Cause of World Unrest - Nesta Webster |
The intelligent reader may have surmised from our last chapter that Albert Pike's enigmatical passage may have had some connection with the founding of the International.
The history of that remarkable movement takes us back to the agitation which preceded the stormy years of 1848 and 1849. Benjamin Disraeli, in his Coningsby, written in 1844, testified beforehand that "that mighty Revolution which is at this moment preparing in Germany, and which will be, in fact, a second and greater Reformation, and of which so little is yet known in England, is developing entirely under the auspices of Jews."
And Disraeli was at least so far right that the two ablest heads in that movement were Jewish—Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx.
Now as to these two men, there is one very remarkable coincidence which has never before been noticed. They were not only Jews; but they both, in their youth, dedicated their lives to revenge.
Ferdinand Lassalle (or Lassal) was born of Jewish parents at Breslau on April 11, 1825. In Breslau, it should be explained, the Jews were not emancipated until 1843. In his youth he kept a diary, and that diary (for the years 1840-41) was afterwards published by Paul Lindau.
In that diary (on February 1, 1840) Lassalle writes:
"I think I am one of the best Jews in existence, although I disregard the ceremonial law. I could, like the Jew in Bulwer's Leila, risk my life to deliver the Jews from their present crushing condition". He speaks of his childish dream "to make the Jews armed—I at their head—free."
And on July 30, 1840, commenting on certain accusations of ritual murder then being made against the Jews, he says:
". . . the time will soon be at hand when we, in very deed, will help ourselves with Christian blood. Aide-toi et le del t'aidera. The dice are ready: it only depends upon the player."
So far Lassalle. Let us now turn to Marx.
In his Karl Marx, His Life and Work, John Spargo says that the true patronymic of the family seems to have been Mordechai. Mordechai, a grandfather of Karl Marx, was a rabbi:
" . . . one of a long line of rabbis, unbroken from the sixteenth century until his son Heinrich, father of Karl Marx, adopted law instead of religion for a career. On his mother's side, also, Karl Marx had a long line of rabbinical ancestors."
But in 1824, when Karl was six years old, Heinrich and his wife suddenly embraced Christianity, and they with their children were baptized. Mr. Spargo tries to make out that Heinrich forsook Judaism as a matter of conviction, but we can hardly credit such an explanation, and for the following reasons: At the time Heinrich adopted Christianity the Jews in the Rhine Province (the Marxes lived in Trier) were subject to extortion and mild persecution at the hands of the Prussian officials. The Code Napoleon of March 17, 1808, had been issued provisionally for a period of only ten years, and fixed the status of the Jews in the Rhine Province; and Heinrich Marx was a convinced disciple of that enemy of Christianity, Voltaire. Moreover, Liebknecht, long the intimate associate of Karl Marx, and himself a Jew and a revolutionary, says in his Memoirs that the acceptance of Christianity by the parents was compulsory, that it was due to an official edict by the Prussian Government compelling all Jews holding official positions or engaged in the learned professions to forgo these or formally renounce Judaism. The same writer says that the boy Karl felt keenly this insult to his race, of which he was so proud, and that "his whole life was a reply and a revenge."
Spargo and other biographers of Karl Marx naturally do not accept this explanation of their hero's activities, and do their best to discredit Liebknecht. But the story, despite their efforts, is, as we have seen, historically credible.
Here then we have a motive hitherto unsuspected by those Gentiles who follow the Red Banner—the motive of destroying the Christian nations in revenge for the wrongs of Judaism.
But to proceed. Karl Marx succeeded, by September 28, 1864, in founding the International Working Men's Association—inaugurated at St. Martin's Hall in London. In organizing this movement, Marx had considerable trouble with Giuseppe Mazzini, who had himself organized the Italian Working Men's Association, and desired to control the movement. Mazzini prepared a draft address, and presented it to the General Council of the International; but it was turned down in favour of another written by Marx, in much the same terms as the famous Manifesto. Mazzini thereupon withdrew from the International, and for the rest of his life was a bitter opponent of Marx.
But Karl Marx was now to encounter a more formidable opponent than Mazzini. Michail Bakunin has been called the Russian Revolutionary Lion. He was, in fact, a Slav, and his gospel was a curious mixture of pan-Slavism and Anarchy. Part of his plan was to organize a great Slav Power to include all the Slav elements of Europe, and with this engine he designed to destroy not only the Russian Empire, but the German and Austrian Empires as well.
Now, we have no means of discovering the real motive behind these ideas. But that the inspiration was at least as much that of race as of class is evident. Bakunin bitterly denounced Karl Marx and his "clique of Jews"; Karl Marx as bitterly denounced Bakunin's pan-Slavism.
