The loan business.
These, only to name the industries with national and international sweep, are in control of the Jews of the United States, either alone or in association with Jews overseas.
The American people would be vastly surprised if they could see a line-up of some of the "American business men" who hold up our commercial prestige overseas. They are mostly Jews. They have a keen sense of the value of the American name, and when in a foreign port you stroll up to the office which bears the sign, "American Importing Company," or "American Commercial Company," or other similarly non-committal names, hoping to find a countryman, an American, you usually find a Jew whose sojourn in America appears to have been all too brief. This may throw a sidelight on the regard in which "American business methods" are held in some parts of the world. When 30 or 40 different races of people can carry on business under the name "American," and do it legally, too, it is not surprising that Americans do not recognize some of the descriptions of American methods which appear in the foreign press. The Germans long ago complained that the rest of the world was judging them by the German-speaking Jewish commercial traveler.
Instances of Jewish prosperity in the United States are commonplace, but prosperity, the just reward of foresight and application, is not to be confounded with control. The prosperity of the Jews can be had by anyone who is willing to pay the price which the Jews pay for it—a very, very high price, as a rule, all things considered—but it would be impossible for any Gentile coalition under similar circumstances to attain the control which the Jews have won, for the reason that there is lacking in the Gentile a certain quality of working-togetherness, a certain conspiracy of objective, and the adhesiveness of intense raciality, which characterizes the Jew. It is nothing to a Gentile that another man is a Gentile; it is next to everything to a Jew that the man at his door is another Jew. So, if instances of Jewish prosperity were needed, the case of the Temple Emmanu-el, New York, might be cited, which in 1846 could scarcely raise $1,520 for its budget, but in 1868, following the Civil War, raised $708,755 from the rental of 231 pews. And the rise of the Jewish clothing monopoly as one of the results of the same Civil War might be cited as an instance of prosperity plus national and international control.
Indeed, it might be said that the Jew has succeeded in everything he has attempted in the United States, except farming. The explanation usually made in Jewish publications is that ordinary farming is far too simple to engage the Jew's intellect and therefore he is not enough interested in it to succeed, but that in dairy and cattle farming where the "brain" is more necessary he has made a success. Numerous attempts have been made in various parts of the United States to start Jewish farming colonies, but their story is a series of failures. Some have blamed the failures on the Jew's lack of knowledge of scientific farming, others on his distaste for manual labor, others on the lack of the speculative element in agriculture. In any case, he stands higher in the non-productive employments than in this basically productive one. Some students of the question state that the Jew never was a man of the land, but always a trader, for which assertion one of the proofs offered is the Jews' selection of Palestine as their country, that strip of land which formed a gateway between East and West and over which the overland traffic of the world passed.
[Issue of June 5, 1920.]
"The Jewish Question still exists. It would be useless to deny it . . . . The Jewish Question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution . . . . The unfortunate Jews are now carrying anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America."
—Theodore Herzl, "A Jewish State," p. 4.
The Jewish Question—Fact or Fancy?
The chief difficulty in writing about the Jewish Question is the supersensitiveness of Jews and non-Jews concerning the whole matter. There is a vague feeling that even to openly use the word "Jew," or to expose it nakedly to print, is somehow improper. Polite evasions like "Hebrew" and "Semite," both of which are subject to the criticism of inaccuracy, are timidly essayed, and people pick their way gingerly as if the whole subject were forbidden, until some courageous Jewish thinker comes straight out with the good old word "Jew," and then the constraint is relieved and the air cleared. The word "Jew" is not an epithet; it is a name, ancient and honorable, with significance for every period of human history, past, present and to come.
There is extreme sensitiveness about the public discussion of the Jewish Question on the part of Gentiles. They would prefer to keep it in the hazy borderlands of their thought, shrouded in silence. Their heritage of tolerance has something to do with their attitude, but perhaps their instinctive sense of the difficulty involved has more to do with it. The principal public Gentile pronouncements upon the Jewish Question are in the manner of the truckling politician or the pleasant after-dinner speaker; the great Jewish names in philosophy, medicine, literature, music and finance are named over, the energy, ability and thrift of the race are dwelt upon, and everyone goes home feeling that a difficult place has been rather neatly negotiated. But nothing is changed thereby. The Jew is not changed. The Gentile is not changed. The Jew still remains the enigma of the world.
Gentile sensitiveness on this point is best expressed by the desire for silence—"Why discuss it at all?" is the attitude. Such an attitude is itself a proof that there is a problem which we would evade if we could. "Why discuss it at all?"—the keen thinker clearly sees in the implications of such a question, the existence of a problem whose discussion or suppression will not always be within the choice of easy-going minds.
Is there a Jewish Question in Russia? Unquestionably, in its most virulent form. Is it necessary to meet that Question in Russia? Undoubtedly, meet it from every angle along which light and healing may come.
Well, the percentage of the Jewish population of Russia is just one per cent more than it is in the United States. The majority of the Jews themselves are not less well-behaved in Russia than they are here; they lived under restrictions which do not exist here; yet in Russia their genius has enabled them to attain a degree of power which has completely baffled the Russian mind. Whether you go to Rumania, Russia, Austria or Germany, or anywhere else that the Jewish Question has come to the forefront as a vital issue, you will discover that the principal cause is the outworking of the Jewish genius to achieve the power of control.
Here in the United States it is the fact of this remarkable minority—a sparse Jewish ingredient of three per cent in a nation of 110,000,000—attaining in 50 years a degree of control that would be impossible to a ten times larger group of any other race, that creates the Jewish Question here. Three per cent of any other people would scarcely occasion comment, because we could not meet with a representative of them wherever we went in high places—in the innermost secrecy of the councils of the Big Four at Versailles; in the supreme court; in the councils of the White House; in the vast dispositions of world finance—wherever there is power to get or use. Yet we meet the Jew everywhere in the upper circles, literally everywhere there is power. He has the brains, the initiative, the penetrative vision which almost automatically project him to the top, and as a consequence he is more marked than any other race.
And that is where the Jewish Question begins. It begins in very simple terms—How does the Jew so habitually and so resistlessly gravitate to the highest places? What puts him there? Why is he put there? What does he do there? What does the fact of his being there mean to the world?
That is the Jewish Question in its origin. From these points it goes on to others, and whether the trend becomes pro-Jewish or anti-Semitic depends on the amount of prejudice brought to the inquiry, and whether it becomes pro-Humanity depends on the amount of insight and intelligence.
The use of the word Humanity in connection with the word Jew usually throws a side-meaning which may not be intended. In this connection it is usually understood that the humanity ought to be shown toward the Jew. There is just as great an obligation upon the Jew to show his humanity toward the whole race. The Jew has been too long accustomed to think of himself as exclusively the claimant on the humanitarianism of society; society has a large claim against him that he cease his exclusiveness, that he cease exploiting the world, that he cease making Jewish groups the end and all of his gains, and that he begin to fulfill, in a sense his exclusiveness has never yet enabled him to fulfill, the ancient prophecy that through him all the nations of the earth should be blessed.
