This alliance between the two extremes of ardent Monarchism and revolutionary Socialism existed at the beginning of the war or even earlier, and, as is now well known, it was the Jewish Social Democrat, Israel Lazarewitch, alias Helphandt alias Parvus, who arranged with the German General Staff for the pa.s.sage of Lenin from Switzerland to Russia, accompanied by Karl Radek, the Austrian Jew deserter, and a number of other Jews.
Now, Switzerland has been for hundreds of years a centre of revolutionary and secret-society intrigue. As early as the sixteenth century the Pope, writing to the Kings of France and Spain, warned them that Geneva was "un foyer eternel de revolution," and Joseph de Maistre, quoting this letter in 1817, declared Geneva to be the metropolis of the revolutionaries, whose art of deception he describes as "the great European secret."[797] Elsewhere, a year earlier, he had referred to Illuminism as the root of all the evil at work. It is now known that at the moment de Maistre wrote these words an inner ring of revolutionaries, claiming direct descent from Weishaupt and even from an earlier sect existing at the end of the fifteenth century, profited by the fall of Napoleon I to reconstruct its organization and took up its headquarters in Switzerland with branch offices in London and Paris. The same secret ring of Illuminati is believed to have been intimately connected with the organization of the Bolshevist revolution, although none of the leading Bolsheviks are said to have been members of the innermost circle, which is understood to consist of men belonging to the highest intellectual and financial cla.s.ses whose names remained absolutely unknown. Outside this absolutely secret ring there existed, however, a semi-secret circle of high initiates of subversive societies drawn from all over the world and belonging to various nationalities--German, Jewish, French, Russian, and even j.a.panese. This group, which might be described as the active ring of the inner circle, appears to have been in touch with, if not in control of, a committee which met in Switzerland to carry out the programme of the Third Internationale.
It was thus in Switzerland that at the same time high initiates of Pan-German secret societies foregathered and that an active centre of pro-German, anti-Entente, and even Bolshevist propaganda was established. These Germans, although Monarchists themselves, co-operated with the secret revolutionary forces in stirring up trouble in the countries of the Allies. At the same time the conferences of the Second Internationale, attended by members of the British I.L.P. took place in Switzerland, and at one of these--the Berne Conference of 1919--the delegates were entertained by a mysterious "American" millionaire, John de Kay, living himself in great style, paying for press service at the rate of 2,000 francs a day, lavishing money on the conference, and at the same time subsidizing a Pacifist and Defeatest paper named _La Feuille_.
It is impossible, then, to ignore the role of Germany in the present outbreak of world revolution. In the British White Paper on Bolshevism in Russia we find it stated by an Englishman who had been through the whole of the Revolution in that country that:
The Germans initiated disturbances in order to reduce Russia to chaos. They printed ma.s.ses of paper money to finance their schemes; the notes, of which I possess specimens, can be easily recognized by a special mark.[798]
What has Germany to say to all this? Simply that the promotion of Bolshevism was a military "necessity" in order to bring about the downfall of her opponents, but that the propaganda utilized by her was in reality of Jewish origin, and that Jewry, not Germany, was the real author of world revolution.
It is easy to see how such a theory can be made to serve the cause of Pan-Germanism. 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. We shall therefore do well to accept with extreme caution advice on the Jewish question emanating from German sources, and to test the sincerity of the spirit in which it is offered by considering the relations which have hitherto existed between the Germans and the Jews.
Now, Germany has long been the home of modern "anti-Semitism." Although in every country and at every period, but more particularly in the East of Europe during the last century, the Jews have suffered from unpopularity, it was Germany that organized this aversion into a definite plan of campaign. If in Russia, Galicia, and Poland the Jews have met with sporadic violence at the hands of the peasants, in Germany they have been systematically held up by the authorities to hatred and contempt. Luther, Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Treitschke, successively inveighed against the Jewish race. Jews were denied admission to masonic lodges and to the rank of officers in the army, whilst society excluded them up to the outbreak of war.