Can it be that the fight between Socialist and Anarchist veiled and covered another fight more fierce and instinctive—between Slav and Jew? Certain it is that Karl Marx's immediate plans did not include the destruction of the German Empire. Marx, despite his exile, had certain connections with the Prussian Government, and he used all his influence in the International movement to weaken France and strengthen Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. But to return to the conflict.
Bakunin became a member of the International by joining the Branche Romane at Geneva. He immediately began his campaign to secure control of the entire movement. He formed within the International the Alliance de la Democratie Socialist, with a programme of its own and branches throughout Europe. When Marx got wind of this plot, he got the General Council of the International to denounce the Alliance as a scheme for disrupting the International. Bakunin capitulated, dissolved the Alliance, but immediately reorganized its branches as branches of the International! Marx said nothing, but at the Basle Congress of 1869 he got his friend Eccarius to propose that the Congress should give the General Council the power to expel any section contravening the principles of the association. To everybody's astonishment, Bakunin supported the motion. He thought that his supporters at the Congress outnumbered those of Marx, but he was wrong. He had still a long way to go before he finally overthrew his rival.
"Taking advantage," says Mr. John Spargo, in his Life of Karl Marx, "of the situation in Europe which resulted from the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, Bakunin went on building up his separate organization, the Alliance, especially in Italy and Spain. . . . Many of those who joined the Alliance had no idea that they were being used by Bakunin as a means of injuring the International."
The struggle came to a head in September, 1872, when the International Congress met at The Hague. Marx had, at first, not intended to be present, but Bakunin had let it be known that he would attend for the purpose of "exposing Marx and his clique." Marx and Engels accepted the challenge. After a five days' word battle they routed Bakunin and prevented him from capturing the International, but to save their society from further molestation, they decided to remove their headquarters to New York. In 1876, the International was formally dissolved at a meeting held in Philadelphia.
These conflicts remain obscure; but they at least suggest an explanation of Albert Pike's enigmatical passage: "Masonry has not only been profaned; but it has served as a veil and a pretext for the plottings of Anarchy, by the secret influence of the avengers of Jacques de Molay."
Hitherto we have explored a dim subterranean twilight region by the candlelight of hints and surmises. We have not attempted to prove anything in the strict or even in the historical sense of that much abused word. No, we have merely attempted to indicate the probability of an organization of a secret order—a "terrible sect"—working for revolution in the world, and the other probability that this sect is controlled by Hebraic conspirators—not indeed orthodox Jews—who aspire to the dominion of the world.
That idea is not too vaguely indicated in a very remarkable passage of a book from which we have already quoted, the Abbe Joseph Lemann's L'Entree des Israelites dans la Societe francaise, which was published in 1886. There is a plan, says Lemann—a plan "d'enfer"—
". . . to disorganize at one blow Christian society, and the beliefs and customs of the Jews, then with this double organization to bring about a state of things where, religiously speaking, there will be neither Christian nor Jew, but only men stripped of divinity, and where, politically speaking, the Christian will become, if not the slave, at least the inferior of the Jew, the master. . . At the hour in which we hold the pen we see this plan unrolling itself in sombre horizons and great funereal lines."
Now what does this passage suggest? It suggests that there is some formidable secret organization, some terrible sect, controlled and directed by Jews for the destruction of our present social order. It suggests also that these Jews are not orthodox Jews, but Jews who have freed themselves from the faith of their ancestors. And it suggests further that the design of these people is not merely anarchy but to create a world domination in which these infidel Jews are masters, and in which the Christian peoples are, if not their slaves, at least their inferiors.
Here, again, however, we are moving in a world of shadows, hints, and surmises, of "sombre horizons and funereal lines." The man of the world, who believes in nothing except what he finds proved, and who refuses to consider anything but a clear and precise statement, may be inclined to dismiss this passage as mere moonshine.
But now we are to emerge suddenly from shadows and moonshine into a fierce blaze of light. For we have now to consider a document which professes to set forth fully and plainly the plan of campaign of this "formidable sect" for the destruction of the social order. Let us now consider what this document is.
In the year 1903 a Russian, Serge Nilus, published a book entitled The Great in Little, The second edition, which was published at Tsarskoe Selo in 1905, had an additional chapter, the twelfth, under the heading "Anti-Christ as a Near Political Possibility". This chapter consisted of some twenty pages of introduction followed by the text of twenty-four "Protocols of Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion," and the book ends with some twenty pages of commentaries on these protocols by Nilus.
