equently killed. He said other things of the same mysterious
character. But when I first became acquainted with the contents
of the manuscript 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_.

Is it necessary, I wonder, to waste words in exposing this pious
fraud? His own statement comes pretty close to convicting him of
being, as I have suggested above, a hireling of the Secret Police, an
_agent provocateur_. Sukhotin, from whom he now claims to have
received the manuscript, was a notorious anti-Semite and a despot of
the worst type. Sipiagin, to whom, it is alleged, the manuscript had
been previously given, was also a bitter anti-Semite and one of the
most infamous of Russian bureaucrats. He was notoriously corrupt and
unspeakably cruel while he was Minister of the Interior. He was
assassinated by Stephen Balmashev, in March, 1902. Even if we credit
this revised version of the way in which he came into possession of
the manuscript, Nilus is closely identified with the secret agencies
of the old regime. Let us take note, however, of other peculiarities
of the canting hypocrite, Nilus. He names Sukhotin and Sipiagin only
after they are dead and denial by them is impossible; he has
"forgotten" the name of the "noblewoman from Tshernigov," the person
alleged to have stolen the original documents; he suggests that the
documents need no other evidence than their own contents. Truly, a
very typical criminal is the mysterious, elusive, unknown "Prof.
Sergei Nilus"!

Now let me call attention to two other very interesting facts in
connection with this story of 1917. The first is that Nilus omits the
very important statement made in the edition of 1905 that the alleged
protocols were "signed by representatives of Zion of the Thirty-third
Degree," without offering the slightest explanation of that most
important omission. The second fact is even more conclusive as
evidence of the man's absolute untrustworthiness. Having told us in
the edition of 1905 that the friend who gave him the protocols assured
him that they had been "stolen by a woman," and in 1917 that it was
Nicholaievich Sukhotin from whom he received the documents, who not
only told him that they had been stolen by a woman, but told him also
the name of the thief (which he has forgotten, unfortunately), h