Part 1 (2/2)

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 n.o.bility 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 n.o.ble. 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 Siberia who was so positive in his statement that Nilus was in Irkutsk is also concealed. And Serge Nilus to whom Saint Sergei ”appeared twice in a vision” ”is said to have written articles in the Russian press” of which n.o.body has knowledge.

In Germany, Nilus is described as follows:

”Sergius Nilus was an employee of the Russian secret police department, of the _okhrana_, connected with the Church, especially relating to 'foreign religions.' He lived for some time at the Optina Pustina monastery. In 1901 he published a book ent.i.tled 'The Great in the Small and the Anti-Christ.' According to the Lutsch Sveta, Nilus claims to have received in 1901 a copy of the text of the Protocols from the secret archives of the Main Zionist organization in France, but he published the 'protocols' only in 1905. A second edition appeared in 1911, and finally another edition was brought out in the beginning of 1917, but all copies are said to have been destroyed.”

”The Cause of the World Unrest,” an anonymous book published in England and reprinted in this country, speaks of Nilus and the ”Protocols” as follows:

”In the year 1903 a Russian, Serge Nilus, published a book ent.i.tled _The Great in Little_. The second edition, which was published at Tsarskoye Selo in 1905, had an additional chapter, the twelfth, under the heading 'Anti-Christ as a Near Political Possibility.' This chapter consisted of some twenty pages of introduction followed by the text of twenty-four 'Protocols of Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion,' and the book ends with some twenty pages of commentaries on these protocols by Nilus.

”Directly after the protocols, comes a statement by Nilus that they are 'signed by representatives of Zion of the thirty-third degree.' These protocols were secretly extracted or were stolen from a whole volume of protocols. All this was got by my correspondent out of the secret depositories of the Head Chancellery of Zion. This Chancellery is at present on French territory.”

In the edition of 1917 Sergius Nilus wrote:

”My book has already reached the fourth edition, but it is only definitely known to me now and in a manner worthy of belief, and that through Jewish sources, that these protocols are nothing other than the strategic plans for the conquest of the world under the heel of Israel, and worked out by the leaders of the Jewish people-and read by the 'Prince of Exile,' Theodor Herzl, during the first Zionist Congress, summoned by him in August, 1897, in Basle.”

It will be shown later that the so-called Butmi edition of the ”protocols” published in 1907 contains the definite statement of the man who claims to have translated them into Russian from the French in 1901 that the Elders of Zion mentioned in the Protocols are not to be confounded with the Zionist movement.

In the 1917 edition Sergius Nilus wrote:

”In 1901 I came into possession of a ma.n.u.script, and this comparatively small book was destined to cause a deep change in my entire viewpoint as can only be caused in the heart of man by Divine Power. It was comparable with the miracle of making the blind see. 'May Divine acts show on him.'

”This ma.n.u.script was called 'the protocols of the Zionist Men of Wisdom,' and it was given to me by the now deceased leader of the Tchernigov n.o.bility, who later became vice-governor of Stavropol, Alexis Nikolayevitch Sukhotin. I had already begun to work with my pen for the glory of the Lord, and I was friendly with Sukhotin.

_He was a man of my opinion_, that is, extremely conservative, as they are now termed.

”Sukhotin told me that he in turn had obtained the ma.n.u.script from a lady who always lived abroad. This lady was a n.o.blewoman from Tchernigov. He mentioned her by name, but I have forgotten it. He said that she obtained it in some mysterious way, by theft, I believe.

”Sukhotin also said that one copy of the ma.n.u.script was given by this lady to Sipiagin, the Minister of the Interior, upon her return from abroad, and that Sipiagin was subsequently killed. He said other things of the same mysterious character. But when I first became acquainted with the contents of the ma.n.u.script I was convinced that its terrible, cruel and straight-forward truth is witness of its true origin from the 'Zionist Men of Wisdom,' and that no other evidence of its origin would be needed.”

Feodor Roditchev, one of Russia's most famous liberals, a member of the n.o.bility, a former member of the Duma, writing recently of the Nilus protocols and of Sukhotin whom Nilus described as a man of his own opinion, says:

”For months I hear on all sides about the Nilus book and its success in England, and I am asked, Who is Nilus? There was a Nilus, an a.s.sociate justice of the Moscow District Court. It is said that the ma.n.u.script was given to Nilus by Sukhotin, the notorious zemstvo official of Chernsk.

”The Berlin edition contains no mention of Sukhotin, but in that edition Nilus said, 'Pray for the soul of the boyar Alexis.'

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