Yet the extraordinary fact remains that of all nations the Germans have always been the favourites of the Jews. Throughout the whole movement for the unification of Germany under the aegis of Prussia, Jews played a leading part, and in the recent war Germany found in them some of her most valuable allies. As Maximilian Harden recently pointed out: "The services of the Jews to Germany during the war were enormous. The patriotism of the Jews was beyond reproach, in many cases even ludicrous and offensive in its intensity." And in spite of "anti-Semitism," Harden declares: "There is a strong affinity between the German and the Jew."[799]
To the Ashken.a.z.im Germany even more than Palestine has appeared the Land of Promise. Thus some years before the war Professor Ludwig Geiger, leader of the Liberal Jews of Berlin, denounced "Zionist sophisms" in the words: "The German Jew who has a voice in German literature must, as he has been accustomed to for the last century and a half, look upon Germany alone as his fatherland, upon the German language as his mother-tongue, and the future of that nation must remain the only one upon which he bases his hopes."[800]
How are we to explain this unrequited devotion? Simply by the German policy of enlisting every dynamic force in her service. She has known how to use the Jews just as she has known how to use the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Socialists for the purpose of Pan-Germanism. From Frederick the Great, who employed the Jew Ephraim to coin false money, to William II, who kept in touch with Rathenau by means of a private telephone wire, the rulers of Germany have always allowed them to co-operate in their schemes of world-domination. As the allies of Bismarck, who used them freely to fill his war-chests, the Jews directed the power of the secret societies in the interests of Germany; in 1871 the Jew Bloechreider acted as adviser to the new German Empire as to the best method of wresting indemnities from France. And Germany, whilst heaping insults on the Jews, nevertheless fulfils certain conditions essential to Jewish enterprise. Unlike England and France, she has never allowed herself to be seriously weakened by democratic ideas, and therefore to the Jews--as to British believers in autocracy--she represents the principle of stability.
Moreover, Germany as the home of militarism offers a wide field for Jewish speculation. We have only to couple together an aphorism of Mirabeau"s with one of Werner Sombart"s to perceive the bond of union between the two races, thus: "War is the national industry of Prussia"
and "Wars are the Jews" harvests." As long ago as 1793 Anacharsis Clootz, the apostle of universal brotherhood and defender of the Jewish race, declared that if Germany were to be prevented from going to war the Jews must be persuaded to withdraw their support from her military adventures:
War could not begin or last in Germany without the activity, the intelligence, and the money of the Jews. Magazines and munitions of all kinds are provided by Hebrew capitalists and all the subaltern agents of military provisionment are of the same nation. We have only to come to an understanding with our brothers, the Rabbis, to produce astonishing, miraculous results.[801]
Mr. Ford, the American motor-car manufacturer, appears to have arrived at much the same conclusion expressed in the words recently attributed to him: "We don"t need the League of Nations to end war. Put under control the fifty most wealthy Jewish financiers, who produce wars for their own profit, and wars will cease."[802]
On another occasion Mr. Ford is reported to have said that the Jews who voyaged with him in the Peace ship in 1915 "went out of their way to convince" him of "the direct relations between the International Jew and the war": they "went into details to tell me the means by which the Jews controlled the war--how they had the money, how they had cornered all the basic materials needed to fight the war," etc.[803]
Without in any way absolving Germany from the crime of the war, it is necessary to take this secondary factor into consideration if peace between the nations is to be established. For as long as the l.u.s.t of war lingers in the hearts of the Germans and the l.u.s.t 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. The following incident will ill.u.s.trate this point.
At a meeting of the Social Democratic Federation Mr. Adolphe Smith moved a resolution appealing to the organized workers of Great Britain--
Not to permit themselves in the supposed interests of their fellow-workers in other countries, to be used by sinister financial and militarist influences merely to weaken the Entente nations in the present critical situation, and urging them to keep careful watch against such manoeuvres on the part of pro-German international financiers, who were able to exercise considerable reactionary influence among the wealthy and official cla.s.ses in this country.[804]
Mr. Hyndman added that "the most serious danger by which we were threatened was from the most powerful group of capitalists in Europe headed by Hugo Stinnes and backed by Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the militarist party in Germany." This resolution was opposed by a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and eventually withdrawn.
The connexion between German Imperialism, International Finance, Illuminism, Bolshevism, and certain sections of British Socialism is thus apparent. Is Germany then the secret power behind the thing we call Bolshevism? Are Illuminism and Pan-Germanism one and the same thing? To this hypothesis two objections present themselves: firstly, that the spirit of Illuminism and Bolshevism existed, as we have seen in earlier chapters of this book, long before modern Germany came into existence; and secondly, that Germany herself is not entirely free from the contagion. 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.
It is clear, then, that besides Pan-Germanism there is another power at work, a power far older, that seeks to destroy all national spirit, all ordered government in every country, Germany included. What is this power? A large body of opinion replies: the Jewish power.
15
THE REAL JEWISH PERIL
In considering the immense problem of the Jewish Power, perhaps the most important problem with which the modern world is confronted, it is necessary to divest oneself of all prejudices and to enquire in a spirit of scientific detachment whether any definite proof exists that a concerted attempt is being made by Jewry to achieve world-domination and to obliterate the Christian faith.
That such a purpose has existed amongst the Jews in the past has been shown throughout the earlier chapters of this book. The conception of the Jews as the Chosen People who must eventually rule the world forms indeed the basis of Rabbinical Judaism.
