like the Indian idol, and each of your fingers touches a spring."
Protocols, p. 65:—
"Our Government will resemble the Hindu god Vishnu. Each of our hundred hands will hold one spring of the social machinery of State."
Taxation of the Press.
The Dialogues and the Protocols alike devote special attention to the Press, and their schemes for the muzzling and control thereof are almost identical—absolutely identical, indeed, in many details. Thus Machiavelli on pp. 135 and 136 of the Dialogues expounds the following ingenious scheme:—
"I shall extend the tax on newspapers to books, or rather I shall introduce a stamp duty on books having less than a certain number of pages. A book, for example, with less than 200 or 300 pages will not rank as a book, but as a brochure. I am sure you see the advantage of this scheme. On the one hand I thin (je rarifie) by taxation that cloud of short books which are the mere appendages of journalism; on the other I force those who wish to escape stamp duty to throw themselves into long and costly compositions, which will hardly ever be sold and scarcely read in such a form."
The Protocols, p. 41, has:—
"We will tax it (the book press) in the same manner as the newspaper Press—that is to say, by means of Excise stamps and deposits. But on books of less than 300 pages we will place a tax twice as heavy. These short books we will classify as pamphlets, which constitute the most virulent form of printed poison. These measures will also compel writers to publish such long works that they will be little read by the public and so chiefly on account of their high price."
Both have the same profound contempt for journalists.
Geneva Dialogues, pp. 145, 146:—
Machiavelli.—"You must know that journalism is a sort of Freemasonry; those who live by it are bound . . . to one another by the ties of professional discretion; like the augurs of old, they do not lightly divulge the secret of their oracles. They would gain nothing by betraying themselves, for they have mostly won more or less discreditable scars . . ."
Protocols, p. 44:—
"Already there exists in French journalism a system of Masonic understanding for giving counter--
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