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.
So, assuming that Mr. Brisbane had to write at all, it could have been
told beforehand what he would write. The only wonder is that he felt he
had to write. Did he really feel that the Jews are being "persecuted"
when an attempt is made to uncover the extent and causes of their
control in the United States and elsewhere? Did he feel, with good
editorial shrewdness, that here was an opportunity to win the attention
and regard of the most influential group in New York and the nation?
Or--and this seems within the probabilities--was he inclined simply to
pass it over, until secretarial suggestions reached him for a Sunday
editorial, or until some of the bondholders made their wishes known?
This is not at all to impugn Mr. Brisbane's motives, but merely to
indicate on what slender strings such an editorial may depend.
But what is more important--does Mr. Brisbane consider that, having
disposed of the Sunday editorial, he is through with the Question, or
that the Question itself is solved? That is the worst of daily
editorializing; having come safely and inoffensively through with one
editorial, the matter is at an end as far as that particular writer is
concerned--that is, as a usual thing.
It is to be hoped that Mr. Brisbane is not through. He ought not to
leave a big question without contributing something to it, and in his
Sunday editorial he did not contribute anything. He even made mistakes
which he ought to correct by further study. "What about the
Phoenicians?" he asks. He should have looked that up while his mind was
opened receptively toward the subject, and he would not have made so
miserable a blunder as to connect them so closely with the Jews. He
would never find a Jew doing that. It is permissible, however, in Jewish
propaganda intended for Gentile consumption. The Phoenicians themselves
certainly never thought they were connected in any way with the Jews,
and the Jews were equally without light on the subject. If in nothing
else, they differed in their attitude toward the sea. The Phoenicians
not only built boats but manned them; the Jew would rather risk his
investment in a boat than himself. In everything else the differences
between the two peoples were deep and distinct. Mr. Brisbane should have
turned up the Jewish Encyclopedia at that point in his dictation. It is
to be hoped he will resume his study and when he has found something
that is not printed in "simply written" Jewish books will give the world
the benefit of it. It is hardly like the question of the rotundity of
the earth; this Question is not settled and it will be discussed.
Mr. Brisbane is in a position to pursue some investigations of his own
on this subject. He has a large staff, and it is presumed that some of
its members are Gentiles of unbiased minds; he has a world-wide
organization; since his own modification of speech and views following
upon his adventure in the money-making world, he has a "look-in" upon
certain groups of men and certain tendencies of power--why does he not
take the Question as a world problem and go after the facts and the
solution?
It is a task worthy of any newspaper organization. It will assist
America to make the contribution which she must make if this Question is
ever to be turned from the bugbear it has been through all the
centuries. All the talk on earth about "loving our fellow men" will not
serve in lieu of an investigation, because it is asking men to love
those who are rapidly and insidiously gaining the mastery of them.
"What's wrong with the Jew?" is the first question, and then, "What's
wrong with the Gentile to make it possible?"
As in the case of every Gentile writer who appears as the Jew's
good-natured defender, Mr. Brisbane is compelled to state a number of
facts which comprise a part of the very Question whose existence is
denied.
"Every other successful name you see in a great city is a Jewish name,"
says Mr. Brisbane. In his own city the ratio is even higher than that.
"Jews numbering less than one per cent of the earth's population possess
by conquest, enterprise, industry and intelligence 50 per cent of the
world's commercial success," says Mr. Brisbane.
Does it mean anything to Mr. Brisbane? Has he ever thought how it will
all turn out? Is he willing to absolve that "success" from every quality
which humanity has a right to challenge? Is he entirely satisfied with
the way that "success" is used where it is supreme? Would he be willing
to undertake to prove that it is due to those commendable qualities he
has named and nothing less commendable? Speaking of the Jew-financed
Harriman railroad campaign, is Mr. Brisbane ready to write his
endorsement upon that? Did he ever hear of Jewish money backing
railroads that were built for railroad purposes and nothing else?
It would be very easy to suggest to Mr. Brisbane, as editor, a series of
articles which would be most enlightening, both to himself and his
readers, if he would only put unbiased men at work gathering the facts
for them.
