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.
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