The Jew cannot go on forever filling the role of suppliant for the world's humanitarianism; he must himself show that quality to a society which seriously suspects his higher and more powerful groups of exploiting it with a pitiless rapacity which in its wide-flung and long drawn-out distress may be described as an economic pogrom against a rather helpless humanity. For it is true that society is as helpless before the well-organized extortions of certain financial groups, as huddled groups of Russian Jews were helpless against the anti-Semitic mob. And as in Russia, so in America, it is the poor Jew who suffers for the delinquencies of the rich exploiter of his race.
This series of articles is already being met by an organized barrage by mail and wire and voice, every single item of which carries the wail of persecution. One would think that a heartless and horrible attack were being made on a most pitiable and helpless people—until one looks at the letterheads of the magnates who write, and at the financial ratings of those who protest, and at the membership of the organizations whose responsible heads hysterically demand retraction. And always in the background there is the threat of boycott, a threat which has practically sealed up the columns of every publication in America against even the mildest discussion of the Jewish Question.
The Jewish Question in America cannot be concealed forever by threats against publications, nor by the propagandist publication of matter extremely and invariably favorable to everything Jewish. It is here and it cannot be twisted into something else by the adroit use of propaganda, nor can it be forever silenced by threats. The Jews of the United States can best serve themselves and their fellow-Jews all over the world by letting drop their far too ready cry of "anti-Semitism," by adopting a franker tone than that which befits a helpless victim, and by seeing what the Jewish Question is and how it behooves every Jew who loves his people to help solve it.
There has been used in this series the term "International Jew." It is susceptible of two interpretations: one, the Jew wherever he may be; the other, the Jew who exercises international control. The real contention of the world is with the latter and his satellites, whether Jew or Gentile.
Now, this international type of Jew, this grasper after world-control, this actual possessor and wielder of world-control is a very unfortunate connection for his race to have. The most unfortunate thing about the international Jew, from the standpoint of the ordinary Jew, is that the international type is also a Jew. And the significance of this is that the type does not grow anywhere else than on a Jewish stem. There is no other racial nor national type which puts forth this kind of person. It is not merely that there are a few Jews among international financial controllers; it is that these world controllers are exclusively Jews. That is the phenomenon which creates an unfortunate situation for those Jews who are not and never shall be world-controllers, who are the plain people of the Jewish race. If world-control were mixed, like the control, say, of the biscuit business, then the occasional Jews we might find in those higher financial altitudes would not constitute the problem at all; the problem would then be limited to the existence of world-control in the hands of a few men, of whatever race or lineage they might be. But since world-control is an ambition which has only been achieved by Jews, and not by any of the methods usually adopted by would-be world conquerors, it becomes inevitable that the question should center in that remarkable race.
This brings another difficulty: in discussing this group of world-controllers under the name of Jews (and they are Jews), it is not always possible to stop and distinguish the group of Jews that is meant. The candid reader can usually determine that, but the Jew who is in a state of mind to be injured is sometimes pained by reading as a charge against himself what was intended for the upper group. "Then why not discuss the upper group as financiers and not as Jews?" may be asked. Because they are Jews. It is not to the point to insist that in any list of rich men there are more Gentiles than Jews; we are not talking about merely rich men who have, many of them, gained their riches by serving a System, we are talking about those who Control—and it is perfectly apparent that merely to be rich is not to control. The world-controlling Jew has riches, but he also has something much more powerful than that.
The international Jew, as already defined, rules not because he is rich, but because in a most marked degree he possesses the commercial and masterful genius of his race, and avails himself of a racial loyalty and solidarity the like of which exists in no other human group. In other words, transfer today the world-control of the international Jew to the hands of the highest commercially talented group of Gentiles, and the whole fabric of world-control would eventually fall to pieces, because the Gentile lacks a certain quality, be it human or divine, be it natural or acquired, that the Jew possesses.
This, of course, the modern Jew denies. There is a new position taken by the modernists among the Jews which constitutes a denial that the Jew differs from any other man except in the matter of religion. "Jew" they say is not a racial designation, but a religious designation like "Episcopalian," "Catholic," "Presbyterian." This is the argument used in newspaper offices in the Jews' protests against giving the Jewish designation to those of their people who are implicated in crime—"You don't give the religious classification of other people who are arrested," the editor is told, "why should you do it with Jews?" The appeal to religious tolerance always wins, and is sometimes useful in diverting attention from other things.
Well, if the Jews are only religiously differentiated from the rest of the world, the phenomenon grows stranger still. For the rest of the world is interested less in the Jew's religion than in anything else that concerns him. There is really nothing in his religion to differentiate the Jew from the rest of mankind, as far as the moral content of that religion is concerned, and if there were he would have overcome that by the fact that his Jewish religion supplies the moral structure for both of the other great religions. Moreover, it is stated that there are among English speaking nations 2,000,000 Jews who acknowledge their race and not their religion, while 1,000,000 are classed as agnostic—are these any less Jews than the others? The world does not think so. The authoritative students of human differences do not think so. An Irishman who grows indifferent to the Church is still an Irishman, and it would seem to be equally true that a Jew who grows indifferent to the Synagogue is still a Jew. He at least feels that he is, and so does the non-Jew.
A still more serious challenge would arise if this contention of the modernists were true, for it would necessitate the explanation of these world-controlling Jews by their religion. We should have to say, "They excel through their religion," and then the problem would turn on the religion whose practice should bring such power and prosperity to its devotees. But another fact would intervene, namely, that these world-controlling Jews are not notably religious; and still another fact would hammer for recognition, namely, the most devout believers and most obedient followers of the Jewish religion are the poorest among the Jews. If you want Jewish orthodoxy, the bracing morality of the Old Testament, you will find it, not among the successful Jews, who have Unitarianized their religion to the same extent that the Unitarians have Judaized their Christianity, but among the poor in the side streets who still sacrifice the Saturday business for their Sabbath keeping. Certainly their religion has not given them world-control; instead, they have made their own sacrifices to keep it inviolate against modernism.
Of course, if the Jew differs from the rest of mankind only when he is in full accord with his religion, the question becomes very simple. Any criticism of the Jew becomes sheer religious bigotry and nothing else! And that would be intolerable. But it would be the consensus of thoughtful opinion that the Jew differs less in his religion than in anything else. There is more difference between the two great branches of Christianity, more conscious difference, than between any branch of Christianity and Judaism.
So that, the contention of certain modernists notwithstanding, the world will go on thinking of the Jew as a member of a race, a race whose persistence has defeated the utmost efforts made for its extermination, a race that has preserved itself in virility and power by the observance of those natural laws the violation of which has mongrelized so many nations, a race which has come up out of the past with the two great moral values which may be reckoned on monotheism and monogamy, a race which today is before us as the visible sign of an antiquity to which all our spiritual wealth harks back. Nay, the Jew will go on thinking of himself as the member of a people, a nation, a race. And all the mixture and intermixture of thought or faith or custom cannot make it otherwise. A Jew is a Jew and as long as he remains within his perfectly unassailable traditions, he will remain a Jew. And he will always have the right to feel that to be a Jew is to belong to a superior race.
