CHAPTER V—CRIMINAL SOCIETIES

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CuapTeR VI—COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY
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INDEX
ORGANISATION
THE Fascists
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
— societies are underground springs that have transformed political geology, welled forth to fertilise green pastures or, more often, to break up noble mountains, sanctuaries, bulwarks, time-stained ruins. It is claimed that they have nurtured great causes and destroyed the bases of society ; fostered progress and crime, illumination and disaster.
All, however, may agree in defining a secret society as machinery in motion, and the machinery may have been released in various ways: by (1) chance, (2) new currents of thought, (3) social and political conditions, (4) grievances, real or imaginary, (5) foreign rule, or (6) criminal instincts.
Thus, (1) a satirical work of fiction chanced to start the Rosicrucians ; (2) Luther and the Encyclopedists infected the vulgar with suggestions that convulsed the world ; (3) class jealousies and popular privations turned to quack remedies fraught with fresh disease ; (4) a distaste for public duties overthrew ancient institutions; (5) Greeks, Poles, Irishmen, Germans plotted successfully against foreign rule; (6) Neapolitan gaolbirds followed in the footsteps of patriotic desperadoes. Classification bristles with difficul- ties, for nearly every group overlaps. But behind them all, groping in darkness, we may discern the moving finger of a hidden hand.
And a general statement may be hazarded : the machinery of secret societies will not work ina vacuum. It needs a fer- tilising atmosphere that has not yet been convincingly analysed. Literary tastes, diversions, public opinions de- pend on atmosphere in a similar way. For instance, Milton, Rousseau, Dickens, Corelli fascinate one generation and dis- gust another; bear-baiting, lawn-tennis, waltzes, negro- dances, cross-word puzzles come and go ; mysticism, psycho-
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12 SECRET SOCIETIES
analysis, free-trade, puritanism, patriotism rise and fall barometrically. The planets may have something to do with this, as they have with tides, vintages and epidemics.
And the machinery of secret societies is strangely similar everywhere. Sometimes, of course, it is borrowed, but it is often repeated spontaneously, indicating common origins as well as common characteristics in all human minds.