It is customary in this country to say that we should respect the Jewish religion, and this would certainly be our duty were the Jewish religion founded, as is popularly supposed, solely on the Old Testament. For although we do not consider ourselves bound to observe the ritual of the Pentateuch, we find no fault with the Jews for carrying out what they conceive to be their religious duties. Moreover, although the Old Testament depicts the Jews as a favoured race--a conception which we believe to have been superseded by the Christian dispensation, whereby all men are declared equal in the sight of G.o.d--nevertheless it does contain a very lofty law of righteousness applicable to all mankind. It is because of their universality that the books of Job and Ecclesiastes, as also many pa.s.sages in the Psalms, in Isaiah, and the minor prophets, have made an undying appeal to the human race. But the Jewish religion now takes its stand on the Talmud rather than on the Bible. "The modern Jew," one of its latest Jewish translators observes, "is the product of the Talmud."[805] The Talmud itself accords to the Bible only a secondary place. Thus the Talmudic treatise Soferim says: "The Bible is like water, the Mischna is like wine, and the Gemara is like spiced wine."
Now, the Talmud is not a law of righteousness for all mankind, but a meticulous code applying to the Jew alone. No human being outside the Jewish race could possibly go to the Talmud for help or comfort. One might look through its pages in vain for any such splendid rule of life as that given by the prophet Micah: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d?" In the Talmud, on the contrary, as Drach points out, "the precepts of justice, of equity, of charity towards one"s neighbour, are not only not applicable with regard to the Christian, but const.i.tute a crime in anyone who would act differently.... The Talmud expressly forbids one to save a non-Jew from death, ... to restore lost goods, etc., to him, to have pity on him."[806]
How far the Talmud has contributed to the anti-social tendencies of modern Judaism is shown by the fact that the Karaites living in the south of Russia, the only body of Jews which takes its stand on the Bible, and not on the Talmud,--of which it only accepts such portions as are in accordance with Bible teaching--have always shown themselves good subjects of the Russian Empire, and have therefore enjoyed equal rights with the Russian people around them. Catherine the Great particularly favoured the Karaites.
Thus even the Jews are not unanimous in supporting the Talmud; indeed, as we have already seen, many Jews have protested against it as a barrier between themselves and the rest of the human race.
But it is in the Cabala, still more than in the Talmud, that the Judaic dream of world-domination recurs with the greatest persistence. The Zohar indeed refers to this as a _fait accompli_, explaining that "the Feast of Tabernacles is the period when Israel triumphs over the other people of the world; that is why during this feast we seize the Loulab [branches of trees tied together] and carry it as a trophy to show that we have conquered all the other peoples known as "populace" and that we dominate them."[807] G.o.d is, however, asked to accord these other peoples a certain share of blessings, "so that occupied with this share they shall not partic.i.p.ate nor mingle with the joy of Israel when he calls down blessings from on high." The situation may thus be compared with that of a king who, wishing to give a feast to his special friends, finds his house invaded by importunate governors demanding admittance.
"What then does the king do? He orders the governors to be served with beef and vegetables, which are common food, and then sits down to table with his friends and has the most delicious dishes served."[808]
But this is nothing to the feasting that is to take place when the Messianic era arrives. After the return of the Jews from all nations and parts of the world to Palestine, the Messiah, we are told in the Talmud, will entertain them at a gorgeous banquet, where they will be seated at golden tables and regaled with wine from Adam"s wine-cellar. The first course is to consist of a roasted ox named Behemoth, so immense that every day it eats up the gra.s.s upon a thousand hills; the second of a monstrous fish Leviathan; the third of a female Leviathan boiled and pickled; the fourth of a gigantic roast fowl known as Barjuchne, of which the egg alone was so enormous that when it fell out of the nest it crushed three hundred tall cedars and the white overflowed threescore villages. This course is to be followed up by "the most splendid and pompous Dessert" that can be procured, including fruit from the Tree of Life and "the Pomegranates of Eden which are preserved for the Just."
At the end of the banquet "G.o.d will entertain the company at a ball"; He Himself will sit in the midst of them, and everyone will point Him out with his finger, saying: "Behold, this is our G.o.d: we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."[809]
The eighteenth-century commentator, whose summary of these pa.s.sages we quote, goes on to observe:
But let us see a little after what manner the Jews are to live in their ancient Country under the Administration of the Messiah. In the First Place, the strange Nations, which they shall suffer to live, shall build them Houses and Cities, till them Ground, and plant them Vineyards; and all this, without so much as looking for any Reward of their Labour. These surviving Nations will likewise voluntarily offer them all their Wealth and Furniture: And Princes and n.o.bles shall attend them; and be ready at their Nod to pay them all Manner of Obedience; while they themselves shall be surrounded with Grandeur and Pleasure, appearing abroad in Apparel glittering with Jewels like Priests of the Unction, consecrated to G.o.d....