These world-controlling Jews at the top of affairs, then, are there by virtue of, among other things, certain qualities which are inherent in their Jewish natures. Every Jew has these qualities even if not in the supreme sense, just as every Englishman has Shakespeare's tongue but not in Shakespeare's degree. And thus it is impracticable, if not impossible, to consider the international Jew without laying the foundations broadly upon Jewish character and psychology.
We may discount at once the too common libel that this greater form of Jewish success is built upon dishonesty. It is impossible to indict the Jewish people or any other people on a wholesale charge. No one knows better than the Jew how widespread is the notion that Jewish methods of business are all unscrupulous. There is no doubt a possibility of a great deal of unscrupulousness existing without actual legal dishonesty, but it is altogether possible that the reputation the Jewish people have long borne in this respect may have had other sources than actual and persistent dishonesty.
We may indicate one of these possible sources. The Jew at a trade is naturally quicker than most other men. They say there are other races which are as nimble at a trade as is the Jew, but the Jew does not live much among them. In this connection one may remember the famous joke about the Jew who went to Scotland.
Now, it is human nature for the slower man to believe that the quicker man is too deft by far, and to become suspicious of his deftness. Everybody suspects the "sharper" even though his sharpness be entirely honest. The slower mind is likely to conceive that the man who sees so many legitimate twists and turns to a trade, may also see and use a convenient number of illegitimate twists and turns. Moreover, there is always the ready suspicion that the one who gets "the best of the bargain" gets it by trickery which is not above board. Slow, honest, plain-spoken and straight-dealing people always have their doubts of the man who gets the better of it.
The Jews, as the records for centuries show, were a keen people in trade. They were so keen that many regarded them as crooked. And so the Jew became disliked for business reasons, not all of which were creditable to the intelligence or initiative of his enemies.
Take for example, the persecution which Jew merchants once suffered in England. In older England the merchant class had many easy-going traditions. One tradition was that a respectable tradesman would never seek business but wait for it to come to him. Another tradition was that to decorate one's store window with lights or colors, or to display one's stock of goods attractively in the view of the public, was a contemptible and underhanded method of tempting a brother tradesman's customers away from him. Still another tradition was that it was strictly unethical and unbusinesslike to handle more than one line of goods. If one sold tea, it was the best reason in the world why he should not sell teaspoons. As for advertising, the thing would have been so brazen and bold that public opinion would have put the advertiser out of business. The proper demeanor for a merchant was to seem reluctant to part with his goods.
One may readily imagine what happened when the Jewish merchant bustled into the midst of this jungle of traditions. He simply broke them all. In those days tradition had all the force of a divinely promulgated moral law and in consequence of his initiative the Jew was regarded as a great offender. A man who would break those trade traditions would stop at nothing! The Jew was anxious to sell. If he could not sell one article to a customer, he had another on hand to offer him. The Jews' stores became bazaars, forerunners of our modern department stores, and the old English custom of one store for one line of goods was broken up. The Jew went after trade, pursued it, persuaded it. He was the originator of "a quick turnover and small profits." He originated the installment plan. The one state of affairs he could not endure was business at a standstill, and to start it moving he would do anything. He was the first advertiser—in a day when even to announce in the public prints the location of your store was to intimate to the public that you were in financial difficulties, were about to go to the wall and were trying the last desperate expedient to which no self-respecting merchant would stoop.
It was as easy as child's play to connect this energy with dishonesty. The Jew was not playing the game, at least so the staid English merchant thought. As a matter of fact he was playing the game to get it all in his own hands—which he has practically done.
The Jew has shown that same ability ever since. His power of analyzing the money currents amounts to an instinct. His establishment in one country represented another base from which the members of his race could operate. Whether by the natural outworking of innate gifts, or the deliberate plan of race unity and loyalty, all Jewish trading communities had relations, and as those trading communities increased in wealth, prestige and power, as they formed relations with governments and great interests in the countries where they operated, they simply put more power into the central community wherever it might be located, now in Spain, now in Holland, now in England. Whether by intention or not, they became more closely allied than the branches of one business could be, because the cement of racial unity, the bond of racial brotherhood cannot in the very nature of things exist among the Gentiles as it exists among the Jews. Gentiles never think of themselves as Gentiles, and never feel that they owe anything to another Gentile as such. Thus they have been convenient agents of Jewish schemes at times and in places when it was not expedient that the Jewish controllers should be publicly known; but they have never been successful competitors of the Jew in the field of world-control.
From these separated Jewish communities went power to the central community where the master bankers and the master analysts of conditions lived. And back from the central community flowed information of an invaluable character and assistance wherever needed. It is not difficult to understand how, under such a condition, the nation that did not deal kindly with the Jews was made to suffer, and the nation that yielded to them their fullest desire was favored by them. And it is credibly stated that they have made certain nations feel the power of their displeasure.
This system, if it ever existed, exists in greater power today. It is today, however, threatened as it has never been. Fifty years ago, international banking, which was mostly in control of the Jews as the money brokers of the world, was on top of business. It exercised the supercontrol of governments and finance everywhere. Then came that new thing, Industry, which expanded to a degree unguessed by the shrewdest prophets and analysts. As Industry gathered strength and power it became a powerful money magnet, drawing the wealth of the world in its train, not, however, merely for the sake of possessing the money, but of making it work. Production and profit on production, instead of loans and interest on loans, became the master method for a time. The war came, in which the former broker-masters of the world had undoubtedly their large part. And now the two forces, Industry and Finance, are in a struggle to see whether Finance is again to become the master, or creative Industry. This is one of the elements which is bringing the Jewish Question to the bar of public opinion.
To state this and to prove it may be nothing more than to establish the superiority of Jewish ability. Certainly it is not a tenable position to say that the Jew is extraordinarily successful and therefore must be curbed. It would be equally aside from the truth to say that the co-ordination of Jewish activity has been, on the whole, a harmful thing for the world. It may be possible to show that up to this point it has been useful. Success cannot be attacked nor condemned. If any moral question arises at all, it must concern the use made of the success which has been attained. The whole matter centers there, after the previous fact is established. May the Jew go on as he has gone, or does his duty to the world require another use of his success?
This inquiry obviously leads to further discussion, as well as a gathering up of the remaining threads of the present discussion, which future articles will attempt to do.
[Issue of June 12, 1920.]
"To this end we must organize. Organize, in the first place, so that the world may have proof of the extent and the intensity of our desire for liberty. Organize, in the second place, so that our resources may become known and be made available . . . .
"Organize, organize, organize, until every Jew must stand up and be counted—counted with us, or prove himself, wittingly or unwittingly, of the few who are against their own people."
—Louis D. Brandeis, Justice of the United States Supreme Court,"Zionism," pp. 113, 114.
Anti-Semitism—Will It Appear in the U. S.?
