n 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 Mazeres, 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
Revolution_, 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 disci