One of the articles might be entitled "The Jews at the Peace
Conference." His men should be instructed to learn who were the most
prominent figures at the Peace Conference; who came and went most
constantly and most busily; who were given freest access to the most
important persons and chambers; which race provided the bulk of the
private secretaries to the important personages there; which race
provided most of the sentinels through whom engagements had to be made
with men of note; which race went furthest in the endeavor to turn the
whole proceeding into a festival rout by dances and lavish
entertainment; which civilians of prominence oftenest dined the leading
conferees in private session.
If Mr. Brisbane, with the genius for reporting which his organization
deservedly has, will turn his men loose on that assignment, and then
print what they bring him, he will have a story that will make a mark
even in his remarkable career as an editor.
He might even run a second story on the Peace Conference, entitled,
"Which Program Won at the Peace Conference?" He might instruct his men
to inquire as to the business which brought the Jews in such quality and
quantity to Paris, and how it was put through. Particularly should they
inquire whether any jot or tittle of the Jews' world program was refused
or modified by the Peace Conference. It should also be carefully
inquired whether, after getting what they went after, they did not ask
for still more and get that, too, even though it constituted a
discrimination against the rest of the world. Mr. Brisbane would
doubtless be surprised to learn that of all the programs submitted to
that Conference, not excepting the great program on which humanity hung
so many pathetic hopes, the only program to go through was the Jews'
program. And yet he could learn just that if he inquired. The question
is, having obtained that information, what would Mr. Brisbane do with
it?
There are any number of lines of investigation Mr. Brisbane might enter,
and in any one of them his knowledge of his country and of its relation
to this particular Question would be greatly enlarged.
Does Mr. Brisbane know who owns Alaska? He may have been under the
impression, in common with the rest of us until we learned better, that
it was owned by the United States. No, it is owned by the same people
who are coming rapidly to own the United States.
Is Mr. Brisbane, from the vantage point afforded by his position in
national journalism, even dimly aware that there are elements in our
industrial unrest which neither "capital" nor "labor" accurately define?
Has he ever caught a glimpse of another power which is neither "labor"
nor "capital" in the productive sense, whose purpose and interest it is
to keep labor and capital as far apart as possible, now by provoking
labor, now by provoking capital? In his study of the industrial
situation and its perfectly baffling mystery, Mr. Brisbane must have
caught a flash of something behind the backmost scene. It would be good
journalistic enterprise to find out what it is.
Has Mr. Brisbane ever printed the name of the men who control the sugar
supply of the United States--does he know them--would he like to know
them?
Has he ever looked into the woolen situation in this country, from the
change of ownership in cotton lands, and the deliberate sabotage of
cotton production by banking threats, right on through to the change in
the price of cloth and clothing? And has he ever noted the names of the
men he found on that piece of investigation? Would he like to know how
it is done, and who does it? Mr. Brisbane could find all these things
and give them to the public by using his efficient staff of
investigators and writers on this Question.
Whether Mr. Brisbane would feel free to do this, he himself best knows.
There may be reasons why he would not, private reasons, prudential
reasons.
However that may be, there are no reasons why he should not make a
complete study of the Question--a real study, not a superficial glance
at it with an eye to its "news value"--and arrive at his own considered
conclusion. There would be no intolerance about that. As it is now, Mr.
Brisbane is not qualified to take a stand on either side of the
Question; he simply brushes it aside as troublesome, as the old planters
used brush aside the anti-slavery moralists; and for that reason the
recent defense of the Jew is not a defense at all. It is more like a bid
for favor.
Mr. Brisbane's chief aversion, apparently, is toward what he calls race
prejudice and race hatred. Of course, if any man should fear that the
study of an economic situation would plunge him into these serious
aberrations of mind, he should be advised to avoid that line of study.
There is something wrong either with the investigation or with the
investigator when prejudice and hatred are the result. It is a mighty
poor excuse, however, for an intelligent man to put forward either on
his own behalf or on behalf of those whose minds he has had the
privilege of molding over a course of years.