Anyone who essays to discuss the Jewish Question in the United States or anywhere else must be fully prepared to be regarded as an Anti-Semite, in high-brow language, or in low-brow language, a Jew-baiter. Nor need encouragement be looked for from people or from press. The people who are awake to the subject at all prefer to wait and see how it all turns out; while there is probably not a newspaper in America, and certainly none of the advertising mediums which are called magazines, which would have the temerity even to breathe seriously the fact that such a Question exists. The press in general is open at this time to fulsome editorials in favor of everything Jewish (specimens of the same being obtainable almost anywhere), while the Jewish press, which is fairly numerous in the United States, takes care of the vituperative end.
Of course, the only acceptable explanation of any public discussion at present of the Jewish Question is that some one—writer, or publisher, or a related interest—is a Jew-hater. That idea seems to be fixed; it is fixed in the Jew by inheritance; it is sought to be fixed in the Gentile by propaganda, that any writing which does not simply cloy and drip in syrupy sweetness toward things Jewish is born of prejudice and hatred. It is, therefore, full of lies, insult, insinuation, and constitutes an instigation to massacre. These terms are culled at random from Jewish editorial utterances at hand.
It would seem to be necessary for our Jewish citizens to enlarge their classification of Gentiles to include the class which recognizes the existence of a Jewish Question and still is not anti-Semitic.
There are four distinct parties traceable among the Jews themselves. First, those whose passionate purpose is to keep Jewish faith and life alive at the cost of any sacrifice of popularity or success; second, those who are willing to make whatever sacrifice may be needed to preserve Jewish religion, but are not so particular about the traditional customs of Jewish life; third, those who have no very strong convictions either way, but are opportunists, and will always swerve in the direction of success; and, fourth, those who believe and preach that the only solution of the differences between the Jew and other men is the complete absorption of the Jewish race by the other races. The fourth is the weakest, most unpopular and least to be considered of all the parties.
With the Gentiles there are only two classes, as far as this special question is concerned: those who dislike Jews, they cannot tell why; and those who are disposed to fairness, in spite of the accident of congeniality or uncongeniality, and who recognize the Jewish Question as, at least, a problem. Both these attitudes, whenever they become apparent, are subject to the charge of "anti-Semitism."
Anti-Semitism is a term which is bandied about too loosely. It ought to be reserved to denote the real anti-Jewish temper of violent prejudice. If used indiscriminately about all who attempt to discuss Jewish characteristics and Jewish world-power, it may in time arrive at the estate of respectability and honor.
Anti-Semitism in almost every form is bound to come to the United States; indeed, it may be said that it is here now, and has been here for a long time. If it be mislabeled now, the United States will not be able to work within it the transformation which has been effected upon so many other ideas that have arrived here in their journey round the globe.
It may be a serviceable clearing of the ground to define what anti-Semitism is not:
1. It is not recognition of the Jewish Question. If it were, then it could be set down that the bulk of the American people are destined to become anti-Semites, for they are beginning to recognize the existence of a Jewish Question and will steadily do so in increasing numbers as the Question is forced upon them from the various practical angles of their lives. The Question is here. We may be honestly blind to it. We may be timidly silent about it. We may even make dishonest denial of it. But it is here. In time all will have to recognize it. In time the polite "hush, hush" of over-sensitive or intimidated circles will not be powerful enough to suppress it. But to recognize it will not mean that we have gone over to a campaign of hatred and enmity against the Jews. It will only mean that a stream of tendency which has been flowing through our civilization has at last accumulated bulk and power enough to challenge attention, to call for some decision with regard to it, to call for the adoption of a policy which will not repeat the mistakes of the past and yet will forestall any possible social menace of the future.
2. Again, the public discussion of the Jewish Question is not anti-Semitism. Publicity is sanitary. The publicity given the Jewish Question, or certain aspects of it, in this country has been very misleading. It has been discussed more fully in the Jewish press than elsewhere, but not with candor or breadth of vision. The two dominant notes—they are sounded over and over again with monotonous regularity in the Jewish press—are Gentile unfairness and Christian prejudice. These apparently are the two chief aspects of life which impress Jewish publicists when they look over the line of their own race. It is said in all soberness that it is fortunate for Jews generally that the Jewish press does not circulate very widely among Gentiles, for it is probably the one established agency in the United States which, without altering its program in the least, could stir up anti-Jewish sentiment by the simple expedient of a general reading among non-Jews. Jewish writers writing for Jewish readers present unusual material for the study of race consciousness and its accompaniment of contempt for other races. It is true that in the publications referred to, America is constantly praised, but not America as the land of the American people; America, rather, as the land of the Jews' opportunity.
On the side of the daily press, there has been no serious discussion at all. This is neither surprising nor reprehensible. The daily press deals with matters that have reached the overheated stage. When it mentions the Jews at all, it has stock phrases for the purpose; the effort includes a list of the famous Jews of history, and usually closes with complimentary references to certain local Jews of commendable qualities, whose advertisements are not infrequently found in another part of the paper. Summing up, it may be said that the publicity given the question in this country consists in misrepresentative criticism of the Gentiles by the Jewish press and misrepresentative praise of the Jews by the non-Jewish press. An independent effort to give a constructive publicity cannot, therefore, be laid to anti-Semitism, even when some of the statements which are made in the course of it arouse the resentment of Jewish readers.
3. Nor is it anti-Semitism to say that the suspicion is abroad in every capital of civilization and the certainty is held by a number of important men that there is active in the world a plan to control the world, not by territorial acquisition, not by military aggression, nor by governmental subjection, not even by economic control in the scientific sense, but by control of the machinery of commerce and exchange. It is not anti-Semitism to say that, nor to present the evidence which supports that, nor to bring the proof of that. Those who could best disprove it if it were not true are the international Jews themselves, but they have not disproved it. Those who could best prove it would be those Jews whose ideals include the good of the whole of humanity on an equality and not the good of one race only, but they have not proved it. Some day a prophetic Jew may arise who will see that the promises bestowed upon the Ancient People are not to be fulfilled by Rothschild methods, and that the promise that all the nations were to be blessed through Israel is not to be fulfilled by making the nations the economic vassals of Israel; and when that time comes we may hope for a redirection of Jewish energy into channels that will drain the present sources of the Jewish Question. In the meantime, it is not anti-Semitism, it may even be found to be a world service to the Jew, to throw light on what purpose motivates certain higher circles.
If the above propositions are true, then the term "anti-Semitic," so freely bestowed on this series of articles, betrays a worse spirit in the critics than in the author. But enough of that. There is much yet to do, and what is done must stand on what merit remains after friend and foe alike are through with praise and blame.
Anti-Semitism has unquestionably swayed large sections of humanity at various times, warping the vision, twisting the characters and staining the hands of its victims, but the most amazing statement that can be made of it is that it has never accomplished anything in behalf of those who used it, and it has never taught anything to the Jews against whom it was used.
