Chapter XVII: Part II: The Present (4)

One of the most zealous enterprises of this great society [the Carbonarios] is, in their own words, to exterminate "the Christian myth" in the minds of the nation of Portugal. The little children in the schools have badges pinned into their clothes with the words "No God! No religion!" and a British tourist who made a journey throughout the country of Portugal met bands of innocent babes carrying banners, on which the inscription was "We have no need of God."[750]

Is it only a coincidence that last year a Socialist and Communist meeting in Trafalgar Square displayed a red banner bearing the motto: "No King, no God, no Law"?[751]

I repeat: It is not an economic revolution which forms the plan of the real directors of the movement, it is neither the "dictatorship of the proletariat" nor the reorganization of society by the Intelligentsia of "Labour"; it is the destruction of the Christian idea. Socialist orators may inveigh against corrupt aristocracy or "bloated Capitalists," but these are not in reality the people who will suffer most if the aim of the conspiracy is achieved. The world-revolution has always shown itself indulgent towards selfish and corrupt aristocrats, from the Marquis de Sade and the Duc d'Orléans onwards; it is the gentle, the upright, the benevolent, who have fallen victims to revolutionary fury.

Socialism with its hatred of all superiority, of noble virtues--loyalty and patriotism--with its passion for dragging down instead of building up, serves the purpose of the deeper conspiracy. If the Christian Intelligentsia can be destroyed or won over and the nation deprived of all its natural leaders, the world-revolutionaries reckon that they will be able to mould the proletariat according to their desires. This being so, the thing we now call Bolshevism forms only one phase of the movement which is carried on by countless different methods, apparently disconnected but all tending towards the same end. We have only to look around us in the 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. In _The Equinox--the Journal of Scientific Illuminism_, it is proposed that prostitutes should be placed on the same level as soldiers who have served their country and be honoured and pensioned by the State.[755] The community of women was not an idea that originated with the Russian Bolsheviks, but one that has run through all the revolutionary movements of the past.

The attempt to pervert all conceptions of beauty in the sphere of art serves to pave the way for moral perversion. In the _New York Herald_ two years ago there appeared a circular protesting against the so-called Modernistic cult in art as "world-wide Bolshevist propaganda." The circular went on to declare:

This aims to overthrow and destroy all existing social systems, including that of the arts. This modernistic degenerate cult is simply the Bolshevist philosophy applied in art. The triumph of Bolshevism therefore means the destruction of the present æsthetic system, the transportation of all æsthetic values, and the deification of ugliness.

The whole propaganda of the movement was said to be organized by "a coterie of European art-dealers"--elsewhere described as German--who had flooded the market with the works of artists who began as "a small group of neurotic egomaniacs in Paris styling themselves worshippers of Satan, the God of Ugliness." Some of these men were suffering from the "visual derangement" of the insane, whilst "many of the pictures exhibited another form of mania. The system of this is an incontrollable desire to mutilate the human body." Sadism, as we know, played a prominent part in both the French and Russian revolutions. The most important point in all this is not that degenerates should be found to perpetrate these abominations, but what the circular describes as the "Machiavellian campaign organized for the unloading of these works. Editions de luxe ... were published and sold by the picture dealers; ...every crafty device known to the picture trade was resorted to in order to discredit and destroy the heretofore universally accepted standards of aesthetics."[756]

This process of reversing all accepted standards may also be brought about by subtler methods. We have already seen that occult practices may lead to the obliteration of all sense of truth and of normal sexual instincts. Under the influence of so-called occult science, which is, in reality, simply powerful suggestion or self-hypnotism, all a man's natural impulses and inhibitive springs of action may be broken; he will no longer react to the conceptions of beauty or ugliness, or right or wrong, which, unknown to himself, formed the law of his being. Thus not only his conscious deeds but his subconscious mental processes may pass under the control of another, or become entirely deranged.

Much the same consequences may result from the Freud system of Psycho-Analysis, which, particularly by its insistence on sex, tends to subordinate the will to impulses of a harmful kind. An eminent American neuro-psychiatrist of New York has expressed his opinion on this subject in the following words:

The Freud theory is anti-Christian and subversive of organized society. Christianity teaches that the individual can resist temptation and Freudism teaches that the matter of yielding to or resisting temptation is one for which the individual is not wilfully responsible. Freudism makes of the individual a machine, absolutely controlled by subconscious reflexes.... It would of course be difficult to prove that psycho-analysis has been evolved as a destructive propaganda measure, but in one sense the point is immaterial. Whether conscious or unconscious, it makes for destructive effect.[757]

In general, the art of the conspiracy is not so much to create movements as to capture existing movements, often innocuous and even admirable in themselves, and turn them to a subversive purpose. Thus birth control, which--if combined with the restriction of alien immigration and carried out under proper direction--would provide a solution to the frightful problem of over-population, can without these provisos become a source of national weakness and demoralization. It is easy to see how a limitation of the native population would serve the cause of England's enemies by reducing her fighting forces and by making room for undesirable aliens. That the birth-control campaign may also be used for evil purposes is suggested by the fact that it has not been confined to our own overcrowded island, but has been carried on in France, where under-population has long constituted a tragedy. In 1903 and 1904 the "Ligue de la Régéneration Humaine," founded by Monsieur Paul Robin, in its organ _L'Émancipateur_ issued not only instructions on "the means how to avoid large families," but also pamphlets on "free love and free maternity."[758] The campaign of race-suicide was thus combined with the undermining of morality; legal families were to be limited and illegal births encouraged. This was quite in accord with the doctrines of the Grand Orient, in whose Temples, Monsieur Copin Albancelli points out, the principle of "la libre maternité"--known in this country as "the right to motherhood"--was advocated.

