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. U n wf 7 dp. ge1f5 " ! i i - ' :,vol. X. NO. 12. FORT WORTH-DALLAS, , TEXAS, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1920 Price 5 Cents. New York, November 80.A coni ference to discuss the widespread campaign of secret anti-Jewish prop aganda in the United States was call ed by the American Jewish Commit tee. This conference was participated by the foremost national Jewish organizations and authorized the is suance of a public statement in which the so-called "Protocols of the Learn ed Elders of Zion" now being circu lated in large numbers by secret agencies are condemned as a forgery, a'nd the charge that Bolshevism is part of a conspiracy by Jews and ' Freemasons to secuie world domina tion is denounced, as a malicious in- ventlon Inspired by foreign reaction ary forces for the rurpose of breed ing suspicion and hatred by the Jews and -Freemasons in the United States In order to discredit "free govern ment ' Ih' the eyes of ' the European masses and thus facilitate the restor ation 4f;ab'solutism in government''; ; Thef sjgnatnres ,of ' the ' declaration Which is addressed "To Our Fellow Citizens" include the following rep resentative Jewish Organizations: Tie American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organization of America, the - Union of American Hebrew Congre gations, the Union cf Orthodox Jew ish Congregations, the United Syna gogue of America,, the Provisional Committee of an American Jewish Congress, the Independent Order of Bsnai B'rith, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the United Orthodox Jfcwiah Rabbis of America. The com plete address follows: To Our Fellow-Citizens: t " During the war, by secret agencies, a, document variously called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," "The Protocols of the Meetings of the Zionist Men of Windom," and "The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion," was clandestinely circulated, in type written, formf among" public officials' and carefully selected civilians, for the purpose of giving rise to the be lief that the Jews, in conjunction with Freemasons, had been for centuries engaged in a conspiracy to produce revolution and anar:hy, by means of which they, hoped to attain the con trol of the world by the establish ment of some, sort of. despotic rule. Some months ago this document was published in England. More recently it has appeared in print in the United States and thousands of copies have been circulated with an air of mys tery among legislator, journalists, clergymen and teachers, members of clubs, and Indiscriminately to the gen eral public. The London Morning Post has given out a serios of articles as a commentary upon The Protocols, In which the charge of an unholy con- A Public Stateiunt by the Amer ican :ish CortTrtee piracy between Jews and Freema.. .tyjons, or with any other body, for , is elaborated, and Bolshevism Is char .acterized as a movement of, for and by the Jews and li declared to be a , fulfilment of The Protocols. These articles, whose authorship is not dis closed, have now appeared in book . form under the title "The Cause of World Unrest." During the past six months there have been sent forth w ekly in Henry Ford's organ, The Dearborn Independent, attacks of ex traordinary virulence upon the Jews. ' These assults upon the honor of the Jewish people are all founded on The Protocols and on thu discredited lit erature of Russian and German antl-l Semitism, inspired by the minions of autocracy. Parrot-liko they repeat the abominable charges that can only ap peal to the credulity of a stunted in telligencecharges long since con-; ceded to be unfounded by all fair-' - minded men. Ford is employing his great wealth in scattering broadcast: his fulminations, regardless of conse-; quences. ' When the Jews of the United States first learned of these malevolent' prints, they deemed it beneath their, dignity to take notice of them, be cause they regarded them as a mere recrudescence of mediaeval bigotry and stupidity showing upon their face their utter worthlessr.ess. These pub lications 'have, however, been put in circulation to such an extent that it is believed that the time has come,' humiliating thought it be to them, for the Jews to make answer to these li-. bels and to the unworthy insinuations, and innuendoes that have been whis-' . pered against them. ' f Speaking as representatives of the Jewish people, familiar with the his-', (ory of Judaism in its various phases and the movements, past and pres ent, in Jewish life, we say with all sol- ', emnity: 1. The Protocols are a base forgery. There has never been an organization of Jews known as The Elders of Zion, or The Zionist Men of Wisdom, or The Wise Men of Zion, or bearing any oth er similar name. There has never ex isted a secret or other Jewish body organised for any purpose such as that implied In The Protocols. The Jewish people have never dreamed of a Jewish dictatorship, of a destruc tion of 'religion,' of an interference with industrial prosperity, or of an ' overthrow of civilization. The Jews have never conspired with the Free- i "Venose. rfv .he time of the destruction of the Temple at Jovsalem by Titus, the Jews have had i.u political state. For ctnturies the? were forced to wander from land to land, an to fle for refuge wherever they micht find it against bitter persecution. Thty were pent up in ghettoes, were i.eprlved of even the shadow of civil or political rights, and were made the ot'jrcts of every po.tsible form of dis crimination. It is a little more than fifty years since the Jews of West ern Europe became politically eman cipated. Until the outbreak of the World War the Jews of Eastern Eu rope, constituting a majority of all the Jews in the world, were not even permitted to exercise the right of citizenship in lands where they and their ancestors had dwelt for genera tions. The great mass of the Jewj were hampered in every way in their ) efforts to earn a livelihood. Far from desiring to govern the world, they were content with the opportun ity to live. Numerically they consti tute less than one per cent of the population of the earth; and more than one-half of them are on the verge of starvation. The suggestion that, in their feebleness, they have been planning in seoret conclave to seize absolute power and to domi nate the 99 per cent of non-Jews upon the globe, Is a ridiculous invention than which even the madness canjure nothing more preposterous. Where is the habitat of these so called Elders of Zion, by whatever name they may be called! Who are these hidden sages? Whence do they come? Whar is the nature of their organization? The distributors (f The Protocols are silent on that subject. Whence cunt thaw pw t- o'ed Protocols? One $rge Nilus, f wl.ose identity Hue is known, a litib iun mystic ail an ardent sup-tf-rir of Csarism, c!a' n to have re ceived them in Rcbsia, in 1901, in manuscript form, from a Russian of ficeholder, who stated that the manu script liad been originally obtained by a lady, whose name is not given, and who, he said, obtained them in a mysterious way. In what language they were written is not stated. Where that manuscript now is does not appear. Nilus t asserts that he submitted the Protocols to one of the Russian Grand Dukes, who, after ex amination! returned them with the de spairing message: "Too late.'' Ap parently there was no room for them in the Russian archives, and they suggested no task for the Czar's ubi quitous police to perform. In 1905, Nilus published at Tsarskoje Selo a second edition of a mystical book en titled "The Great in the Little," the first edition having been published in 1901. Into this later edition he incorporated for the first time The Protocols, which he claimed to have had in his possession for four years. In January, 1917, he published an other book under the title, "It Is Near, at the Door," purporting to foretell "the coming of the Anti Christ and the Kingoom of the Devil on Earth." In this book he an nounces that he had only then learned authoritatively from Jewish sources (what they were is not explained) that these Protocols were nothing other than a strategic plan for the conquest of the world, of putting it under the yoke of Israel, "the strug-gler-against-God," a plan worked out by the leaders of the Jewish people during the many centuries of their dispersion, and finilly presented to the Council of Elders by the Prince of Exile, Theodor Herzl, at the time of the first Zionist Congress sum moned by him at Basle in August, 1897. He declared that the Protocols were signed by the Zionist represent atives of the thirty-third degree of initiation; that thev were secretly re moved from the complete file of Pro tocols that pertained to the first Zionist Congress; that they were tak en from the secret vaults at the main Zionist office, whioh, it is said, "at present is located in French terrf tory." The Protocols as published bear no signatures. The identity of the Zion ist representatives by whom they are claimed to have bjon signed is left untold. The location of the main Zionist office and of the secret vaults from which The Protocols were se cretly removed remains a secret It is, however, a matter of history that the first Zionist Congress was pub licly held by Jews who came from various parts of Europe for the pur pose of considering the misery of their brethren in Eastern Europe and of enabling them to find shelter in the Holy Land. Theodor Herzl was a distinguished journalist man of true nobility of character. He pre sided at the Congress, all of whose deliberations were held In the light of day. The insinuation that there was a thirty-third, cr any other, de gree of initiation in this organization is merely a malicious effort to bring the Jews into parallelism with the Freemasons and thus subject them to all the fanciful and fantastic (Continued on Page 11).