The grades of anti-Semitism are fairly numerous, and a few of them may be cited here:
1. There is first that degree of anti-Semitism, if it may be so described, which consists in plain dislike of the Jew as a person, no matter whom he may be. This is often found in people of all grades. It is found mostly, however, in those whose contact with Jews has been very limited. It begins sometimes in childhood with an instinctive dislike for the word "Jew." It is encouraged by the misuse of the word "Jew" as an epithet, or as an adjective generally descriptive of unpopular practices. The feeling is not different from that which exists toward Gentiles, concerning whom the same notions are held, but it differs in that it is extended to the race of unknown individual Jews instead of being restricted to known individuals who may justify such a feeling.
Congeniality is not within our choice, but control of the sentiment of uncongeniality is. Every fair-minded person is compelled at times to reflect that it is not impossible that the person for whom he feels a dislike may be as good and possibly a better person than he. Our dislike merely registers the result of attraction and repulsion as they operate between another person and oneself; it does not indicate that the disliked person is unworthy. Of course, wherever intelligence is joined with this instinctive withdrawal from social contact with members of the Jewish race, prejudice is forestalled, except, of course, in those persons who hold that there are no individuals among the Jews worthy of respect. This is an extreme attitude and is composed of other elements beside natural dislike. It is possible for people to dislike Jews and not be anti-Semitic. Indeed, it is not at all uncommon, it grows more and more common, that intelligent and refined Jews themselves do not relish the society of their own people except in cases of exceptional refinement.
This reality calls for some comment on the manners and characteristics of the ordinary member of the Jewish race, the accidents of behavior which stand out most obnoxiously and of which Jews themselves are often the most unsparing critics, but these comments must fall into place later.
2. A second stage of the spirit of anti-Semitism may be designated as hatred and enmity. It should be noted that the antipathy referred to immediately above was not hatred. Dislike is not hatred, nor is it necessarily enmity. One may dislike sugar in his tea without troubling to hate sugar. But undoubtedly there are people who because they have let their dislikes deepen into prejudice, and perhaps also because of unpleasant experiences with members of the Jewish race (probably a million Americans have been brought to the verge of becoming Jew-haters this winter because of contact with Jewish merchants and landlords) may be classified as, at least, incipient anti-Semites. This is most of all unfortunate for the persons who harbor these emotions. It is unfortunate in that it unfits the mind to consider intelligently the facts which constitute the Jewish Question, and also unfits it to deal with them in a fair and constructive way. For one's own sake, whatever the provocation otherwise, it is better not to let passion deflect the needle of one's mind. Hatred at the wheel means hazard on the course. Enmity lives in the vicinity of the Jews more than of any other race, and the reason for this is one of the puzzles of the ages. The Jewish nature itself, as shown in ancient and modern history, is not without its own share of enmity, and it either evokes or provokes enmity where it comes in contact with those Aryan races which follow their natural impulses unchecked by cultural and ethical influences. This age-long conflict of the Jew has puzzled the minds of students for generations. Some explain it Biblically as the curse of Jehovah upon His Chosen People for their disobedience to the discipline by which He would have made them the Prophet Nation of the world. If this offense must come, if it is part of the Jew's heritage, an old saying—Christian and Scriptural, by the way—would still remain true: "It must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."
3. In some parts of the world at various times this feeling of hatred has broken into murderous violence, which has roused, as wholesale physical outrage always does, the horror and resentment of humanity. This is the extreme form in which anti-Semitism has exhibited itself, and it is the charge of intending to stimulate it here and elsewhere which every public discussion of the Jewish Question has to bear. There is, of course, no excuse for these outbreaks, but there is sufficient explanation of them. The Jews usually explain them as expressions of religious prejudice, and the Gentiles as rebellion against an economic yoke which the Jews have woven for the people. It is an astonishing fact that, to take one country, the parts of Russia where anti-Semitic violence has been most marked are the most prosperous parts, so prosperous indeed and with a prosperity so unquestionably due to Jewish enterprise that the Jews have openly declared that they have the power to throw those parts of Russia back into commercial lethargy again by simply withdrawing. It is utterly idle to throw denials at this statement. It is confirmed time and time again by men who have gone to Russia full of resentment against the attitude of the Russians toward the Jews, as that attitude is represented in the Anglo-Saxon press, and who have come home with a new light on the cause of these outbreaks, though not excusing their character. Impartial observers have also found that some of the outbreaks have been precipitated by the Jews themselves. A correspondent, known the world over for his trenchant defense of the Jews under Russian persecution, was always bitterly attacked by the Jews themselves whenever he stated the truth about this, notwithstanding his protest to them that if he did not tell the truth when they were in the wrong the world would not be ready to believe him when he said they were blameless. To this day, in every country, the Jews are slow to admit blameworthiness for anything. They must be excused, whoever else may be accused. It is a trait which will have to be disciplined before they can be brought to assist, if ever they can, the removal of those characteristics which arouse the antagonism of other peoples. Elsewhere in the world, it may be said that out-and-out enmity to the Jews has an economic basis. This, of course, leads to the question whether the Jew shall have to become a deliberate failure, or deny his genius, and forego his just meed of prosperity before he can win the approval of the other races—a question which will arise for discussion later.
As to the religious prejudice which the Jews are, as a rule, readiest to affirm, it is safe to say that it does not exist in the United States. Yet it is charged up to Americans by Jewish writers just as freely as it is charged up to Russians. Each non-Jew reader is competent to settle this for himself. He can easily do so by asking himself whether in all his life he has ever felt a moment's resentment against the Jew on account of his religion. In an address recently delivered in a Jewish lodge and reported in the Jewish press, the speaker, a Jew, stated that if 100 non-Jews on the street were approached at random and casually asked what a Jew is, the reply of the majority would be, "He is a Christ-killer." One of the best known and most highly respected rabbis in the United States said recently in a sermon that children in Christian Sunday schools were taught to regard the Jew as a Christ-killer. He repeated it in a conversation several weeks later.
It would probably be the testimony of Christians generally that they never heard this term until they heard it in a Jewish complaint, and certainly themselves never used it. The charge is absurd. Let the 20,000,000 now in the Christian Sunday schools of Canada and the United States testify as to the instruction given. There is no hesitation in stating that there is no prejudice whatever in the Christian churches against the Jew on account of his religion. On the contrary, there is not only a deep sense of indebtedness, but a feeling of sharing with the Jew in his religion. The Sunday schools of the Christian churches of the world are spending six months of this year studying the International Lessons which are appointed for the Books of the Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel and the Books of the Kings, and every year is devoted in part to the Old Testament.
Here, however, is something for Jewish religious leaders to consider: there is more downright bitterness of religious prejudice on the part of the Jews against Christianity than could ever be possible in the Christian churches of America. Simply take the church press of America and compare it with the Jewish press in this regard, and there is no answer. No Christian editor would think it either Christian or intelligent to attack the Jewish religion, yet any six months' survey of the Jewish press would yield a mass of attack and prejudice on the other side. Moreover, no religious bitterness in America attains within infinite distances to that bitterness visited upon the Jew who becomes a Christian in his faith. It amounts almost to a holy vendetta. A Christian may become a Jewish proselyte and his motives be respected; it is never so when a Jew becomes a Christian. These statements are true of both the orthodox and liberal wings of Judaism. It is not his religion that gives prominence to the Jew today; it is something else. And yet, with undeviating monotony, it is repeated wherever the Jew takes cognizance of the feeling toward him that it is on account of three things, first and most prominent of which is his religion. It may be comforting to him to think that he is suffering for his faith, but it is not true. Every intelligent Jew must know it.