It is curious to notice that the apparently innocent invention of Esperanto receives support from the same quarter. This is not surprising since we know that the idea of a universal language has long haunted the minds of Freemasons. I have myself seen a document emanating from a body of French Masons stating that Esperanto is directly under the control of the three masonic powers of France--the Grand Orient, the Grande Loge Nationale, and the Droit Humain.

That it is largely used for promoting Bolshevism has been frequently stated. In July 1922, M. Bérard, Minister of Education, issued a circular "to the heads of all French Universities, academies, and colleges, calling on them not to help in any way in the teaching of Esperanto on the ground that Bolsheviks use it as one of their dangerous forms of propaganda."[759] A correspondent points out to me that another universal language, Ido, is used for propaganda by the Anarchists, and that several journals distributed by revolutionary societies, written in Ido, are "frankly and baldly Anarchical." The writer adds:

Last week I received a copy of _Libereso_ (Liberty), monthly organ of the Anarchist Section of the "Emancipating Star"--"Cosmopolitan Union of Labour-class Idists." It commands carrying out Anarchistic principles to their extreme limits; commends "La Ruzo" (ruse); is sarcastic regarding Socialism and Democracy.... It contains an appeal for help (in money) for the Anarchists imprisoned in Russia ... written by Alexander Berkmann and signed by him with Emma Goldmann and A. Schapiro.

Here, then, we have a revolutionary movement which is anti-Socialist and even anti-Bolshevist, which tends to prove the opinion I have already expressed, that Bolshevism is only one phase of the world-conspiracy. But if we explain this by the old antagonism between the opposing revolutionary camps of Anarchy and Socialism, how are we to account for the fact that the same destructive purpose animates people who are neither Anarchist nor Socialist, but can only be ranged in the category of extreme reaction? Of this phase of the movement Nietzsche provides the supreme example. In his imprecations against "the Crucified," the advocate of autocracy and militarism rivals the most infuriated of revolutionary Socialists. The whole spirit of perversion is contained in the description of Nietzsche by his friend Georges Brandes: "His thoughts stole inquisitively along forbidden paths: 'This thing passes for a value. Can we not turn it upside-down? This is regarded as good. Is it not rather evil?'" What is this but Satanism? The case of Nietzsche is not to be explained away by the fact that he died raving mad, since a number of apparently sane people still profess for him unbounded admiration, and whilst deriding Socialism and even attacking Bolshevism join in the war against Christian civilization. The conspiracy therefore exists apart from so-called democratic circles.

Not long ago I picked up an Italian novel by an anti-Socialist containing precisely the same diatribes against "Christian-bourgeois society" that are to be found in Anarchist and Bolshevist literature. "The family," says the author, "is the kernel of contemporary society and its base. Whoever would really reform or subvert must begin by reforming and subverting the family.... The family ... is the principal path of all unhappiness, of all vice, of all hypocrisy, of all moral ugliness, ..." and he goes on to show that the two countries which have proved themselves the sanest and the strongest are Germany and America, because they have advanced by long strides towards free love.[760]

The writer of these words may be of no importance, but they should be noted because they are symptomatic and help us to locate certain centres of infection.

It is impossible to observe all these miscellaneous movements going on all around us without being struck by the similarity of aim between them; each seems to form part of a common plan, which, like the separate pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, convey no meaning, but when fitted together make up a perfectly clear design. That there is somewhere in the background a point of contact is suggested by the fact that we find members of the different groups playing a double and a treble rôle, the same name occurring in the list of patrons in a Birth Control paper and in a revolutionary secret society, amongst the exponents of Psycho-Analysis and the members of an Irish Republican Committee.

With the open as with the secret forces the great method of warfare is the capture of public opinion. A hidden influence behind the press contributes powerfully to this end. Some of the subtlest disintegrating propaganda during the last seven years has emanated from the so-called "Capitalist press." The _Daily Herald_ is only the brass band of the Revolution. It is to the journals inspired and patronized by the Intelligentsia that we must turn to find the doctrines of Illuminism set forth with the most persuasive eloquence.[761]

More than eighty years ago a Frenchman endowed with extraordinary prophetic instinct foretold not only the danger that would one day come from Russia, but that the press would facilitate the destruction of civilization:

When our cosmopolitan democracy, bearing its last fruits, shall
have made of war a thing odious to whole populations, when the
nations calling themselves the most civilized on earth shall have
finished enervating themselves in their political debaucheries, ...
the floodgates of the North will open on us once again, then we
shall undergo a last invasion not of ignorant barbarians but of
cunning and enlightened masters, more enlightened than ourselves,
for they will have learnt from our own excesses how we can and must
be governed.

