This secret permeation of universities (which was successful in the German ones in Weishaupt's day, as his documents show) was very largely effective in our generations. The two British government officials who after their flight to Moscow were paraded before the international press in 1956 to state that they had been captured by Communism at their universities, were typical products of this method, described by the Protocols early in the century and by Weishaupt in 1787.
Weishaupt's documents speak of Freemasonry as the best "cover" to be used by the agents of the conspiracy. The Protocols allot the function of "cover" to "Liberalism":
"When we introduced into the State organism the poison of Liberalism its whole political complexion underwent a change. States have been seized with a moral illness, blood-poisoning. All that remains is to await the end of their death agony".
The term "utopian dreamers", used more than once, is applied to Liberals, and its original source probably resides in the Old Testamentary allusion to "dreamers of dreams" who, with "false prophets", are to be put to death. The Protocols did not specify it:
"We shall root out liberalism from the important strategic posts of our government on which depends the training of subordinates for our State structure".
The "Big Brother" regimes of our century, are accurately foretold in the passage,
"Our government will have the appearance of a patriarchal paternal guardianship on the part of our ruler".
Republicanism, too, is to be a "cover" for the conspiracy. The Protocols are especially contemptuous of republicanism, in which (and in liberalism) they see the weapon of self-destruction forged out of "the mob":
" . . . then it was that the era of republics became possible of realization; and then it was that we replaced the ruler by a caricature of a government, by a president, taken from the mob, from the midst of our puppet creatures, our slaves. This was the foundation of the mine which we have laid under the peoples".
Then the unknown scribes of some time before 1905 describe the position to which American presidents have been reduced in our century. The passage begins,
"In the near future we shall establish the responsibility of presidents". This, as the sequence shows, means personal responsibility, as distinct from the responsibility curbed by constitutional controls; the president is to become one of the "premier-dictators earlier foreseen, whose function is to be to break down the constitutional defences of states and thus prepare "unification under our sovereign rule".
During the First and Second World Wars the American presidents did in fact become "premier-dictators" in this sense, claiming that "the emergency" and the need for "victory" dictated this seizure of powers of personal responsibility; powers which would be restored to "the people" when "the emergency" was past. Readers of sufficient years will recall how inconceivable this appeared before it happened and how passively it was accepted in the event. The passage then continues:
"The chamber of deputies will provide cover for, will protect, will elect presidents, but we shall take from it the right to propose new, or make changes in existing laws, for this right will be given by us to the responsible president, a puppet in our hands . . .
Independently of this we shall invest the president with the right of declaring a state of war. We shall justify this last right on the ground that the president as chief of the whole army of the country must have it at his disposal in case of need . . .
It is easy to understand that in these conditions the key of the shrine will lie in our hands, and that no one outside ourselves will any longer direct the force of legislation . . .
The president will, at our discretion, interpret the sense of such of the existing laws as admit of various interpretation; he will further annul them when we indicate to him the necessity to do so, beside this, he will have the right to propose temporary laws, and even new departures in the government constitutional working, the pretext both for the one and the other being the requirements for the supreme welfare of the state. By such measures we shall obtain the power of rights, we are compelled to introduce into the constitutions of states to prepare for the transition to an imperceptible abolition of every kind of constitution, and then the time is come to turn every government into our despotism".