Every Jew ought to know also that in every Christian church where the ancient prophecies are received and studied, there is a great revival of interest in the future of the Ancient People. It is not forgotten that certain Promises were made to them regarding their position in the world, and it is held that these prophecies will be fulfilled. The future of the Jew, as prophetically outlined, is intimately bound up with the future of this planet, and the Christian church in large part—at least by the evangelical wing, which the Jews most condemn—sees a Restoration of the Chosen People yet to come. If the mass of the Jews knew how understandingly and sympathetically all the prophecies concerning them are being studied in the Church, and the faith that exists that these prophecies will find fulfillment and that they will result in great Jewish service to society at large, they would probably regard the Church with another mind. They would at least know that the Church does not believe that it will be the instrument in the conversion of the Jews—a point on which Jewish leaders are tragically misled and which evokes more bitterness than anything else—but that it depends on quite other instruments and conditions, which it is not the function of this article to point out except to say that it will be the Jews' very own Messiah which will accomplish it and not the "wild olive," or the Gentile.
Curiously enough, there is a phase of anti-Semitism having to do with religion, but not in the way here discussed. There are those, very few in number and of atheistical tendencies, who assert that all religion is a sham, being the invention of Jews for the purpose of enslaving the minds of the people of the world to an enervating superstition. This position, however, has had no effect on the main issue. It is a far extreme.
Now, which of these exhibitions of anti-Semitism will show itself in America? If certain tendencies continue, as they are certain to do, what form will the feeling toward the Jew take? Not that of mass violence, we may be sure. The only mass action visible now is that of the Jewish agencies themselves against any person or institution that dares bring the Jewish Question to public attention.
1. Anti-Semitism will come to America because of the habit which emotions and ideas apparently have of making their way westward around the world. North of Palestine, where the Jews have been longest settled and where they are now in great numbers, anti-Semitism is acute and well-defined. Westward, in Germany, it is clearly defined but, until the seizure of German revolutionary agencies, was devoid of violence. Still farther westward, in Great Britain, it is defined, but because of the comparatively small number of Jews in the British Isles and their coalition with the ruling class, it is more a feeling than a movement. In the United States it is not so definite, but shows itself in a restlessness, a questioning, a sensible friction between the traditional tendency of the American to fair-mindedness and his respect for the cold facts.
Because the Question will assume more and more pressure in America it behooves everyone of foresight to disregard the shortsighted protests of the Jews themselves and see to it that the Question shall not present itself among us as it has done among other people, in its most distressing and confusing forms. It is a public duty to seize this problem at its beginning and train it up, so to speak; that is, so prepare for it that it may be handled here in a manner which will form a model for all other countries, which will indeed supply all other countries with the essential materials for a permanent solution. And this can be done only by exposing and recognizing and treating with the serum of publicity the conditions before which, heretofore, the nations have helplessly floundered because they lacked either the desire or the means to get at the great root of the difficulty.
2. Another cause of the Question appearing here will be the great influx of Jews which is planned for America. There will probably be a million Jews enter the country this year, increasing our Jewish population to nearly 4,500,000. This does not mean merely an immigration of persons, but an immigration of ideas. No Jewish writer has ever told us, in systematic fashion, just what is the Jews' idea of non-Jews, how they regard the Gentiles in their private minds. But there are indications of it, although one would not attempt to reconstruct the Jewish attitude toward Gentiles. A Jew ought to do this for us, but he would probably be cast out by his own people if he discharged his task with rigorous jealousy for the exact fact.
These people are coming here regarding the Gentile as an hereditary enemy, as perhaps they have good ground for doing, and so believing they are going to model their behavior in a manner that will show it. Nor will these Jews be so helpless as they appear. In stricken Poland, where the Jews are represented as having been stripped of everything during the war, there are hundreds daily appearing before the consulate to arrange their passage here. The fact is significant. In spite of their reputed suffering and poverty, they are able to travel a great distance and to insist on coming. No other people are financially able to travel in such numbers. But the Jews are. It will readily be seen that they are not objects of charity. They have been able to keep afloat in a storm that has wrecked the other people. They know it and they joy in it, as is natural. And they will bring here the same thoughts toward the majority which they have harbored in their present lands of domicile. They may hail America; they will have their own thoughts about the majority of the American people. They may be in the lists as Russians or Poles or what not, but they will be Jews with the full Jewish consciousness, and they will make themselves felt.
All this is bound to have its effect. And it is not race prejudice to prepare for it, and to invite American Jews themselves to consider the fact and contribute to the solution of the problem which it presents.
3. Every idea which has ruled Europe has met with transformation when it was transplanted in America. It was so with the idea of Liberty, the idea of Government, the idea of War. It will be so with the idea of anti-Semitism. The whole problem will center here and if we are wise and do not shirk it, it will find its solution here. A recent Jewish writer has said: "Jewry today largely means American Jewry . . . . . . . . . . all former Jewish centers were demolished during the war and were shifted to America." The problem will be ours, whether we choose it or not.
And what course will it take? Much depends on what can be accomplished before it becomes very strong. It may be said, however, that the first element to appear will be a show of resentment against certain Jewish commercial successes, more particularly against the united action by which they are attained. Our people see the spectacle of a people in the midst of a people, in a sense which the Mormons never were, and they will not like it. The Mormons made an Exodus; Israel is going back into Egypt to subjugate it.
The second element which will undoubtedly appear is prejudice and its incitement. The majority may always be right, but they are not always initially reasonable. That prejudice which exists now, and which is freely admitted by both Jew and Gentile, may become more marked, to the distress of both parties, for neither the subject nor the object of prejudice can attain that freedom of mind which is happiness.
Then we may most confidently look for a reaction of Justice. It is here that the whole matter will begin to bend to the genius of Americanism. The innate justice of the American mind has come to the aid of every object that ever roused American resentment. The natural reaction with us is of very brief duration; the intellectual and ethical reaction swiftly follows. The American mind will never rest with merely resenting certain individuals. It will probe deeper. Already this deeper probe has been begun in Great Britain and America. We characteristically do not stop with persons when principles are in sight.
And upon this there will be an investigation of materials, part of which may yet be presented in this series and which may possibly be disregarded for a time, but which at a future date will be found to be the clue to the maze. Upon this, the root of all the trouble will be bared to the light, to die as all roots do when deprived of their concealment of darkness, and then the Jewish people themselves may be expected to begin an adjustment to the new order of things, not to lose their identity or to curtail their energy or to dim their brilliance, but to turn all into more worthy channels for the benefit of all races, which alone can justify their claim to superiority. A race that can achieve in the material realm what the Jews have achieved while asserting themselves to be spiritually superior, can achieve in a less sordid, a less society-defying realm also.
