "This secret mysticism was no late growth. Difficult though it is to prove the date and origin of this system of philosophy and the influences and causes which produced it, we can be fairly certain that its roots stretch back very far and that the mediæval and Geonic Kabbala was the culmination and not the inception of Jewish esoteric mysticism. From the time of Graetz it has been the fashion to decry the Kabbala and to regard it as a later incrustation, as something of which Judaism had reason to be ashamed." The writer goes on to express the opinion that "the recent tendency requires adjustment. The Kabbala, though later in form than is claimed by its adherents, is far older in material than is allowed by its detractors."

[35] Vulliaud, op. cit., I. 22.

[36] Ibid., I. 13, 14, quoting Edersheim, _La Société Juive an temps de Jésus-Christ_ (French translation), pp. 363-4

[37] See chapters on this question by Gougenot des Mousseaux in _Le Juif, le Judaïsme et la Judaïsation des Peisples Chrétiens_, pp. 499 and following (2nd edition, 1886). The first edition of this book, published in 1869, is said to have been bought up and destroyed by the Jews, and the author died a sudden death before the second edition could be published.

[38] Eliphas Lévi, _Histoire de la Magie_, pp. 46, 105. (Eliphas Lévi was the pseudonym of the celebrated nineteenth-century occultist the Abbé Constant.)

[39] _Lexicon of Freemasonry_, p. 323.

[40] Ginsburg op. cit. p. 105; _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article on Cabala.

[41] Gougenot des Mousseaux, _Le Juif, le Judaïsms el la Judaïsation des Peuples Chrétiens_, p. 503 (1886).

[42] P. L. B. Drach _De l'Harmonie entre l'Église et la Synagogue_, Vol. I. p. xiii (1844). M. Vulliaud (op. cit., II. 245) points out that, as far as he can discover Drach's work has never met with any refutation from the Jews, by whom it was received in complete silence. The _Jewish Encyclopædia_ has an article on Drach in which it says he was brought up in a Talmudic school and afterwards became converted to Christianity, but makes no attempt to challenge his statements.

[43] Drach, op. cit., Vol. II. p. xix

[44] Franck, op. cit., p. 127.

[45] De Pauly's translation. Vol. V. pp. 336-8, 343-6.

[46] Zohar, treatise Beschalah, folio 59_b_ (De Pauly, III. 265).

[47] Zohar, Toldoth Noah, folio 69_a_ (De Pauly, I. 408).

[48] Zohar, treatise Beschalah, folio 48_a_ (De Pauly, III. 219).

[49] Ibid., folio 44a (De Pauly, III. 200).

[50] _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article on Cabala.

[51] Adolf Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 32.

[52] Zohar, treatise Toldoth Noah, folio 59b (De Pauly, I. 347).

[53] Zohar, treatise Lekh-Lekha, folio 94a (De Pauly, I. 535).

[54] Zohar, treatise Bereschith, folio 26a (De Pauly, I. 161).

[55] The _Emek ha Melek_ is the work of the Cabalist Napthali, a disciple of Luria.

[56] Drach, _De l'Harmonie entre l'Église et la Synagogue_, I. 272.

[57] Ibid., p. 273.

[58] D'Herbelot, _Bibliothèque Orientale_ (1778), article on Zerdascht.

[59] Ibid., I. 18.

[60] Rom. iii. 2.

[61] Drach, _De l'Harmonie entre l'Eglise et la Synagogue_, II. 19.

[62] Ibid., I. 280.

[63] Vulliaud, op. cit., II. 255, 256.

[64] Ibid., p. 257, quoting Karppe, _Études sur les Origines du Zohar_, p. 494.

[65] Ibid., I. 13, 14. In Vol. II. p. 411, M. Vulliaud quotes Isaac Meyer's assertion that "the triad of the ancient Cabala is Kether, the Father; Binah, the Holy Spirit or the Mother; and Hochmah, the Word or the Son." But in order to avoid the sequence of the Christian Trinity this arrangement has been altered in the modern Cabala of Luria and Moses of Cordovero, etc.

[66] _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article on Cabala, p. 478.

[67] "...All that Israel hoped for, was national restoration and glory. Everything else was but means to these ends; the Messiah Himself only the grand instrument in attaining them. Thus viewed, the picture presented would be of Israel's exaltation, rather than of the salvation of the world.... The Rabbinic ideal of the Messiah was not that of 'a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel'--the satisfaction of the wants of humanity, and the completion of Israel's mission--but quite different, even to contrariety."--Edersheim, _The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah_, I. 164 (1883).

