Nesta Helen Webster

“ The Grand Orient, which definitely accepts this doctrine, has therefore logically erased the name of the Great Architect of the Universe from its ritual and has become an association of Freethinkers and Atheists.
Is it necessary to point out the folly as well as the crime of this delusion--the ludicrous inconsequence of men who divinize humanity yet revile what they call "society"? All the evils of the world, they declare, are not to be found in nature but in "man-made laws," in the institutions of "society." Yet what is society but the outcome of human wills, of human aspirations? ”

“ The system of the Illuminés is not to embrace the dogmas of a sect, but to turn all errors to its advantage, to concentrate in itself everything that men have invented in the way of duplicity and imposture.
More than this, Illuminism was not only the assemblage of all errors, of all ruses, of all subtleties of a theoretic kind, it was also an assemblage of all practical methods for rousing men to action. For in the words of von Hammer on the Assassins, that cannot be too often repeated:
Opinions are powerless so long as they only confuse the brain without arming the hand. ”

“ For as long as the lust of war lingers in the hearts of the Germans and the lust of gain at the price of human suffering lingers in the hearts of the Jews, both races will remain necessary to each other and the hideous nightmare of war will continue to brood over the world.
There is then a great deal of truth in the Socialist phrase "Capitalists' Wars," although not in the sense they attribute to it. For it will be noticed that the Capitalists who are most instrumental in making wars are precisely those whom the Socialists are always careful to shield from blame. ”

“ It is true that to-day the world is in a state of chaos, industrial chaos, political chaos, social chaos, religious chaos. Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is rent with divisions, the ruling classes are abdicating in favour of unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith for popularity.
And what has brought the world to this pass? Humanity! Humanity, that all-wise, all-virtuous abstraction that needs no light from Heaven. Humanity that was to take the place of God! ”

“ For the final goal of world-revolution is not Socialism or even Communism, it is not a change in the existing economic system, it is not the destruction of civilization in a material sense; the revolution desired by the leaders is a moral and spiritual revolution, an anarchy of ideas by which all standards set up throughout nineteen centuries shall be reversed, all honoured traditions trampled under foot, and above all the Christian ideal finally obliterated.
It is true that a certain section of the Socialist movement proclaims itself Christian. ”

“ For although the danger of Bolshevism in Germany has been doubtless greatly exaggerated in order to prevent the Allies from pressing their demands for disarmament and reparations, nevertheless Bolshevism under its illuminated name of Spartacism cannot be regarded as a movement entirely staged for the deception of Europe. Moreover, just as in the countries of the Allies it has shown itself, under the guise of Pacifism, savagely anti-national and pro-German, so in Germany, as also in Hungary, it turned Pacifism to the opposite purpose by professing sympathy at moments with the Allies. ”

“ For behind the concrete forces of revolution--whether Pan-German, Judaic, or Illuminist--beyond that invisible secret circle which perhaps directs them all, is there not yet another force, still more potent, that must be taken into account? In looking back over the centuries at the dark episodes that have marked the history of the human race from its earliest origins--strange and horrible cults, waves of witchcraft, blasphemies, and desecrations--how is it possible to ignore the existence of an Occult Power at work in the world? ”

“ The Reign of Terror, like the outbreak of Satanism in the Middle Ages, can be explained by no material causes--the orgy of hatred, lust, and cruelty directed not only against the rich but still more against the poor and defenceless, the destruction of science, art, and beauty, the desecration of the churches, the organized campaign against all that was noble, all that was sacred, all that humanity holds dear, what was this but Satanism? ”

“ And de Luchet ends with this despairing appeal to the powers of Europe:
Masters of the world, cast your eyes on a desolated multitude, listen to their cries, their tears, their hopes. A mother asks you to restore her son, a wife her husband, your cities for the fine arts that have fled from them, the country for citizens, the fields for cultivators, religion for forms of worship, and Nature for beings of which she is worthy. ”

“ The Bolsheviks continue to exist amidst telephones, electric light, and other amenities of modern life, but they have almost killed the soul of Russia. In this sense then civilization may pass away, not as the civilizations of the ancient world passed away, leaving only desert sands and crumbling ruins behind them, but vanishing imperceptibly from beneath the outward structure of our existing institutions. Here is the final goal of world revolution. ”

“ For not only has Socialism never been known to succeed, but all its past failures are carefully kept dark by its exponents. Who, then, stands to gain by advocating it? And further, who provides the vast sums spent on propaganda? If in reality Socialism is a rising of the "have-nots" against the "haves," how is it that most of the money seems to be on the side of the "have-nots"? For whilst organizations working for law and order are hampered at every turn for funds, no financial considerations ever seem to interfere with the activities of the so-called "Labour movement." ”

“ At last, when he has been completely captivated, when several years of testing guarantee to the society inviolable secrecy and absolute devotion, it is made known to him that millions of individuals distributed in all the States of Europe share his sentiments and his hopes, that a secret link binds firmly all the scattered members of this immense family, and that the reforms he desires so ardently must sooner or later come about. ”

“ I do not accept the doctrine that all the millions of human beings who have never heard of Christ are plunged in spiritual darkness; I believe that behind all religions founded on a law of righteousness there lies a divine and central truth, that Ikhnaton, Moses and Isaiah, Socrates and Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mohammed were all teachers who interpreted to men the aspect of the divine as it had been vouchsafed to them and which in harmony with the supreme revelation given to man by Jesus Christ. ”

“ You realize the power which Freemasonry has at its disposal. We can say that we hold France. It is not because of our numbers, since there are only 25,000 Freemasons in this country [this was in 1889] . Nor is it because we are the brains, for you have been able to judge of the intellectual mediocrity of the greater number of these 25,000 Freemasons. We hold France because we are organized and the only people who are organized. But above all, we hold France because we have an aim, this aim is unknown; as it is unknown, no obstacle can be put in its way ”

“ But if this description may be legitimately applied to the brains behind Socialism and to certain of its leading doctrinaires, there are doubtless thousands of honest visionaries to be found in the movement. A system that professes to cure all the ills of life inevitably appeals to generous minds that feel but do not reason. In reality many of these people, did they but know it, are simply social reformers at heart and not Socialists at all, and their ignorance of what Socialism really means leads them to range themselves under the banner of a party that claims a monopoly of ideals. ”

“ Christ did not believe in equality of payment when He told the parable of the ten talents and the unprofitable servant. Socialism would reduce all labour to the pace of the slowest. Above all, Christ was not a Socialist when He bade the young man who had great possessions sell all that he had and give it to the poor. What School of Socialism has ever issued such a command? On the contrary, Socialists are enjoined by their leaders not to give their money away in charity lest they should help by this means to prolong the existence of the present social system. ”

“ It is not Prussian militarism that constitutes the crime of modern Germany. Militarism in the sense of courage, patriotism, discipline, and devotion to duty is a splendid thing. But the spirit of Pan-Germanism differs from the British conception of patriotism in that it overrides the rights of all other peoples and seeks to establish its domination over the whole world. Under German domination every German would be free and every other human being a slave. ”

“ We must degrade the noblesse and attribute it to an odious origin, establish a germ of equality which can never exist but which will flatter the people; [we must] immolate the most obstinate, burn and destroy their property in order to intimidate the rest, so that if we cannot entirely destroy this prejudice we can weaken it and the people will avenge their vanity and their jealousy by all the excesses which will bring them to submission. ”

“ The revolutionary explosion might well have finally shattered these illusions but for the Grand Orient. We have already seen the identity of theory between French Masonry and French Socialism in the nineteenth century. It was thus that, although in France one experiment after another demonstrated the unreality of Socialist Utopias, the lodges were always there to reconstruct the mirage and lead humanity on again across the burning desert sands towards the same phantom palm-trees and illusory pools of water. ”

“ Amidst the universal storm produced by the present revolutions in the political and moral world, at this period of supreme illumination and of profound blindness, it would be a crime against truth and humanity to leave any longer shrouded in a veil things that can provide the only key to past and future events, things that should show to thousands of men whether the path they have been made to follow is the path of folly or of wisdom. ”

“ To sum up, I do not so far see in Illuminism a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christianity, but rather a movement finding its principal dynamic force in the ancient spirit of revolt against the existing social and moral order, aided and abetted perhaps by Jews who saw in it a system that might be turned to their own advantage. Meanwhile, Illuminism made use of every other movement that could serve its purpose. ”

“ A race that has always considered itself entitled to occupy a privileged position amongst the nations of the world must inevitably meet with resentment, and in a primitive age or population resentment is apt to find a vent in violence shocking to the civilized mind. Moreover, to represent the Jews as a gentle long-suffering people, always the victims but never the perpetrators of violence, is absolutely contrary to historic fact. In the dark ages of the past the Jews showed themselves perfectly capable of cruelties not only towards other races but towards each other. ”

“ Far more potent than the sign of distress that summons Freemasons to each other's aid at moments of peril is the call of the blood that rallies the most divergent elements in Jewry to the defence of the Jewish cause.
The old complaint of the French merchants already quoted would thus appear to be justified, that "the Jews are particles of quicksilver, which at the least slant run together into a block." One must therefore not be deceived by the fact that they often appear disunited. There may be, and indeed is, very little unity amongst Jews, but there is immense solidarity. ”

“ Here, as in every phase of earthly life, there is the revers de la médaille--white and black, light and darkness, the Heaven and Hell of the human mind. The quest for hidden knowledge may end with initiation into divine truths or into dark and abominable cults. ”

“ The Socialist intellectual may write of the beauties of nationalization, of the joy of working for the common good without hope of personal gain; the revolutinary working man sees nothing to attract him in all this. Question him on his ideas of social transformation, and he will generally express himself in favour of some method by which he will acquire something he has not got; he does not want to see the rich man's motor-car socialized by the State--he wants to drive about in it himself. The revolutionary working man is thus in reality not a Socialist but an Anarchist at heart. ”

“ The present satisfactory condition of Freemasonry in England is owing not only to its established statutes, but to the character of the men who control it--men who are not, as in eighteenth-century France, mere figureheads, but the real directors of the Order. Should the control ever pass into the wrong hands and the agents of secret societies succeed in capturing a number of the lodges, this great stabilizing force might become a gigantic engine of destruction. ”

“ Such, then, is the Association's continual mode of progression from its origins until the present moment; it is by conveying from childhood the germ of poison into the highest classes of society, in feeding the minds of students on ideas diametrically opposed to that order of things under which they have to live, in breaking the ties that bind them to sovereigns, that Illuminism has recruited the largest number of adepts, called by the state to which they were born to be the mainstays of the Throne and of a system which would ensure them honours and privileges. ”

“ Hence the efforts of well-meaning people to set forth in long, well-reasoned arguments the "fallacies of Socialism" produce little or no result. All these so-called "fallacies" have been exposed repeatedly by able writers and disproved by all experience, so that if based merely on ignorance or error they would long since have ceased to obtain credence. The truth is that they are not fallacies but lies, deliberately devised and circulated by men who do not believe in them for a moment and who can therefore only be described as unscrupulous charlatans exploiting the credulity of the public. ”

“ If in a world where all patriotism, all national traditions, and all Christian virtues are being systematically destroyed by the doctrines of International Socialism one race alone, a race that since time immemorial has cherished the dream of world-power, is not only allowed but encouraged to consolidate itself, to maintain all its national traditions, and to fulfil all its national aspirations at the expense of other races, it is evident that Christian civilization must be eventually obliterated. ”

“ Jesus wished to introduce no new religion, but only to restore natural religion and reason to their old rights. Thereby he wished to unite men in a great universal association, and through the spread of a wiser morality, enlightenment, and the combating of all prejudices to make them capable of governing themselves; so the secret meaning of his teaching was to lead men without revolution to universal liberty and equality. ”

“ For if Germany can persuade us that the Jews alone were responsible for the war and were also the sole authors of Bolshevism, we shall naturally be led to the conclusion that Germany is, after all, innocent of the crimes attributed to her, and that our only safety lies in forgoing reparations, restoring her to her former power, and coalescing with her against a common enemy. ”