They are translated from a photographed copy of the volume in the British Museum: * * * * * "We have succeeded in obtaining for our use from a man close to us, now deceased, a manuscript in which are described with unusual precision and clearness the course and progress of the universal fatal mystery aiming to bring the apostate world to an inevitable catastrophe.

This manuscript was given to us about four years ago (in 1901) with the assurance that it was an accurate copy--a translation of the original documents stolen by a woman from one of the most powerful and sacred directors of Freemasonry after one of the secret meetings of the 'initiates' in France, the present nest of the Freemason's sect.

This manuscript under the general title 'Protocols of Meetings of the Wise Men of Zion' I now call to the attention of all who wish to see or hear.

These 'Protocols' at a first cursory glance might seem to be what we are accustomed to call truisms; they are more or less commonplaces although expressed with a boldness and a hatred not altogether customary in commonplaces.

A proud, deeply-rooted, ancient, for a long time secretly growing,--and what is more frightful than all,--a religious rage boils between the lines, bubbling over and escaping from the overfilled vessel of violence and vengeance, already approaching complete triumph.
"It must be mentioned, by the way, that the title of the manuscript does not fully justify the contents: these are not protocols of a meeting but rather the report of someone in power, divided into parts which are not even always logically connected: the impression remains that this is a fragment of something much more significant, the beginning of which has been lost.