In a word, the felicity of this Holy Nation, in the Times of the Messiah, will be such, that the exalted Condition of it cannot enter into the Conception of Man; much less can it be couched in human Expression. This is what the Rabbis say of it. But the intelligent reader will doubtless p.r.o.nounce it the Paradise of Fools.[810]
It is interesting to notice that this conception of the manner in which the return to Palestine is to be carried out has descended to certain of the modern colonists. Sir George Adam Smith, after watching Zionism at work in 1918, wrote:
On visiting a recently established Jewish colony in the north-east of the land, round which a high wall had been built by the munificent patron, I found the colonists sitting in its shade gambling away the morning, while groups of _fellahin_ at a poor wage did the cultivation for them. I said that this was surely not the intention of their patron in helping them to settle on land of their own. A Jew replied to me in German: "Is it not written: The sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and vinedressers?" I know that such delinquencies have become the exception in Jewish colonization of Palestine, but they are symptomatic of dangers which will have to be guarded against.[811]
The fellahin may, however, consider themselves lucky to be allowed to live at all, for, according to several pa.s.sages in the Cabala, all the _goyim_ are to be swept off the face of the earth when Israel comes into its own. Thus the Zohar relates that the Messiah will declare war on the whole world and all the kings of the world will end by declaring war on the Messiah. But "the Holy One, blessed be He, will display His force and exterminate them from the world."[812] Then:
Happy will be the lot of Israel, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, has chosen from amongst the _goyim_ of whom the Scriptures say: "Their work is but vanity, it is an illusion at which we must laugh; they will all perish when G.o.d visits them in His wrath." At the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, will exterminate all the _goyim_ of the world, Israel alone will subsist, even as it is written: "The Lord alone will appear great on that day."[813]
The hope of world-domination is therefore not an idea attributed to the Jews by "anti-Semites," but a very real and essential part of their traditions. What then of their att.i.tude to Christianity in the past? We have already seen that hatred of the person and teaching of Christ did not end at Golgotha, but was kept alive by the Rabbis and perpetuated in the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu. The Cabala also contains pa.s.sages referring both to Christ and to Mohammed so unspeakably foul that it would be impossible to quote them here.
But it will be urged: the Jews of Western Europe to-day know nothing of the Cabala. This may be so, yet imperceptibly the Cabala has moulded the mind of the Jew. As a modern Jewish writer has declared:
[Kabbalism] has contributed to the formation of modern Judaism, for, without the influence of the Kabbala, Judaism to-day might have been one-sided, lacking in warmth and imagination. Indeed, so deeply has it penetrated into the body of the faith that many ideas and prayers are now immovably rooted in the general body of orthodox doctrine and practice. This element has not only become incorporated, but it has fixed its hold on the affections of the Jews and cannot be eradicated.[814]
It is thus not in the law of Moses thundered from Sinai, not in the dry ritual of the Talmud, but in the stupendous imaginings of the Cabala, that the real dreams and aspirations of Jewry have been transmitted through the ages. Belief in the coming Messiah may burn low, but faith in the final triumph of Israel over the other nations of the world still glows in the hearts of a race nurtured on this hope from time immemorial. Even the free-thinking Jew must unconsciously react to the promptings of this vast and ancient ambition. As a modern French writer has expressed it:
a.s.suredly sectarian Freethinkers swarm, who flatter themselves on having borrowed nothing from the synagogue and on hating equally Jehovah and Jesus. But the modern Jewish world is itself also detached from any supernatural belief, and the Messianic tradition, of which it preserves the cult, reduces itself to considering the Jewish race as the veritable Messiah[815].
Some colour is lent to this statement by an article which recently appeared in the Jewish press, in which it is explained that, according to the teaching of the "Liberal Jewish Synagogue," the beautiful pa.s.sages in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah concerning "the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief," usually supposed by Christians to relate to the promised Messiah, are interpreted to modern Jewish youth as relating to Israel and signifying that Israel"s "sufferings were caused by the sins of other nations," who thus "escaped the suffering they deserved." Consequently "Israel has suffered for the sake of the whole world[816]." How this amazing pretension can be maintained in view of the perpetual denunciations of the Israelites throughout the whole of the Old Testament is difficult to imagine. On their entry into Canaan they were distinctly told by Moses that the Lord their G.o.d had not given them "this good land" on account of their righteousness or the uprightness of their hearts[817]; long afterwards Daniel declared that all Israel had transgressed the law of G.o.d[818]; Nehemiah showed that on account of their rebellion and disobedience they had been delivered into the hands of their enemies[819]. Isaiah spoke of the iniquities of Judah in burning words: