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Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion
Translated by Victor E. Marsden
PREFACE
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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