It is not for nothing that Providence piles up so many inactive
forces in the East of Europe. One day the sleeping giant will arise
and force will put an end to the reign of words. In vain, then,
distracted equality will call the old aristocracy to the help of
liberty; the weapon grasped again too late and wielded by hands too
long inactive will have become powerless. Society will perish for
having trusted to words void of sense or contradictory; then the
deceitful echoes of public opinion, the newspapers, wishing at all
costs to keep their readers, will push [the world] to ruin if only
to have something to relate for a month longer. They will kill
society to live upon its corpse.[762]

To-day the newspapers, no longer the echoes of public opinion but its supreme directors, throw open their columns to every form of disintegrating doctrine and close them to arguments that could effectually arrest the forces of destruction.

What is the hidden influence behind the press, behind all the subversive movements going on around us? Are there several Powers at work? Or is there one Power, one invisible group directing all the rest--the circle of the _real Initiates_?

14

PAN-GERMANISM

We have seen in the course of this book that the idea of a secret power working for world-revolution through both open movements and secret societies, is not a new one, but dates from the eighteenth century. In order to appreciate the continuity of this idea, let us recapitulate the testimonies of contemporaries, some of which have been already quoted in their context, but which when collected together and placed in chronological order make up a very remarkable chain of evidence.

In 1789 the Marquis de Luchet warned France of the danger of the Illuminati, whose object was world-domination.[763] In consequence of this "gigantic project" de Luchet foresees "a series of calamities of which the end is lost in the darkness of time, like unto those subterranean fires of which the insatiable activity devours the bowels of the earth and which escape into the air by violent and devastating explosions."[764]

In 1794 the Duke of Brunswick in his manifesto to the German lodges said:

A great sect arose, which, taking for its motto "the good and
happiness of man," worked in the darkness of the conspiracy to make
the happiness of humanity a prey for itself. This sect is known to
everyone: its brothers are known no less than its name.... The plan
they had formed for breaking all social ties and of destroying all
order was revealed in their speeches and acts.... Indomitable
pride, thirst of power, such were the only motives of this sect:
their masters had nothing less in view than the thrones of the
earth, and the government of the nations was to be directed by
their nocturnal clubs.[765]

In 1797 Montjoie, writing of the Orléaniste conspiracy, to which in an earlier work he had attributed the whole organization of the French Revolution in its first stages, observed:

I will not examine whether this wicked prince, thinking he was
acting in his personal interests, was not moved by that _invisible
hand_[766] which seems to have created all the events of our
revolution in order to lead us towards a goal that we do not see at
present, but which I think we shall see before long.[767]

In 1801 Monsignor de Savine "made allusions in prudent and almost terrified terms to some international sect ...a power superior to all others ...which has arms and eyes everywhere and which governs Europe to-day."[768]

In 1817 the Chevalier de Malet declared that "the authors of the Revolution are not more French than German, Italian, English, etc. They form a particular nation which took birth and has increased in the dark amidst all civilized nations with the object of subjecting them all to its domination."[769]

In 1835 the Carbonaro, Malegari, wrote to another member of the Carbonari:

We form an association of brothers in all points of the globe, we
have desires and interests in common, we aim at the emancipation of
humanity, we wish to break every kind of yoke, yet there is one
that is unseen, that can hardly be felt, yet that weighs on us.
Whence comes it? Where is it? No one knows, or at least no one
tells. The association is secret, even for us, the veterans of
secret societies.[770]

In 1852 Disraeli wrote:

It was neither parliaments nor populations, nor the course of
nature, nor the course of events, that overthrew the throne of
Louis Philippe ...the throne was surprised by the Secret Societies,
ever prepared to ravage Europe.... Acting in unison with a great
popular movement they may destroy society, as they did at the end
of the last century.[771]

In 1874 Père Deschamps, after his exhaustive study of secret societies, thus propounded the question:

We have now to ask ourselves whether there is anything but an
identity of doctrines and personal communications between the
members of the different sects, whether there is really a unity of
direction which binds together all the secret societies, including
Free Masonry. Here we touch on the most mysterious point of the
action of secret societies, on that which these national Grand
Orients who declare themselves independent of each other and
sometimes even excommunicate each other conceal most carefully
beneath a veil.[772]

Finally Deschamps is led to the conclusion that there is "a secret council which directs all masonic societies,"[773] that there are secret lairs where the chiefs of the sects agree together on their work of destruction.[774]

It would be easy to multiply quotations of this kind taken from many different sources. Whether the men who expressed these opinions were, as we are frequently told, suffering from delusions or not, the fact remains that the idea of a hidden hand behind world-revolution has existed for at least 135 years. And when we compare these utterances with Monsieur Copin Albancelli's description of an inner circle secretly directing the activities of the Grand Orient, and with the conclusions reached by members of other secret societies, that such a circle exists behind all occult and masonic societies of a subversive kind, we are necessarily led to enquire: is there one circle or rather one Power behind both open and secret organizations working for the overthrow of the existing social order and Christian civilization? If so, what is this power?

Now, to leave speculation for the moment and come to known facts, everyone who has seriously studied these matters is aware that there are at the present moment five principal organized movements at work in the world with which ordered government has to contend, that may be summarized as follows:

1. Grand Orient Freemasonry.
2. Theosophy with its innumerable ramifications.
3. Nationalism of an aggressive kind, now represented by Pan-Germanism.
4. International Finance.
5. Social Revolution.

It will be seen that, with the exception of the fourth, these movements are those of which I have endeavoured to trace the course throughout the earlier part of this book. It is a highly significant fact that it was only when I had reached this stage of my work I discovered there were independent investigators who had arrived at precisely the same conclusions as myself.

The problem that now confronts us is therefore this: if there is indeed one power directing all subversive movements, is it one of the five movements here enumerated or is it yet another power more potent and more invisible? In order to discover this, it is necessary to consider whether these movements, although apparently divergent in their ultimate purpose, have nevertheless any ideas or any aims in common. One fundamental point of similarity will certainly be found between them. All desire to dominate the world and to direct it along lines and according to rules of their own devising; more than this, each desires to direct it solely for the benefit of one class of people--social, intellectual, or national as the case may be--to the entire exclusion of every human being outside that class. Thus in reality each aspires to the dictatorship of the world.

Besides this, it will be noticed that not only these principal movements, but also the minor subversive movements described in the last chapter, have in the main (1) a pro-German tendency--none, at any rate, are pro-French nor do they encourage British patriotism, (2) all contain a Jewish element--none, at least, are "anti-Semite," and (3) all have a more or less decided antagonism to Christianity. If then, there is a single power behind them, is it the Pan-Germanic Power? Is it the Jewish Power? Or is it the Anti-Christian Power? Let us examine each of these possibilities in turn.

Viewed under the aspect of exaggerated Nationalism, the spirit of Pan-Germanism is nothing new. The dream of world-domination has haunted the imagination of many races from the time of Alexander the Great to Napoleon I, but nowhere has the plan been carried out by the Machiavellian methods which have characterized Prussian foreign policy and diplomacy from the days of Frederick the Great onwards. It is not Prussian militarism that constitutes the crime of modern Germany. Militarism in the sense of courage, patriotism, discipline, and devotion to duty is a splendid thing. But the spirit of Pan-Germanism differs from the British conception of patriotism in that it overrides the rights of all other peoples and seeks to establish its domination over the whole world. Under German domination every German would be free and every other human being a slave. England, whilst seeking conquests, has, on the other hand, always allowed the inhabitants of conquered territories to develop along their own lines and has made use of legislation largely to protect them from each other. The preference of the native of India for an English judge to one of his own race is evidence of this fact. But it is further the abandonment of all principle, the acceptance of the doctrine that everything is allowable--lying, treachery, calumny, and bad faith--in order to achieve its end, that has placed Germany outside the comity of nations. Robison describes the system of the Illuminati as leading to the conclusion that "nothing would be scrupled at, if it could be made appear that the Order would derive advantage from it, because the great object of the Order was held as superior to every consideration."[775] Change the word Order to State, and one has the whole principle of modern German Imperialism.

Now, it is interesting to notice that the founders of German Illuminism and of German Imperialism drew certain of their ideas from the same source. Both Weishaupt and Frederick the Great were earnest students of Machiavelli--and both out-did their master. This form of Machiavellism, carried to a point probably never dreamt of by the Italian philosopher, has run through the whole struggle of Prussia for supremacy and at the same time through each outbreak of world revolution in which Prussian influence has played a part. Thus the Ems telegram in 1870, the false report that tricked Russia into mobilization in 1914,[776] the violation of treaties and of all the laws of civilised warfare during the recent war, were the direct outcome of doctrines that may be found in embryo in _The Prince_. So also the most striking characteristic of the French Revolution under the inspiration of Weishaupt's emissaries and the agents of Prussia, and of the present revolutionary movement inaugurated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is not so much its violence as its Machiavellian cunning. The art popularly known to-day as _camouflage_--of dressing-up one design under the guise of something quite different, of making black appear white by glorifying the most ignoble actions, of making white appear black by holding up all honourable traditions to contempt and ridicule, in a word _perversion_--has been reduced to a system by the secret directors of world revolution. It is here that we can detect the non-proletarian character of the movement. The working-man of all countries is the least Machiavellian of beings; his weakness lies in the fact that he is too inarticulate, that he does not know how to put his case even when he has a good one, still less to make a bad one appear plausible. It was not until world revolution was taken over by the faction described by Bakunin as "the German-Jew Company" that it reassumed its Machiavellian character and gradually became the formidable organization it is to-day.

