I believe that historical study is not one of Mr. Ford's strong points, but, even so, he must be aware of the fact that it is one of the commonest things in history to encounter charges of conspiracy directed against religious and political sects, supported by more or less plausible arguments and believed by considerable numbers of people. Were it necessary to my purpose, and did time permit, I could quite easily fill a considerable volume with illustrations of this fact. For example, there exists a great literature devoted to the object of proving that the Vatican is the headquarters of such a conspiracy to bring about or to attain world domination. Thousands of books and pamphlets have been written to convict the Jesuits of such a conspiracy, many of them far more convincing than these protocols. Pamphlets aiming to convince the American people that the Knights of Columbus is an organization aiming at the overthrow of the American Republic and the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the Pope over the United States have been circulated by the million. It is a matter of court record that this charge has been supported by the publication of what purported to be exact copies of oaths pledging the members of that organization to the end stated. Let me say at once that I do not credit these sensational stories and charges. I have confined myself to charges made against one of the two great sections of Christianity for reasons which seem to me peculiarly cogent. The charges made against the Jews have produced the most terrible results in the countries where the Roman Catholic Church is strongest, and no leader of the Christian religion has such strong reason for denouncing such appeals to prejudice and hatred as the head of that Church. Belief in widespread conspiracies directed against individuals or the state is probably the commonest form assumed by the human mind when it loses its balance and its sense of proportion. I venture to hazard the opinion that of all the cranks who have pestered Mr. Ford since he has attained a conspicuous position, those who imagined themselves to be the victims of conspiracies have outnumbered all the others. These protocols are either preposterous forgeries deliberately wrought for the purpose of fostering anti-Semitism in Russia, or they are the pitiable ravings of a familiar type of monomaniac. Concerning the authorship of the protocols, there has been much conjecture, especially on the part of those who have seriously regarded them as an authentic expression of Jewish opinion. It has been whispered in those places where the so-called Jewish question is discussed, that they are the work of the well-known Zionist leader, Dr. Theodor Herzl. This is the theory which Nilus himself advances in the introduction to the edition of 1917. He says: