Witt Doehring, who had himself reached the degree of P.S.P., thereupon declares that, having taken his vows under a misapprehension, he holds himself to be released from his obligations and conceives it his duty to warn society. "The fears that assail governments are only too well founded. The soil of Europe is volcanic."[654] It is unnecessary to go over the ground already traversed in _World Revolution_ by relating the history of the successive eruptions which proved the truth of Witt Doehring's warning. The point to emphasize again is that every one of these eruptions can be traced to the work of the secret societies, and that, as in the eighteenth century, most of the prominent revolutionaries were known to be connected with some secret association. According to the plan laid down by Weishaupt, Freemasonry was habitually adopted as a cover. Thus Louis _Amis de la Vérité_, numbering Bazard and Buchez amongst Blanc, himself a Freemason, speaks of a lodge named the its founders, "in which the solemn puerilities of the Grand Orient only served to mask political action."[655] Bakunin, companion of the Freemason Proudhon,[656] "the father of Anarchy," makes use of precisely the same expression. Freemasonry, he explains, is not to be taken seriously, but "may serve as a mask" and "as a means of preparing something quite different."[657] I have quoted elsewhere the statement of the Socialist Malon that "Bakunin was a disciple of Weishaupt," and that of the Anarchist Kropotkine that between Bakunin's secret society--the _Alliance Sociale Démocratique_--and the secret societies of 1795 there was a direct affiliation; I have quoted the assertion of Malon that "Communism was handed down in the dark through the secret societies" of the nineteenth century; I have quoted also the congratulations addressed by Lamartine and the Freemason Crémieux to the Freemasons of France in 1848 on their share in this revolution as in that of 1789; I have shown that the organization of this later outbreak by the secret societies is not a matter of surmise, but a fact admitted by all well-informed historians and by the members of the secret societies themselves. So, too, in the events of the Commune, and in the founding of the First Internationale, the role of Freemasonry and the secret societies is no less apparent. The Freemasons of France have indeed always boasted of their share in political and social upheavals. Thus in 1874, Malapert, orator of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, went so far as to say: "In the eighteenth century Freemasonry was so widespread throughout the world that one can say that since that epoch nothing has been done without its consent." The secret history of Europe during the last two hundred years yet remains to be written. Until viewed in the light of the _dessous des cartes_, many events that have taken place during this period must remain for ever incomprehensible.