A few extracts from _The Prince_ will show how closely both the Prussians and the Terrorists of France and Russia have followed Machiavelli's manual for despots:

"He who usurps the government of any State is to execute and put in practice all the cruelties which he thinks material at once, that he may have no occasion to renew them often," etc.[777] (Vide the German principle of "frightfulness" to be exercised against the inhabitants of invaded territory and the plan of the French and Russian Terrorists in suppressing "counter-revolutionaries.")

"It is of such importance to a prince to take upon him the nature and disposition of a beast; of all the whole flock he ought to imitate the lion and the fox."[778](Vide Frederick the Great and the demagogues of France and Russia.)

"A prince ... who is wise and prudent, cannot or ought not to keep his parole, when the keeping of it is to his prejudice, and the causes for which he promised removed."[779] (Vide Germany's doctrine of the scrap of paper and the promises of the Bolshevist Trade Delegation in London to refrain from propaganda.)

"Because the whole multitude which submits to your government is not capable of being armed, if you be beneficial and obliging to those you do arm, you may make the bolder with the rest, for the difference of your behaviour to the soldier binds him more firmly to your service," etc.[780](Vide the insolent behaviour permitted to officers of the German Imperial Army and the feeding of the Red Army in Russia at the expense of the rest of the population.)

"The prince ... is obliged ... at convenient times in the year to entertain the people by feastings and plays and spectacles of recreation ... and give them some instance of his humanity and magnificence."[781] (Vide the important part played by "spectacles" in the French Revolution and by the theatre and opera in Soviet Russia. Always the same plan of "_panem ei circenses_!")

Just after the fall of Napoleon I a French writer published a book describing the "methodic perversity" of the revolutionary leaders and the Revolution as the beginning of a Machiavellian régime.[782] How did this system come to be established in France unless under the guidance of Weishaupt's emissaries and the agents of Frederick the Great and of the Illuminatus Frederick William II?

Germany was well able, however, to defend herself against the devastating doctrines of Illuminism. Always the home of secret societies, she became by the end of the nineteenth century the spiritual home of Socialism. Yet although this might appear to present a danger to German Imperialism, no country has remained so free as Germany from serious agitation. It has been well said that the Germans are theoretically more Socialistic than other nations, but they are far less revolutionary.

The truth is that the rulers of Germany have always known that they could count not merely on the servility of the people but on their ardent national spirit. A strong vein of patriotism ran through all the secret societies even of the most subversive variety, and it was the German Student Orders, whence the Illuminati drew their disciples, that became also the recruiting-ground for the German Imperialist idea. Instead of combating subversive forces, German Imperialism adopted the far more skilful expedient of enlisting them in its service.

It was thus that in Germany Freemasonry became a powerful aid to Prussian aggrandizement. From 1840 onwards the word of command to all the lodges went out from Berlin,[783] and in the revolution of 1848 the Freemasons of Germany showed themselves the most ardent supporters of German unity under the ægis of Prussia. Later, Bismarck with superb ingenuity enlisted not only Freemasons and members of secret societies but Socialists and democrats in the same cause. Lassalle and Marx contributed powerfully to the cause of pan-Germanism. Dammer, who succeeded Lassalle as head of the Socialist party, instructed his successor Fritsche that "in the meetings which took place in Saxony, whilst putting forward Socialist claims, they must not fail to demand the unity of Germany under the domination of Prussia. Fritsche was personally to render an account to Bismarck of the results obtained at these meetings."[784]

Even as far afield as Italy, Bismarck succeeded in imposing the policy of German autocracy on men who were ostensibly marching in the vanguard of "liberty." "I believe in the unity of Germany," Mazzini wrote to Bismarck in 1867, "and I desire it as I desire that of my own country. I abhor the empire and supremacy that France arrogates to herself over Europe."[785]

Before 1870 Freemasonry everywhere on the Continent helped the cause of Germany. "The Occult Power preached pacifism and humanitarianism in France by means of French Freemasonry whilst it preached patriotism in Germany by means of German Freemasonry."[786] So although throughout the nineteenth century the rulers of Germany permitted the dissemination of ideas antagonistic to religion, until by the dawn of the following century the very idea of God was rooted out of the minds of many German children, the Imperial Government was careful that nothing should be allowed to weaken patriotism. Indeed, the Pan-German obsession into which German patriotism became transformed under the influence of such men as Treitschke and Bernhardi was, no less than revolutionary Socialism, fortified by irreligion because founded on the law of force and the absence of all moral scruple. It is thus not "militarism" in the accepted sense that has rendered Germany a menace to the world, but the Machiavellian plan of using for export doctrines sternly repressed within her own borders.

I shall not enlarge here on the crime of the German Imperial Staff in sending Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks to Russia, because I have already dealt at length with this question in a controversy that appeared in the _Morning Post_ two years ago.[787] But whilst acknowledging the fair and courteous line of argument adopted by my German opponent, with which on certain points I found myself completely in agreement. I was obliged to recognize that the bar to any real understanding between us lay in the impossibility of persuading him to recognize the principle that all means are not justifiable in order to obtain one's ends. This is how he expresses himself on the subject:

If Mrs. Webster ... reproaches Germany for having employed seditious propaganda in the countries of the Allies, it may simply be brought to mind that all is fair in love and war. In a war, in a fight concerning life and death, one does not look at the weapons which one takes, nor at the values which are destroyed by using the arms. The only adviser [sic] is, first of all, the success of the fight, the salvation of one's independence.[788]

Until Germany abandons this Machiavellian doctrine it will be impossible to treat her as a civilized Power.

But Herr Kerlen accuses England of pursuing the same Machiavellian policy of encouraging sedition abroad. Undoubtedly England did propagate Pacifism in Germany and other enemy countries and hoped to bring about a political revolution, that is to say, a rising of the German people against the rulers who had led them into war. (It should be remembered that all the friends of Germany in this country always declared that the German people did not want the war and were dragged into it unwillingly by the military caste.) But is there any evidence to show that England ever attempted to engineer a social revolution, to undermine morality and all belief in ordered government, in a word to promote Bolshevism in Germany or elsewhere? Herr Kerlen cites the sympathy accorded in this country to the Kerensky revolution. But England, largely through the influence of the Liberals, had always entertained an exaggerated idea of "Tzarist tyranny," and honestly sympathized with all efforts, however misguided, to "liberate" the Russian people. Further, throughout the war the Tzar and Tzarina had been ceaselessly represented as faithless to the Allies--a story that we now know to have been an infamous calumny circulated doubtless by enemy agents. This idea even obtained credence in Conservative circles, misled by false information on the situation in Russia. One must have lived through the spring of 1917 in London to realize how completely not only the public but the authorities were deluded. What else could be expected when the opinion of Socialists was accepted on the matter? I know from personal experience that two of the most important Government departments were completely mistaken even on the subject of Bolshevism, with the result that measures were not taken which might have checked its spread into this country.

In a word, then, the essential difference between the attitude of Germany and England to Russia was that whilst England imagined that the Kerensky revolution would be for the good of Russia as well as for the advantage of the Allies, Germany deliberately introduced into Russia what she knew to be a poison.

Always faithful to the maxim of _divide et impera_, Germany, after bringing Russia to ruin, has at last succeeded in causing dissensions between the Allies. This policy she pursued unremittingly throughout the war. Thus whilst on one hand she was assuring the French that "the English would fight to the last breath of the last Frenchman," General Ludendorff was instructing the Imperial Chancellor that: "We must again and again rub in the sentence in Kuhlmann's speech to the effect that the question of Alsace-Lorraine is the only one which stands in the way of peace. And we must lay special emphasis on the fact that the English people are shedding their blood for an Imperialistic war-aim."[789]

So skilfully was this propaganda carried on after the war had ended that whilst English officers returning to England from the occupied areas were declaring that the friendliness of the Germans convinced them that Germany was really our friend and that we should have an "entente" with her rather than with France, French officers returning to France said that the Germans had assured them that they were their best friends, that England was the real enemy, and that it would be better to break the Entente and form an alliance with Germany. At the same time no less than three lines of propaganda concerning the causes of the war were going out from Germany, one laying all the blame on the English, one on the French, and one on the Jews, and pamphlets embodying these conflicting theories were despatched broadcast to likely subjects in the countries of the Allies.[790]

The greatest triumph for Imperial Germany lay in her success in enlisting the very elements amongst the Allies which might most be expected to oppose her. Although there was no country in the world where monarchy was so adored, militarism so universally admired, where rank and birth played so important a part, and the working classes, though cared for, so rigidly kept in subjection, Germany from the time of Bismarck onwards has always been the "spiritual home" of British Socialists, democrats, and pacifists, just as in France she has always found her principal allies in the masonic lodges. And this although the German Socialists and Freemasons have never attempted to use their influence in favour of the masonic and Socialist ideal of universal brotherhood and world-peace, but, on the contrary, at every crisis have thrown in their lot with the military party. Thus before the Franco-Prussian War, whilst French Freemasons of the Loge Concordia and the Socialists of the First Internationale were urging their brothers to rely on German Socialism to avert a conflict, the Prussian lodges were shouting Hoch! to the national colours and chanting the praises of King William and "the Prussian sword," and the German Social Democrats were applauding the cause of German unity.[791]

Exactly the same thing happened before the recent war, when Jaurès assured his fellow-Socialists that at the first sign of conflict he had only to communicate with Berlin in order to enlist German Socialism in the interests of peace; yet on the declaration of war the German Socialists voted solidly for war credits, whilst the British Socialists opposed participation in the war and even in some instances expressed sympathy with Germany. And let it never be forgotten, it was not Socialist Germany but Imperial Germany that won the allegiance of our so-called democrats.

