g the
first Zionist Congress, summoned by him in August, 1897, in Basle."

It will be shown later that the so-called Butmi edition of the
"protocols" published in 1907 contains the definite statement of the man
who claims to have translated them into Russian from the French in 1901
that the Elders of Zion mentioned in the Protocols are not to be
confounded with the Zionist movement.

In the 1917 edition Sergius Nilus wrote:

"In 1901 I came into possession of a manuscript, and this
comparatively small book was destined to cause a deep change in my
entire viewpoint as can only be caused in the heart of man by
Divine Power. It was comparable with the miracle of making the
blind see. 'May Divine acts show on him.'

"This manuscript was called 'the protocols of the Zionist Men of
Wisdom,' and it was given to me by the now deceased leader of the
Tchernigov nobility, who later became vice-governor of Stavropol,
Alexis Nikolayevitch Sukhotin. I had already begun to work with my
pen for the glory of the Lord, and I was friendly with Sukhotin.
_He was a man of my opinion_, that is, extremely conservative, as
they are now termed.

"Sukhotin told me that he in turn had obtained the manuscript from
a lady who always lived abroad. This lady was a noblewoman from
Tchernigov. He mentioned her by name, but I have forgotten it. He
said that she obtained it in some mysterious way, by theft, I
believe.

"Sukhotin also said that one copy of the manuscript was given by
this lady to Sipiagin, the Minister of the Interior, upon her
return from abroad, and that Sipiagin was subsequently 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."

Feodor Roditchev, one of Russia's most famous liberals, a member of the
nobility, a former member of the Duma, writing recently of the Nilus
protocols and of Sukhotin whom Nilus described as a man of his own
opinion, says:

"For months I hear on all sides about the Nilus book and its
success in England, and I am asked, Who is Nilus? There was a
Nilus, an associate justice of the Moscow Dis