they were either the work of some such society or of someone profoundly versed in the lore of secret societies who was able to reproduce their ideas and phraseology.
The so-called refutation of the Protocols which appeared in the Times of August 1922, tends to confirm this opinion. According to these articles the Protocols were largely copied from the book of Maurice Joly, Dialogues aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu, published in 1864. Let it be said at once that the resemblance between the two works could not be accidental, not only are whole paragraphs almost identical, but the various points in the programme follow each other in precisely the same order. But whether Nilus copied from Joly or from the same source whence Joly derived his ideas is another question. It will be noticed that Joly in his preface never claimed to have originated the scheme described in his book; on the contrary he distinctly states that it "personifies in particular a political system which has not varied for a single day in its application since the disastrous and alas! too far-off date of its enthronement." Could this refer only to the government of Napoleon III, established twelve years earlier? Or might it not be taken to signify a Machiavellian system of government of which Napoleon III was suspected by Joly at this moment of being the exponent? We have already seen that this system is said by M. de Mazères, in his book *De Machiavel et de l'influence de sa doctrine sur les opinions, les moeurs