In spite of this betrayal by the Socialists of Germany, in spite of the fact that they have contributed nothing to the cause of International Socialism or of world-peace, the British "Labour" Party never until its accession to office wavered in its policy of publicly advocating the cause of Germany. With the exception of the Social Democratic Federation, every Socialist body in this country has proclaimed pro-German sentiments, and _Justice_ alone, of all Socialist organs, has expressed its sympathy for the sufferings of France. In fact, any Socialist who dared to champion the cause of France immediately lost his influence and position in Socialist circles. As to the _Daily Herald_, had it been edited in Berlin it could not more faithfully have supported German interests. When Alsace Lorraine was restored to France, it published an article showing how deeply the inhabitants of this province resented being transferred from the German Empire to the French Republic[792]; when a general strike threatened this country, it seized the opportunity to come out with an appeal in enormous capitals to revise the Versailles Treaty; in the matter of reparations its efforts to let Germany off altogether have been, as it itself observed, "unceasing." "The plain fact is," it declared on December 17, 1921, "that these fantastic reparation demands cannot be met; and that every payment by which Germany attempts to meet them will only work further havoc to our own commerce and our own industry. We have urged that ceaselessly for three years. To-day even the Premier begins to see that we were right, that the interests of this country demand the scrapping of _the whole bad business of 'making Germany pay_.'"[793]

Indeed, when the interests of Germany were concerned, this paper, which Lenin has described as "our own organ," but which might still more truly be claimed by Ludendorff and Stinnes, was quite ready to throw Socialism to the winds and plead the cause of capital. At the very moment that it was advocating the Labour policy of a capital levy on all fortunes exceeding £5,000 in this country, the _Daily Herald_ waxed almost tearful over the iniquity of France in attempting to touch the pockets of German multi-millionaires whose profits, it went on to explain elaborately, were not nearly as huge as might appear in view of the decline in the purchasing power of the mark. The decline in the purchasing power of the pound had, however, never been taken into account when assessing the profits of British employers of labour.[794]

We have only to follow point by point the policy of the British Labour Party since the war to recognize that whilst the measures it advocated might be of doubtful benefit to the workers, there could be no doubt whatever of the benefit they would confer on Germany. With a million and a quarter unemployed and large numbers of the working classes unable to find homes, the professed representatives of Labour have persistently clamoured for the removal of restrictions on alien immigration and alien imports. So although through the Trade Unions the British worker was to be rigorously protected against competition from his fellow-Briton, no obstacles were to be placed in the way of competition by foreign, and frequently underpaid, labour. That this glaring betrayal of their interests should not have raised a storm of resentment amongst the working classes is surely evidence that the Marxian doctrine "the emancipation of the working classes must be brought about by the working classes themselves"[795] has so far led to no great results. Emerson truly observed: "So far as a man thinks, he is free." The working classes can never be free until they learn to think for themselves instead of allowing their thinking to be done for them by the middle-class exploiters of Labour.

The hand of Germany behind Socialism must be apparent to all those who do not deliberately shut their eyes to the fact, and it is significant to notice that the nearer Socialism approaches to Bolshevism the more marked this influence becomes. Thus although certain Socialist groups, such as the Social Democratic Federation in England and the Socialist Party in France, have not become Germanized, the avowed Communists in all the Allied countries are strongly pro-German. This is the case even in France, where the Bolsheviks find fervent supporters in the group led by Marcel Cachin, Froissart, and Longuet, grandson of Karl Marx.

The organization of the Bolshevist movement has indeed throughout owed a great deal of its efficiency to German co-operation, provided not only by the Socialist but by the Monarchist elements in Germany. It is necessary in this connexion to understand the dual character of the German Monarchist party since the ending of the war. The great majority of its adherents, animated by nothing more reprehensible than the spirit of militarism and an aggressive form of patriotism that clings to the old formula of _Deutschland über alles_, are probably strangers to any intrigues, but behind this mass of honest Imperialists, and doubtless unknown to a great number, there lurk those sinister organizations the Pan-German secret societies.

Many of these, as for example the _Ostmarkenverein_, ostensibly instituted for the defence of German interests on the Russian frontier, existed before the war; indeed, there is little doubt that they have continued without a break since the days of the Tugendbund and have always preserved their masonic and "illuminized" character. But since the beginning of the Great War, and still more since the Armistice, their numbers have increased until in 1921 they were estimated to run into three figures. Moreover, as in the time of Weishaupt, Bavaria is still a centre for secret-society intrigue, and it was here that Escherich founded the _Einwohnerwehr_ sometimes known as the _Orgesch_ or Organization Escherich, with Munich as its headquarters. The Orgesch was followed by the formidable murder club known to all the world as the Organization C or "Consul," named after its founder, the famous Captain Ehrhardt, whose nickname was "_der Herr Consul_." During the year 1921 no less than 400 political assassinations were reported in Germany and said to be the work of secret societies. Amongst the crimes attributed to the initiative of Organization C were the murders of Herr Erzberger and the attempt on the life of Herr Scheidemann. Eighty persons arrested for complicity in the murder of Herr Rathenau were also said to be members of the same society.[796]

But as in the case of all secret societies, the visible leaders were not the real hierarchy; behind this active body there existed an inner circle organised on masonic lines, the Druidenorden, a name unknown to the public, and behind this again another and still more secret circle which appears to be nameless. It is these inner rings which, whilst remaining Monarchist in Germany, work for other ends abroad, and are connected with the world-revolutionary movement.