[68] Zohar, section Schemoth, folio 8; cf. ibid., folio 9b: "The period when the King Messiah will declare war on the whole world." (De Pauly, III. 32, 36).

[69] A blasphemous address entitled _The God Man_, given by Tom Anderson, the founder of the Socialist Sunday Schools, on Glasgow Green to an audience of over 1,000 workers in 1922 and printed in pamphlet form, was founded entirely on this theory.

[70] J.G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, Part VI. "The Scapegoat," p. 412 (1914 edition); E.R. Bevan endorses this view.

[71] _Histoire de la Magie_, p. 69.

[72] The Magi or Wise Men are generally believed to have come from Persia; this would accord with the Zoroastrian prophecy quoted above.

[73] Drach, op. cit., II. p. 32.

[74] Ibid., II. p. xxiii.

[75] Joseph Barclay, _The Talmud_, pp 38, 39; cf. Drach, op. cit., I 167

[76] _The Talmud_, by Michael Rodkinson (alias Michael Levy Rodkinssohn).

[77] _Le Talmud de Babylone_ (1900).

[78] Le Zohar, translation in 8 vols by Jean de Pauly, published in 1909 by Emile Lafuma-Giraud. Wherever possible in quoting the Talmud or the Cabala I shall give a reference to one of the translations here mentioned.

[79] _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article Talmud.

[80] Drach, op. cit., I. 168, 169. The text of this encyclical is given by Drach in Hebrew and also in translation, thus: "This is why we enjoin you, under pain of excommunication major, to print nothing in future editions, whether of the Mischna or of the Gemara, which relates whether for good or evil to the acts of Jesus the Nazarene, and to substitute instead a circle like this O, which will warn the Rabbis and schoolmasters to teach the young these passages only viva voce. By means of this precaution the savants amongst the Nazarenes will have no further pretext to attack us on this subject." Cf. Abbé Chiarini, _Le Talmud de Babylone_, p. 45 (1831).

[81] On this point see Appendix I.

[82] _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article on "Jesus."

[83] Eliphas Lévi, _La Science des Esprits_, p. 40.

[84] Origen, _Contra Celsum_.

[85] S. Baring-Gould, _The Counter-Gospels_, p. 69 (1874).

[86] Cf. Baring-Gould, op. cit., quoting Talmud, treatise Sabbath, folio 104.

[87] Ibid., p. 55, quoting Talmud, treatise Sanhedrim, folio 107, and Sota, folio 47; Eliphas Lévi, _La Science des Esprits_, pp. 32, 33.

[88] According to the Koran, it was the Jews who said, "'Verily we have slain the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, an apostle of God.' Yet they slew him not, and they crucified him not, but they had only his likeness.... No sure knowledge had they about him, but followed an opinion, and they did not really slay him, but God took him up to Himself."--Sura iv. 150. See also Sura iii. 40. The Rev. J.M. Rodwell, in his translation of the Koran, observes in a footnote to the latter passage: "Muhammad probably believed that God took the dead body of Jesus to Heaven--for three hours, according to some--while the Jews crucified a man who resembled him."

[89] Sura iii. 30, 40.

[90] Sura xxi. 90.

[91] Sura iv. 150.

[92] Sura ii. 89, 250; v. 100.

[93] Sura v. 50.

[94] In the masonic periodical _Ars Quatuor Coronatorum_, Vol. XXIV, a Freemason (Bro. Sydney T. Klein) observes: "It is not generally known that one of the reasons why the Mohammedans removed their Kiblah from Jerusalem to Mecca was that they quarrelled with the Jews over Jesus Christ, and the proof of this may still be seen in the Golden Gate leading into the sacred area of the Temple, which was bricked up by the Mohammedans, and is bricked up to this day, because they declared that nobody should enter through that portal until Jesus Christ comes to judge the world, and this is stated in the Koran." I cannot trace this passage in the Koran, but much the same idea is conveyed by the Rev. J.M. Rodwell, who in the note above quoted adds: "The Muhammadans believe that Jesus on His return to earth at the end of the world will slay the Antichrist, die, and be raised again. A vacant place is reserved for His body in the Prophet's tomb at Medina."

[95] Graetz, _Geschichte der Juden_, III. 216-52.

[96] _The Essenes: their History and Doctrines_, an essay by Christian D. Ginsburg, LL.D. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1864).

[97] Ibid., p. 24.

[98] Edersheim (op. cit., I. 325) ably refutes both Graetz and Ginsburg on this point, and shows that "the teaching of Christianity was in a direction the opposite from that of Essenism." M. Vulliaud (op. cit., I. 71) dismisses the Essene origin of Christianity as unworthy of serious attention. "To maintain the Essenism of Jesus is a proof of frivolity or of invincible ignorance."

