against the
danger of rejecting, or ignoring, or undervaluing unpleasant and
unwelcome facts, I am bound to say that those who find in these
alleged protocols a sufficient basis for bringing the Jewish race
under indictment seem to me to have brought preconceived suspicion and
fear of the Jew to their study of the documents themselves.
Personally, I can find nothing in them which suggests any highly
organized intelligence, such as the leaders of the Jewish race
represent and command in abundance; rather, they seem to me to clearly
indicate the disordered mind and distorted vision of a very common
type of monomaniac, the genus "crank."

I believe that historical study is not one of Mr. Ford's strong
points, but, even so, he must be aware of the fact that it is one of
the commonest things in history to encounter charges of conspiracy
directed against religious and political sects, supported by more or
less plausible arguments and believed by considerable numbers of
people. Were it necessary to my purpose, and did time permit, I could
quite easily fill a considerable volume with illustrations of this
fact. For example, there exists a great literature devoted to the
object of proving that the Vatican is the headquarters of such a
conspiracy to bring about or to attain world domination. Thousands of
books and pamphlets have been written to convict the Jesuits of such a
conspiracy, many of them far more convincing than these protocols.
Pamphlets aiming to convince the American people that the Knights of
Columbus is an organization aiming at the overthrow of the American
Republic and the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope
over the United States have been circulated by the million. It is a
matter of court record that this charge has been supported by the
publication of what purported to be exact copies of oaths pledging the
members of that organization to the end stated. Let me say at once
that I do not credit these sensational stories and charges. I have
confined myself to charges made against one of the two great sections
of Christianity for reasons which seem to me peculiarly cogent. The
charges made against the Jews have produced the most terrible results
in the countries where the Roman Catholic Church is strongest, and no
leader of the Christian religion has such strong reason for denouncing
such appeals to prejudice and hatred as the head of that Church.

Belief in widespread conspiracies directed a