In closing this chapter it is perhaps well that some record should be made of the sinister use which was made of these alleged protocols during the World War. Not long after the United States had begun active participation in the war against Germany, it came to my attention that typewritten manuscripts purporting to prove that the war was part of a great conspiracy of international Jews were being circulated. On at least three different occasions, early in 1918, I was asked about this charge. I was told then that the British and American governments were in a special sense the agents of this Jewish conspiracy. In July, 1918, in Paris, a fuller account of the documents was given to me by a loyal Socialist, to whom they had been shown. There was not then, as there is not now, the slightest doubt in my mind that the pro-German propagandists resorted to this trick in order to weaken the morale of the principal Allied nations. IV IS SOCIALISM A JEWISH CONSPIRACY? Upon the strength of statements made in this collection of documents of mysterious and suspicious origin, a number of papers, including the _Dearborn Independent_ and the _London Morning Post_, have attempted to account for and explain the international Socialist movement as part of this Jewish imperialistic conspiracy. Neither in the protocols themselves nor in the newspapers making this particular charge has any shred of authentic evidence been adduced in its support. True, a great deal has been made of the undeniable fact that Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle, Wilhelm Liebnecht, and other noted Socialists belonged to the Jewish race. Against this fact might very well be set the equally undeniable fact that the foremost opponents of these men, and of Socialism, were also of the Jewish race. Apparently, therefore, we are to believe that the leaders of this Jewish conspiracy set up the Socialist movement and fostered it, while at the same time they enlisted their ablest minds to defeat it. Surely for the normal mind that is not obsessed this is a theory too absurd for belief.