The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

PREFACE (Translated by Victor E. Marsden) The author of this translation of the famous Protocols was himself a victim of the Revolution. He had lived for many years in Russia and was married to a Russian lady. Among his other activities in Russia he had been for a number of years a Russian Correspondent of the MORNING POST, a position which he occupied when the Revolution broke out, and his vivid descriptions of events in Russia will still be in the recollection of many of the readers of that Journal. Naturally he was singled out for the anger of the Soviet. On the day that Captain Cromie was murdered by Jews, Victor Marsden was arrested and thrown into the Peter-Paul Prison, expecting every day to have his name called out for execution. This, however, he escaped, and eventually he was allowed to return to England very much of a wreck in bodily health. However, he recovered under treatment and the devoted care of his wife and friends. One of the first things he undertook, as soon as he was able, was this translation of the Protocols. Mr. Marsden was eminently well qualified for the work. His intimate acquaintance with Russia, Russian life and the Russian language on the one hand, and his mastery of a terse literary English style on the other, placed him in a position of advantage which few others could claim. The consequence is that we have in his version an eminently readable work, and though the subject-matter is somewhat formless, Mr. Marsden's literary touch reveals the thread running through the twenty-four Protocols. It may be said with truth that this work was carried out at the cost of Mr. Marsden's own life's blood. He told the writer of this Preface that he could not stand more than an hour at a time of his work on it in the British Museum, as the diabolical spirit of the matter which he was obliged to turn into English made him positively ill. Mr. Marsden's connection with the MORNING POST was not severed by his return to England, and he was well enough to accept the post of special correspondent of that journal in the suite of H.R.H., the Prince of Wales on his Empire tour. From this he returned with the Prince, apparently in much better health, but within a few days of his landing he was taken suddenly ill, and died after a very brief illness. May this work be his crowning monument! In it he has performed an immense service to the English-speaking world, and there can be little doubt that it will take its place in the first rank of the English versions of "THE PROTOCOLS of the Meetings of the LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION."