[multi]

(N.H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements,
London, 1924)
"When I first began to write on Revolution a well known London Publisher
said to me; 'Remember that if you take an anti-revolutionary line you will
have the whole literary world against you.' This appeared to me
extraordinary. Why should the literary world sympathize with a movement
which, from the French revolution onwards, has always been directed
against literature, art, and science, and has openly proclaimed its aim to
exalt the manual workers over the intelligentsia? 'Writers must be
proscribed as the most dangerous enemies of the people' said Robespierre;
his colleague Dumas said all clever men should be guillotined. The system
of persecutions against men of talents was organized...they cried out in
the Sections (of Paris) 'Beware of that man for he has written a book.'
Precisely the same policy has been followed in Russia under moderate
socialism in Germany the professors, not the 'people,' are starving in
garrets. Yet the whole Press of our country is permeated with subversive
influences. Not merely in partisan works, but in manuals of history or
literature for use in schools, Burke is reproached for warning us against
the French Revolution and Carlyle's panegyric is applauded. And whilst
every slip on the part of an anti-revolutionary writer is seized on by the
critics and held up as an example of the whole, the most glaring errors
not only of conclusions but of facts pass unchallenged if they happen to
be committed by a partisan of the movement. The principle laid down by
Collot d'Herbois still holds good: 'Tout est permis pour quiconque agit
dans le sens de la revolution.'

All this was unknown to me when I first embarked on my work. I knew that
French writers of the past had distorted facts to suit their own political
views, that conspiracy of history is still directed by certain influences
in the Masonic lodges and the Sorbonne [The facilities of literature and
science of the University of Paris]; I did not know that this conspiracy
was being carried on in this country. Therefore the publisher's warning
did not daunt me. If I was wrong either in my conclusions or facts I was
prepared to be challenged. Should not years of laborious historical
research meet either with recognition or with reasoned and scholarly
refutation?

But although my book received a great many generous appreciative reviews
in the Press, criticisms which were hostile took a form which I had never
anticipated. Not a single honest attempt was made to refute either my
French Revolution or World Revolution by the usual methods of controversy;
Statements founded on documentary evidence were met with flat
contradiction unsupported by a shred of counter evidence. In general the
plan adopted was not to disprove, but to discredit by means of flagrant
misquotations, by attributing to me views I had never expressed, or even
by means of offensive personalities. It will surely be admitted that this
method of attack is unparalleled in any other sphere of literary
controversy."