d such
evidence as is available indicates that the protocols are the product
of a single diseased and depraved mind--the documents cease to possess
any great significance and the terrible injustice and frightfully
dangerous consequences of charging them against the Jewish people are
obvious. We must, therefore, pay critical attention to the origin of
the protocols and the circumstances surrounding their publication, as
well as to any internal evidences of their genuineness or otherwise.

III

THE MYSTERY OF THE PROTOCOLS

First of all, then, what do we actually know about the origin of these
protocols? In the year 1903 a book was published at Solotarevo in
Russia, entitled _The Great in Little_. The reputed author of the book
was one Prof. Sergei Nilus, concerning whom we have no absolutely
reliable information. Author of a book which has made an enormous
sensation in many lands and become the subject of furious controversy,
he is quite unknown. No responsible person in or out of Russia has
ever positively identified Nilus, so far as I have been able to
discover. From what he says of himself it is practically certain that
he was in the service of the infamous Secret Police Agency of the late
Tsar Nicholas II. For reasons which will presently appear, I am
disposed to believe that the very un-Russian name Nilus is really a
pseudonym.

In a second edition of his book, published in 1905, Nilus gives a
brief autobiographical account of himself. He says that he was born in
1862 of Russian parents who held liberal opinions, and that his family
was well known in Moscow, its members being educated people who were
firm in their allegiance to the Tsar and the Greek Church. This is
hardly what a Russian of the period would describe as holding "liberal
opinions," but let that pass. Nilus claims to have been graduated from
Moscow University and to have held a number of civil-service posts,
all of them, so far as his specifications go, connected with the
police and judicial systems. He went to the government of Orel, where
he became a landowner and a sort of petty noble. He entered the
Troitsky-Sergevsky Monastery, near Moscow, or so he says. Although
numerous efforts have been made in Russia to find this Sergei Nilus,
none has succeeded.

It is true that a number of persons have testified to the existence of
Sergei Nilus, but in each case a different person has been referred
to, though Nilus is not a Russian name or co