s were rescued
and given to the world. This explanation is taken from the German
version published in Charlottenburg. The introduction to that edition
says that the Protocols, having been read from day to day at the Basle
Congress, were sent as read to Frankfort on the Main. The disclosure of
them came through the infidelity of the messenger.

The 1917 edition is published with a prologue and an epilogue, like a
drama, which indeed it is, with all the ingredients of melodrama--a
villain, a mysterious woman, a Grand Duke, a conspiracy to destroy the
world, and a saint--Nilus, who convicts himself in his own writings of
falsification in the giving of these various accounts of how the
Protocols came into his possession.

Nothing is known of Sergius Nilus. Russian standard reference books and
encyclopedias contain no mention of his name.

The anonymous American editor of the Nilus book gives the following
information about Nilus:

"Serge Nilus, in the 1905 edition of whose book was first published the
_Zionist Protocols_, was, as he states, born in the year 1862, of
Russian parents holding liberal opinions. His family was fairly well
known in Moscow, for its members were educated people who were firm in
their allegiance to the Tsar and the Greek Church. On one side he is
said to have been connected by marriage with the nobility of the Baltic
provinces. Nilus himself was graduated from the University of Moscow and
early entered the civil service, obtaining a small appointment in the
law courts. Later, he received a post under the Procurator of a
provincial court in the Caucasus. Finally, tiring of the law, he went to
the Government of Orel, where he was a landowner and a noble. His
spiritual life had been tumultuous and full of trouble, and finally he
entered the Troitsky-Sergevsky Monastery near Moscow. 'In answer to his
appeal for pardon, Saint Sergei, stern and angry, appeared to him twice
in a vision. He left the Monastery a converted man.'

"From 1905 until the present, little is known of his activities.
Articles are said to have appeared from time to time in the Russian
press from his pen. A returning traveller from Siberia in August, 1919,
was positive in his statement that Nilus was in Irkutsk in June of that
year. Whether his final fate was that of Admiral Kolchak is not known."

The American editor of Sergius Nilus's book containing the "Protocols"
is hiding behind anonymity. The name of the traveller from Si