The Jews will not be destroyed; neither will they be permitted to maintain the yoke which they have been so skillful in fastening upon society. They are the beneficiaries of a system which itself will change and force them to other and higher devices to justify their proper place in the world.
[Issue of June 19, 1920.]
"We must force the Gentile governments to adopt measures which will promote our broadly conceived plan already approaching its triumphal goal by bringing to bear the pressure of stimulated public opinion which has in reality been organized by us with the help of the so-called 'great power' of the Press. With few exceptions, not worth considering, it has already fallen into our hands."
—The Seventh Protocol.
Jewish Question Breaks Into the Magazines
Once upon a time an American faculty member of an American university went to Russia on business. He was expert in a very important department of applied science and a keen observer. He entered Russia with the average American's feeling about the treatment which the government of that people accorded the Jew. He lived there three years, came home for a year, and went back again for a similar period, and upon his second return to America he thought it was time to give the American public accurate information about the Jewish Question in Russia. He prepared a most careful article and sent it to the editor of a magazine of the first class in the Eastern United States. The editor sent for him, spent most of two days with him, and was deeply impressed with all he learned—but he said he could not print the article. The same interest and examination occurred with several other magazine editors of the first rank.
It was not because the professor could not write—these editors gladly bought anything he would write on other subjects. But it was impossible for him to get his article on the Jews accepted or printed in New York.
The Jewish Question, however, has at last broken into a New York magazine. Rather it is a fragment of a shell hurled from the Jewish camp at the Jewish Question to demolish, if possible, the Question and thus make good the assertion that there is no such thing.
Incidentally it is the only kind of article on the Jewish Question that the big magazines, whose mazes of financial controllers make most interesting rummaging, would care to print.
Yet, the general public may learn much about the Question even from the type of article whose purpose is to prove that the Question doesn't exist.
Mr. William Hard, in the Metropolitan for June, has done as well as could be expected, considering the use he was supposed to make of such material as he had at hand. And doubtless the telegraph and letter brigades, which keep watch over all printed references to the Jews, have duly congratulated the good editors of the Metropolitan for their assistance in soothing the public to further sleep.
It is to be hoped, for the sake of the Question, that Mr. Hard's effort will have a wide reading, for there is very much to be learned from it—much more than it was anybody's intention should be learned from it.
It may be learned, first, that the Jewish Question exists. Mr. Hard says it is discussed in the drawing-rooms of London and Paris. Whether the mention of drawing-rooms was a writer's device to intimate that the matter was unimportant and frivolous, or merely represented the extent of Mr. Hard's contact with the Question is not clear. He adds, however, that a document relating to the Question has "travelled a good bit in certain official circles in Washington." He also mentions a cable dispatch to the New York World, concerning the same Question, which that paper published. His article was probably published too early to note the review which the London Times made of the first document referred to. But he has told the reader who is looking for the objective facts in the article that there is a Jewish Question, and that it does not exist among the riff-raff either but principally in those circles where the evidence of Jewish power and control is most abundant. Moreover, the Question is being discussed. Mr. Hard tells us that much. If he does not go further and tell us that it is being discussed with great seriousness in high places and among men of national and international importance, it is probably because of one of two things, either he does not know, or he does not consider it consonant with the purpose of the article to tell.
However, Mr. Hard has already made it clear that there is a Jewish Question, that it is being discussed, that it is being discussed by people who are best situated to observe the matter they are talking about.
The reading of Mr. Hard's article makes it clear also that the Question always comes to the fore on the note of conspiracy. Of course, Mr. Hard says he does not believe in conspiracies which involve a large number of people, and it is with the utmost ease that his avowal of unbelief is accepted, for there is nothing more ridiculous to the Gentile mind than a mass conspiracy, because there is nothing more impossible to the Gentile himself. Mr. Hard, we take it, is of non-Jewish extraction, and he knows how impossible it would be to band Gentiles together in any considerable number for any length of time in even the noblest conspiracy. Gentiles are not built for it. Their conspiracy, whatever it might be, would fall like a rope of sand. Gentiles have not the basis either in blood or interest that the Jews have to stand together. The Gentile does not naturally suspect conspiracy; he will indeed hardly bring himself to the verge of believing it without the fullest proof.
It is therefore quite easy to understand Mr. Hard's difficulty with conspiracy; the point is that to write his article at all, he is forced to recognize at almost every step that whenever the Jewish Question is discussed, the idea of conspiracy occupies a large part in it. As a matter of fact, it is the central idea in Mr. Hard's article, and it completely monopolizes the heading—"Great Jewish Conspiracy."
The search for basic facts in Mr. Hard's article will disclose the additional information that there are certain documents in existence which purport to contain the details of the conspiracy, or—to drop a word that is unpleasant and may be misleading and which has not been used in this series—the tendency of Jewish power to achieve complete control. That is about all that the reader learns from Mr. Hard about the documents, except that he describes one as "strange and horrible." Here is indeed a regrettable gap in the story, for it is to discredit a certain document that Mr. Hard writes, and yet he tells next to nothing about it. Discreditable documents usually discredit themselves. But this document is not permitted to do that. The reader of the article is left to take Mr. Hard's word for it. The serious student or critic will feel, of course, that the documents themselves would have formed a better basis for an intelligent judgement. But laying that matter aside, Mr. Hard has made public the fact that there are documents.
And then Mr. Hard does another thing, as well as he can with the materials at hand, the purpose of the article being what it was, and that is to show how little the Jews have to do with the control of affairs by showing who are the Jews that do control certain selected groups of affairs. The names are all brought forward by Mr. Hard and he alone is responsible for them, our purpose in referring to them being merely to show what can be learned from him.
Mr. Hard leans heavily on Russian affairs. Sometimes it would almost seem as if the Jewish Question were conceived as the Soviet Question, which it is not, as Mr. Hard very well knows, and although the two have their plain connections, it is nothing less than well-defined propaganda to set up Bolshevist fiction and knock it down by Jewish fact for the purpose of the latter. However, what Mr. Hard offers as fact is very instructive, quite apart from the conclusion which he draws from it.
Now, take his Russian line-up first. He says that in the cabinet of Soviet Russia there is only one Jew. But he is Trotsky. There are others in the government, of course, but Mr. Hard is speaking about the cabinet now. He is not speaking about the commissars, who are the real rulers of Russia, nor about the executive troops, who are the real strength of the Trotsky-Lenin régime. No, just the cabinet. Of course, there was only one Jew prominent in Hungary, too, but he was Bela Kun. Mr. Hard does not ask us to believe, however, that it is simply because of Trotsky and Kun that all Europe believes that Bolshevism has a strong Jewish element. Else the stupid credibility of the Gentiles would be more impossible of conception than the idea of a Jewish conspiracy is to Mr. Hard's mind. Why should it be easier to believe that Gentiles are dunces than that Jews are clever?