This alliance between the two extremes of ardent Monarchism and revolutionary Socialism existed at the beginning of the war or even earlier, and, as is now well known, it was the Jewish Social Democrat, Israel Lazarewitch, alias Helphandt alias Parvus, who arranged with the German General Staff for the passage of Lenin from Switzerland to Russia, accompanied by Karl Radek, the Austrian Jew deserter, and a number of other Jews.

Now, Switzerland has been for hundreds of years a centre of revolutionary and secret-society intrigue. As early as the sixteenth century the Pope, writing to the Kings of France and Spain, warned them that Geneva was "un foyer éternel de révolution," and Joseph de Maistre, quoting this letter in 1817, declared Geneva to be the metropolis of the revolutionaries, whose art of deception he describes as "the great European secret."[797] Elsewhere, a year earlier, he had referred to Illuminism as the root of all the evil at work. It is now known that at the moment de Maistre wrote these words an inner ring of revolutionaries, claiming direct descent from Weishaupt and even from an earlier sect existing at the end of the fifteenth century, profited by the fall of Napoleon I to reconstruct its organization and took up its headquarters in Switzerland with branch offices in London and Paris. The same secret ring of Illuminati is believed to have been intimately connected with the organization of the Bolshevist revolution, although none of the leading Bolsheviks are said to have been members of the innermost circle, which is understood to consist of men belonging to the highest intellectual and financial classes whose names remained absolutely unknown. Outside this absolutely secret ring there existed, however, a semi-secret circle of high initiates of subversive societies drawn from all over the world and belonging to various nationalities--German, Jewish, French, Russian, and even Japanese. This group, which might be described as the active ring of the inner circle, appears to have been in touch with, if not in control of, a committee which met in Switzerland to carry out the programme of the Third Internationale.

It was thus in Switzerland that at the same time high initiates of Pan-German secret societies foregathered and that an active centre of pro-German, anti-Entente, and even Bolshevist propaganda was established. These Germans, although Monarchists themselves, co-operated with the secret revolutionary forces in stirring up trouble in the countries of the Allies. At the same time the conferences of the Second Internationale, attended by members of the British I.L.P. took place in Switzerland, and at one of these--the Berne Conference of 1919--the delegates were entertained by a mysterious "American" millionaire, John de Kay, living himself in great style, paying for press service at the rate of 2,000 francs a day, lavishing money on the conference, and at the same time subsidizing a Pacifist and Defeatest paper named _La Feuille_.

It is impossible, then, to ignore the role of Germany in the present outbreak of world revolution. In the British White Paper on Bolshevism in Russia we find it stated by an Englishman who had been through the whole of the Revolution in that country that:

The Germans initiated disturbances in order to reduce Russia to
chaos. They printed masses of paper money to finance their schemes;
the notes, of which I possess specimens, can be easily recognized
by a special mark.[798]

What has Germany to say to all this? Simply that the promotion of Bolshevism was a military "necessity" in order to bring about the downfall of her opponents, but that the propaganda utilized by her was in reality of Jewish origin, and that Jewry, not Germany, was the real author of world revolution.

It is easy to see how such a theory can be made to serve the cause of Pan-Germanism. For if Germany can persuade us that the Jews alone were responsible for the war and were also the sole authors of Bolshevism, we shall naturally be led to the conclusion that Germany is, after all, innocent of the crimes attributed to her, and that our only safety lies in forgoing reparations, restoring her to her former power, and coalescing with her against a common enemy. We shall therefore do well to accept with extreme caution advice on the Jewish question emanating from German sources, and to test the sincerity of the spirit in which it is offered by considering the relations which have hitherto existed between the Germans and the Jews.

Now, Germany has long been the home of modern "anti-Semitism." Although in every country and at every period, but more particularly in the East of Europe during the last century, the Jews have suffered from unpopularity, it was Germany that organized this aversion into a definite plan of campaign. If in Russia, Galicia, and Poland the Jews have met with sporadic violence at the hands of the peasants, in Germany they have been systematically held up by the authorities to hatred and contempt. Luther, Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Treitschke, successively inveighed against the Jewish race. Jews were denied admission to masonic lodges and to the rank of officers in the army, whilst society excluded them up to the outbreak of war.

Yet the extraordinary fact remains that of all nations the Germans have always been the favourites of the Jews. Throughout the whole movement for the unification of Germany under the ægis of Prussia, Jews played a leading part, and in the recent war Germany found in them some of her most valuable allies. As Maximilian Harden recently pointed out: "The services of the Jews to Germany during the war were enormous. The patriotism of the Jews was beyond reproach, in many cases even ludicrous and offensive in its intensity." And in spite of "anti-Semitism," Harden declares: "There is a strong affinity between the German and the Jew."[799] To the Ashkenazim Germany even more than Palestine has appeared the Land of Promise. Thus some years before the war Professor Ludwig Geiger, leader of the Liberal Jews of Berlin, denounced "Zionist sophisms" in the words: "The German Jew who has a voice in German literature must, as he has been accustomed to for the last century and a half, look upon Germany alone as his fatherland, upon the German language as his mother-tongue, and the future of that nation must remain the only one upon which he bases his hopes."[800]