Directly after the protocols, comes a statement by Nilus that they are "signed by representatives of Zion of the thirty-third degree. These protocols were secretly extracted (or were stolen) from a whole volume of protocols. All this was got by my correspondent out of the secret depositories of the Head Chancellery of Zion. This Chancellery is at present on French territory."
An English translation of these protocols has now been published (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 2s. 6d. net). This translation, which we have compared with the Russian 1905 edition in the British Museum, is substantially correct, but in a work of such importance we have preferred to use our own translation.
Now the contention of Nilus is that these protocols of a secret organization or government of Jewry for the return of this organization or government to Zion, and for the government of the whole world by a Jewish dispensation. This plan, Nilus asserts, is not of yesterday but has been developed through many ages. What is usually understood by the Zionist movement, initiated at Basle in 1897, was not, it is said, a modern development of Jewry, but an indiscreet revelation of part of a plan long entertained. For that reason—i.e., that the Zionist movement was a revelation to the world of secret designs—it was not regarded with favour by the real leaders nor by certain great Jewish capitalists. That indiscretion was committed by the impetuous Dr. Theodor Hertzl, a Vienna journalist and dramatic critic, who energetically brought forward to a world-wide public certain age-old plans of these secret leaders of Jewry.
The symbolism of the snake, says Nilus, typifies a coiling and encircling movement by which
". . . all Europe, and through Europe all the rest of the world, by the use of all forms of force, by wars of conquest, and by economic pressure, will be subjected to the influence of Jewry. . . . All the States passed over by the symbolic snake, not excluding Germany, with her apparent might, are in reality undermined by constitutional Liberalism and economic derangement. On the economic side, England and Germany are still spared, but only until such time as the irrevocable conquest of Russia, towards which all energies are now concentrated, has been accomplished. . . . Constantinople is the eighth and last stage towards Jerusalem."
We have said that this document flashes a blaze of light, and so it does, but whether this document is genuine or not, whether the blaze of light is true or false, can only be judged by internal evidence and probabilities. We may say at once that Nilus advances nothing in the nature of real evidence to prove the document, and that his account of how it came into his hands consists of assertion only, without evidence to support it. We can only say that if the document is not genuine it is a very extraordinary forgery, since it predicts with certainty not only the fact but the manner and mechanism of a great revolution before the event. Moreover, it says before the event that this destruction will be carried out by a Jewish organization—a formidable sect—and such evidence as we have of the Russian Revolution confirms this prediction.
Thus, for example, Lieutenant-Colonel Malone, the Member of Parliament who went on a friendly visit to the Bolsheviks and returned in the latter part of 1919 to England, stated in the House of Commons on November 5th:
"It is said openly that the Soviet Government is a Government of the Jews. Why, there are not in Lenin's Cabinet as many Jews or crypto-Jews as there are in any other Cabinet in Europe. There is only one—Trotsky. Of course, there are Jews in control in Russia. There are Jews behind the commissars, and there is no doubt that in Russia at this time the Jews are not subject to those horrible persecutions which they have endured for countless ages."
And this is supported by numerous Christian refugees from Russia, who all assert that the chief actors in the Revolution are Jewish, and that the Jewish bourgeoisie have been spared by the revolutionaries.
Here, then, are two very remarkable pieces of corroborative evidence: first, that the document was published before the event which it predicted, and, second, that those whom it states to be the conspirators are afterwards found to be the principal agents of the Revolution.
We shall not begin the examination of the document itself at this stage of our inquiry, but we shall content ourselves merely with a quotation from Disraeli's novel Coningsby, which is well worth reading over again in the light of recent happenings. Those who know the novel will remember the mysterious character Sidonia, who describes himself as a Spanish Jew and an international power. He tells Coningsby how his ancestors had settled in Aragon before the Moorish invasion, how they had been persecuted and had adopted the veil of Christianity, remaining Jews in secret, how they had betrayed Spain to the Moors, and how they had again been persecuted when Ferdinand and Isabella re-established Christian domination, how they had again disguised themselves as Christians, but how as soon as their descendants had reached England, he had set up the Mosaic altar. He refers to his tutor, Rebello—
". . . .a Jesuit before the Revolution, since then an exiled Liberal leader, now a member of the Spanish Cortes; Rebello was always a Jew." He refers also to "the subterranean agency of which the world in general knows so little, but which exercises so great an influence on public events."
And he proceeds:
"You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the Jews do not greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews; that mysterious Russian diplomacy which so alarms Western Europe is organized and practically carried on by Jews; that mighty Revolution which is at this moment preparing in Germany, and which will be in fact a second and greater Reformation, and of which so little is yet known in England, is developing entirely under the auspices of Jews."