tzky,
Professor Kokovtsev, Kartashov, Bulgakov, Berdyayev--men of profound
intellect and a living conscience. In them the counterfeit ravings
of the ignorant monk (Nilus) evoked but a smile of contempt. The
low level of the circles in which men like Nilus moved and worked
is only too well known. It was the world of police denunciations,
divorce perjuries, monastic servility and feigned, blasphemous
piety. In order to attract attention, Nilus's 'Protocols of the
Wise Men of Zion' had to emigrate from Russia. And the further away
they went, the better they fared."

CHAPTER TWO

THE STORY FROM WHICH THE PROTOCOLS WERE FABRICATED

Essence of "Protocols" Was German Fiction of "Sir John Retcliffe"--Who
Was "Retcliffe"?--His Infamous Record--His Bloodcurdling Story--The Meeting
in the Cemetery--An Avowed Myth--Meeting Every Hundred Years Attended by
"Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel"--The "Son of the
Accursed" Also Attends and Provides Comic Interludes.

The query now naturally arises, what is the origin of these much
heralded "Protocols" which were published in Russia by Sergius Nilus in
1905, and a copy of which, it is triumphantly announced, is now in the
British Museum?

The anti-Jewish propagandists everywhere content themselves with the
"history" of the origin of the "Protocols" as given by the "Russian
mystic" Sergius Nilus. But fortunately "murder will out," and the
criminals who perpetrated the stupendous forgery for the purpose of
slandering the Jews have left behind clues that enable one to visualize
the very process that they pursued in the perpetration of their crime.

In 1866-1870 there appeared in Berlin a series of novels entitled
"Biarritz--Rome" purporting to have been written by "Sir John Retcliffe,"
the pseudonym of Herman Goedsche, a German novelist with an unsavory
past. To conceal his identity and to convey the impression that the
antisemitism with which his writings abounded emanated from English
sources, he selected "Sir John Retcliffe" as his pen-name.

According to _Meyer's Konversations Lexikon_ (Sixth edition, 1904,
Volume VIII, page 77), Herman Goedsche was born in February, 1815, in
Trachenberg, Silesia, and died on November 8, 1878, at Warmbrunn. He was
employed in the postal service, but as he was implicated in the Waldeck
forgery case, he left the service in 1849, and devoted himself to
literary work. Under the name of