he 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. I