However, it is not too much to say that Trotsky is way up at the top, sharing the utmost summit of Bolshevism with Lenin, and Trotsky is a Jew—nobody ever denied that, not even Mr. Braunstein himself (the latter being Trotsky's St. Louis, U.S.A., name).
But then, says Mr. Hard, the Mensheviks are led by Jews, too! That is afact worth putting down beside the others. Trotsky at the head of theBolsheviks; at the head of the Mensheviks during their opposition of theBolsheviks were Leiber, Martov and Dan—"all Jews," says Mr. Hard.
There is, however, a middle party between these extremes, the Cadets, which, Mr. Hard says, are or were the strongest bourgeois political party in Russia. "They now have their headquarters in Paris. Their chairman is Vinaver—a Jew."
There are the facts as stated by Mr. Hard. He says that Jews, whose names he gives, head the three great divisions of political opinion in Russia.
And then he cries, look how the Jews are divided! How can there be conspiracy among people who thus fight themselves?
But another, looking at the same situation may say, look how the Jews control every phase of political opinion in Russia! Doesn't there seem to be some ground for the feeling that they are desirous of ruling everywhere?
The facts are there. What significance does it bring to the average mind that the three great parties of Russia are led by Jews?
But that does not exhaust the information which the matter-of-fact reader may find in Mr. Hard's article. He turns to the United States and makes several interesting statements.
"There is Otto Kahn," he says. Well, sometimes Otto Kahn is there, and sometimes he is in Paris on important international matters, and sometimes he is in London advocating certain alliances between British and American capital which have to do in a large way with European political conditions. Mr. Kahn is rated as a conservative, and that may mean anything. A man is conservative or not according to the angle from which he is viewed. The most conservative men in America are really the most radical; their motives and methods go to the very roots of certain matters; they are radicals in their own field. The men who controlled the last Republican Convention—if not the last, the most recent—are styled conservatives by those whose vision is circumscribed by certain limited economic interests; but they are the most radical of radicals, they have passed the red stage and are white with it. If it were known what is in the back of Mr. Kahn's mind, if he should display a chart of what he is doing and aiming to do, the term which would then most aptly describe him might be quite different. Anyway, we have it from Mr. Hard, "There is Mr. Kahn."
"On the other hand," says Mr. Hard, "there is Rose Pastor Stokes." He adds the name of Morris Hillquit. They are, in Mr. Hard's classification, radicals. And to offset these names he adds the names of two Gentiles, Eugene V. Debs and Bill Haywood and intimates that they are much more powerful leaders than the first two. Students of modern influences, of which Mr. Hard has long appeared as one, do not think so. Neither Debs nor Haywood ever generated in all their lives a fraction of the intellectual power which Mrs. Stokes and Mr. Hillquit have generated. Both Debs and Haywood live by the others. To every informed person, as to Mr. Hard in this article, come the Jewish names to mind when the social tendencies of the United States are passed under reflection.
This is most instructive indeed, that in naming the leaders of so-called conservatism and radicalism, Mr. Hard is driven to use Jewish names. On his showing the reader is entitled to say that Jews lead both divisions here in the United States.
But Mr. Hard is not through. "The man who does more than any other man—the man who does more than any regiment of other men—to keep American labor anti-radical is a Jew—Samuel Gompers." That is a fact which the reader will place in his list—American labor is led by a Jew.
Well, then, "the strongest anti-Gompers trade union in the country—The Amalgamated Clothing Workers—and very strong indeed, and very large—is led by a Jew—Sidney Hillman."
It is the Russian situation over again. Both ends of the movements, and the movement which operate within the movement, are under the leadership of Jews. This, whatever the construction put upon it, is a fact which Mr. Hard is compelled by the very nature of his task to acknowledge.
And the middle movement, "the Liberal Middle" as Mr. Hard calls it, which catches all between, produces in this article the names of Mr. Justice Brandeis, Judge Mack and Felix Frankfurter, gentlemen whose activities since Armistice Day would make a very interesting story.
For good measure, Mr. Hard produces two other names, "Baron Gunzberg—a Jew" who is "a faithful official" of the Russian Embassy of Ambassador Bakhmetev, a repesentative of the modified old regime, while the Russian Information Bureau, whose literary output appears in many of our newspapers is conducted by another Jew, so Mr. Hard calls him, whose name is familiar to newspaper readers, Mr. A. J. Sack.
It is not a complete list by any means, but it is quite impressive. It seems to reflect importance on the documents which Mr. Hard endeavors to minimize to a position of ridiculous unimportance. And it leads to the thought that perhaps the documents are scrutinized as carefully as they are because the readers of them have observed not only the facts which Mr. Hard admits but other and more astonishing ones, and have discovered that the documents confirm and explain the observations. Other readers who have not had the privilege of learning all that the documents contain are entitled to have satisfaction given to the interest thus aroused.
The documents did not create the Jewish Question. If there were nothing but the documents, Mr. Hard would not have written nor would the Metropolitan Magazine have printed the article here discussed.
What Mr. Hard has done is to bring confirmation in a most unexpected place that the Question exists and is pressing for discussion. Someone felt the pressure when "The Great Jewish Conspiracy" was ordered and written.
[Issue of June 26, 1920.]
"What are you prating about? As long as we do not have the Press of the whole world in our hands, everything you may do is vain. We must control or influence the papers of the whole world in order to blind and deceive the people."
—Baron Montefiore.
Arthur Brisbane Leaps to the Help of Jewry
Once more the current of this series on the Modern Jewish Question is interrupted to give notice of the appearance of the Question in another quarter, the appearance this time consisting of a more than two-column "Today" editorial in the Hearst papers of Sunday, June 20, from the pen of Arthur Brisbane. It would be too much to say that Mr. Brisbane is the most influential writer in the country, but perhaps he is among the dozen most widely read. It is, therefore, a confirmation of the statement that the Question is assuming importance in this country, that a writer of Mr. Brisbane's prominence should openly discuss it.
Of course, Mr. Brisbane has not studied the Question. He would probably admit in private conversation—though such an admission would hardly be in harmony with the tone of certainty he publicly adopts—that he really knows nothing about it. He knows, however, as a good newspaper man, how to handle it when the exigencies of the newspaper day throw it up to him for offhand treatment. Every editorial writer knows how to do that. There is something good in every race, or there have been some notable individuals in it, or it has played a picturesque part in history—that is enough for a very readable editorial upon any class of people who may happen to be represented in the community. The Question, whatever it may be, need not be studied at all; a certain group of people may be salved for a few paragraphs, and the job need never be tackled again. Every newspaper man knows that.
And yet, having lived in New York for a long time, having had financial dealings of a large and obligating nature with certain interests in this country, having seen no doubt more or less of the inner workings of the great trust and banking groups, and being constantly surrounded by assistants and advisors who are members of the Jewish race, Mr. Brisbane must have had his thoughts. It is, however, no part of a newspaper man's business to expose his thoughts about the racial groups of his community, any more than it is a showman's business to express his opinion of the patrons of his show. The kinds of offense a newspaper will give, and the occasions on which it will feel justified in giving it, are very limited.