Thus the Protocols were in 1907 presented by G. Butmi, dedicated to the Black Hundreds, as Masonic, not as Jewish documents. In his introduction the author says, in part, as follows:
“‘These secret protocols were secured with great difficulty in fragmentary form, and were translated into Russian in December, 1901. It is almost impossible to get at the secret depositories again where they are hidden, and therefore they cannot be reinforced by definite information as to the place, day, month, year, where and when they were composed.
“‘The reader who is more or less familiar with the secrets of Freemasonry will draw from the general character of the criminal plot, outlined in the protocols, the conclusion as to their authenticity, and from several details he will suppose with great certainty that the mentioned protocols were taken from the documents of the Masonic lodge of Egyptian ritual, or Mizraim, which is joined mostly by Jews. . . .
“‘But the above-mentioned failure to mention the time and place where the protocols were composed might call forth in the reader, who is entirely unfamiliar with the abominations of Masonic doctrines, doubts as to the authenticity of these documents.’”
At the end of the “protocols” published in this edition by Butmi, in 1907, there appears a note by the man who declares that he had secured and translated the documents from the French, on December 9, 1901, and in the very first two lines of his note, he states that the representatives of Zion mentioned in the documents are not to be confounded with the representatives of the Zionist movement. The Russian mystic Serge Nilus, in his later editions, connected the documents with the Zionist Congress in Basle and with the head of the Zionist movement, Dr. Theodore Herzl.
The translator, as do Nilus and Lutostansky, also gives a version of “the political plan devised by the Wise Men of Zion.” This translator, however, states that the “po-