[99] Luke xvii. 7-9.

[100] Ginsburg, op. cit., pp. 15, 22, 55.

[101] Ginsburg, op. cit., p. 12.

[102] Fabre d'Olivet thinks this tradition had descended to the Essenes from Moses: "If it is true, as everything attests, that Moses left an oral law, it is amongst the Essenes that it was preserved. The Pharisees, who flattered themselves so highly on possessing it, only had its outward forms (_apparences_), as Jesus reproaches them at every moment. It is from these latter that the modern Jews descend, with the exception of a few real _savants_ whose secret tradition goes back to the Essenes."--_La Langue Hebraïque_, p. 27 (1815).

[103] Matter, _Histoire du Gnosticisme_, I. 44 (1844).

[104] _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article on Cabala.

[105] Matter, op. cit., II. 58.

[106] Ragon, _Maçonnerie Occulte_, p. 78.

[107] "The Cabala is anterior to the Gnosis, an opinion which Christian writers little understand, but which the erudites of Judaism profess with a legitimate assurance."--Matter, op. cit.. Vol. I. p. 12.

[108] _Jewish Encyclopædia_, article on Cabala.

[109] John Yarker, _The Arcane Schools_, p. 167; Matter, op. cit., II. 365, quoting Irenæus.

[110] Eliphas Lévi, _Histoire de la Magie_, p. 189.

[111] Eliphas Lévi, op. cit., p. 218.

[112] Dean Milman, _History of the Jews_ (Everyman's Library edition), II. 491.

[113] Matter, II. 171; E. de Faye, _Gnostiques et Gnosticisme_, p. 349 (1913).

[114] De Luchet, _Essai sur la Secte des Illuminés_, p. 6.

[115] _Manuel d'Histoire Ecclésiastique_, par R. P. Albers, S.J., adapté par René Hedde, O.P., p. 125 (1908); Matter, op. citt., II. 197.

[116] Matter, op. cit., II. 188.

[117] Matter, op. cit., II. 199, 215.

[118] Eliphas Lévi, _Histoire de la Magie_, pp. 217, 218.

[119] Matter, op. cit., II. 115, III. 14; S. Baring-Gould, _The Lost and Hostile Gospels_ (1874).

[120] Matter, op. cit., II 364.

[121] Ibid., p. 365.

[122] Ibid., p. 369.

[123] _Some Notes on Various Gnostic Sects and their Possible Influence on Freemasonry_, by D. F. Ranking, republished from _Ars Quatuor Coronatorum_ (Vol. XXIV, p. 202, 1911) in pamphlet form, p. 7.

[124] Hastings, _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, article on Manicheism.

[125] Zohar, treatise Bereschith, folio 54 (De Pauly's translation, I. 315).

[126] The Yalkut Shimoni is a sixteenth-century compilation of Haggadic Midrashim.

[127] Principal authorities consulted for this chapter: Joseph von Hammer, _The History of the Assassins_ (Eng. trans., 1835); Silvestre de Sacy, _Exposé de le Religion des Druses (1838) and Mémoires sur la Dynastie des Assassins_ in _Mémoires de l'Institut Royal de France_, Vol. IV. (1818); Hastings _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_; Syed Ameer Ali, _The Spirit of Islam_ (1922); Dr. F. W. Bussell, _Religious Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages_ (1918).

[128] Reinhart Dozy, _Spanish Islam_ (Eng. trans.), pp. 403-5.

[129] Claudio Jannet, _Les Précurseurs de la Franc-Moçonnerie_, p. 58 (1887).

[130] The following account is given by de Sacy in connexion with Abdullah ibn Maymūn (op. cit., I. Ixxiv), and Dr. Bussell (_Religious Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages_, p. 353) includes it in his chapter on the Karmathites. Von Hammer, however, gives it as the programme of the Dar ul Hikmat, and this seems more probable since the initiation consists of nine degrees and Abdullah's society of Batinis, into which Karmath had been initiated, included only seven. Yarker (_The Arcane Schools_, p. 185) says the two additional degrees were added by the Dar ul Hikmat. It would appear then that de Sacy, in placing this account before his description of the Karmathites, was anticipating. The point is immaterial, the fact being that the same system was common to all these ramifications of Ismailis, and that of the Dar ul Hikmat varied but little from that of Abdullah and Karmath.

[131] Von Hammer, op. cit. (Eng. trans.), pp. 36, 37.

[132] Von Hammer, _The History of the Assassins_, pp. 45, 46.

[133] Dr. F. W. Bussell, _Religious Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages_, p. 368.

[134] Von Hammer, op. cit., p. 55.

[135] Von Hammer, op. cit., pp. 83, 89.

[136] Ibid., p. 164.

[137] _Développement des abus introduits dans la Franc-maçonnerie_, p. 56 (1780).

[138] Jules Loiseleur, _La doctrine secrète des Templiers_, p. 89.

[139] Dr. F W. Bussell, D.D., _Religions Thought and Heresy in the Middle Ages_, pp. 796, 797 note.

[140] G. Mollat, _Les Popes d'Avignon_, p. 233 (1912).

[141] Michelet, _Procès des Templiers_, I. 2 (1841). This work largely consists of the publication in Latin of the Papal _bulls_ and trials of the Templars before the Papal Commission in Paris contained in the original document once preserved at _Notre Dame_. Michelet says that another copy was sent to the Pope and kept under the triple key of the Vatican. Mr. E. J. Castle, K.C., however, says that he has enquired about the whereabouts of this copy and it is no longer in the Vatican (_Proceedings against the Templars in France and in England for Heresy_, republished from _Ars Quatuor Coronatorum_, Vol. XX. Part III. p. 1).

[142] M. Raynouard, _Monuments historiques relatifs à la condemnation des Chevaliers du Temple et de l'abolition de leur Ordre_, p. 17 (1813).

[143] Michelet, op. cit. I. 2 (1841).

[144] Michelet, _Procès des Templiers_, II. 333.

[145] Ibid., pp. 295, 333.

[146] Ibid., pp. 290, 299, 300.

[147] "Dixit per juramentum suum quod ita est terribilis figure et aspectus quod videbatur sibi quod esset figura cujusdam demonis, dicendo gallice _d'un maufé_, et quod quocienscumque videbat ipsum tantus timor eum invadebat, quod vix poterat illud respicere nisi cum maximo timore et tremore."--Ibid., p. 364.

[148] Ibid., pp. 284, 338. "Ipse minabatur sibi quod nisi faceret, ipse ponereteum in carcere perpetuo."--Ibid., p. 307.

[149] "Et fuit territus plus quam unquam fuit in vita sua: et statim unus eorum accepit eum per gutur, dicens quod oportebat quod hoc faceret, vel moreretur."--Ibid., p. 296.

[150] Mollat, op. cit., p. 241.

[151] _Procès des Templiers_, I. 3: Mr. E. J. Castle, op. cit. Part III. p. 3. (It should be noted that Mr. Castle's paper is strongly in favour of the Templars.)

[152] Ibid., I. 4.

[153] _Procès des Templiers_, I. 5.

[154] Michelet in Preface to Vol. I. of _Procès des Templiers_.

[155] Jules Loiseleur, _La Doctrine Secrète des Templiers_, p. 40 (1872).

[156] Ibid., p. 16.

[157] _Proceedings against the Templars in France and England for Heresy_, by E. J. Castle, Part I. p. 16, quoting Rymer, Vol. III. p. 37

[158] Ibid., Part II. p. 1.

[159] Ibid., Part II. pp. 25-7.

[160] Ibid., Part II. p. 30.

[161] "Another witness of the Minor Friars told the Commissioners he had heard from Brother Robert of Tukenham that a Templar had a son who saw through a partition that they asked one professing if he believed in the Crucified, showing him the figure, whom they killed upon his refusing to deny Him, but the boy, some time after, being asked if he wished to be a Templar said no, because he had seen this thing done. Saying this, he was killed by his father.... The twenty-third witness, a Knight, said that his uncle entered the Order healthy and joyfully, with his birds and dogs, and the third day following he was dead, and he suspected it was on account of the crimes he had heard of them, and that the cause of his death was he would not consent to the evil deeds perpetrated by other brethren."--Ibid., Part II. p. 13.

[162] F. Funck-Brentano, _Le Moyen Age_, p. 396 (1922).

[163] Ibid., p. 384.

[164] F. Funck Brentano, op. cit., p. 396.

[165] Ibid., p. 387.

[166] Dean Milman, _History of Latin Christianity_, VII. 213.

[167] E. J. Castle, op. cit., Part I. p. 22.

[168] Thus even M. Mollat admits: "En tout cas leurs dépositions, défavorables à l'Ordre, l'impressionnèrent si vivement que, par une série de graves mesures, il abandonna une à une toutes ses oppositions."--_Les Papes d'Avignon_, p. 242.

[169] F. Funck-Brentano, op. cit., p. 392.

[170] E. J. Castle, _Proceedings against the Templars, A.Q.C._, Vol. XX.