Prejudice and hatred are the very conditions which a scientific study of
the Jewish Question will forestall and prevent. We prejudge what we do
not know, and we hate what we do not understand; the study of the Jewish
Question will bring knowledge and insight, and not to the Gentile only,
but also to the Jew. The Jew needs this as much, even more than the
Gentile. For if the Jew can be made to see, understand, and deal with
certain matters, then a large part of the Question vanishes in the
solution of ideal common sense. Awaking the Gentile to the facts about
the Jew is only part of the work; awaking the Jew to the facts about the
Question is an indispensable part. The big initial victory to be
achieved is to transform Gentiles from being mere attackers and to
transform Jews from being mere defenders, both of them special pleaders
for partisan views, and to turn them both into investigators. The
investigation will show both Gentile and Jew at fault, and the road will
then be clear for wisdom to work out a result, if there should perchance
be that much wisdom left in the race.
There is a serious snare in all this plea for tolerance. Tolerance is
first a tolerance of the truth. Tolerance is urged today for the sake of
suppression. There can be no tolerance until there is first a full
understanding of what is tolerated. Ignorance, suppression, silence,
collusion--these are not tolerance. The Jew never has been really
tolerated in the higher sense because he has never been understood. Mr.
Brisbane does not assist the understanding of this people by reading a
"simply written" book and flinging a few Jewish names about in a sea of
type. He owes it to his own mind to get into the Question, whether he
makes newspaper use of his discoveries or not.
As to the newspaper angle, it is impossible to report the world even
superficially without coming everywhere against the fact of the Jews,
and the Press gets around that fact by referring to them as Russians,
Letts, Germans, and Englishmen. This mask of names is one of the most
confusing elements in the whole problem. Names that actually name,
statements that actually define are needed for the clarification of the
world's mind.
Mr. Brisbane should study this question for the light such a study would
throw on other matters with which he is concerned. It would be a help to
that study if from time to time he would publish some of his findings,
because such publication would put him in touch with a phase of Judaism
which mere complimentary editorials could not. No doubt Mr. Brisbane has
been deluged by communications which praise him for what he has written;
the real eye-opener would come if he could get several bushels of the
other kind. Nothing that has ever come to him could compare with what
would come to him if he should publish even one of the facts he could
discover by an independent investigation.
Having written about the Jews, Mr. Brisbane will probably have a readier
eye henceforth for other men's pronouncements on the same subject. In
his casual reading he will find more references to the Jew than he has
ever noticed before. Some of them will probably appear in isolated
sentences and paragraphs of his own papers. Sooner or later, every
competent investigator and every honest writer strikes a trail that
leads toward Jewish power in the world. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT is only
doing with system and detail what other publications have done or are
doing piecemeal.
There is a real fear of the Jew upon the publicity sources of the United
States--a fear which is felt and which ought to be analyzed. Unless it
is a very great mistake, Mr. Brisbane himself has felt this fear, though
it is quite possible he has not scrutinized it. It is not the fear of
doing injustice to a race of people--all of us ought to have that
honorable fear--it is the fear of doing anything at all with reference
to them except unstintedly praising them. An independent investigation
would convince Mr. Brisbane that a considerable modification of praise
in favor of discriminate criticism is a course that is pressing upon
American journalism.
[Issue of July 3, 1920.]
VIII.
Does a Definite Jewish World Program Exist?
In all the explanations of anti-Jewish feeling which modern Jewish
spokesmen make, these three alleged causes are commonly given--these
three and no more: religious prejudice, economic jealousy, social
antipathy. Whether the Jew knows it or not, every Gentile knows that on
his side of the Jewish Question no religious prejudice exists. Economic
jealousy may exist, at least to this extent, that his uniform success
has exposed the Jew to much scrutiny. A few Jewish spokesmen seek to
turn this scrutiny by denying that the Jew is pre-eminent in finance,
but this is loyalty in extremity. The finances of the world are in
control of Jews; their decisions and their devices are themselves our
economic law. But because a people excels us in finance is no sufficient
reason for calling them to the bar of public judgement. If they are more
intellectually able, more persistently industrious than we are, if they
are endowed with faculties which have been denied us as an inferior or
slower race, that is no reason for our requiring them to give an account
of themselves. Economic jealousy may explain some of the anti-Jewish
feeling; it cannot account for the presence of the Jewish Question
except as the hidden causes of Jewish financial success may become a
minor element of the larger problem. And as for social antipathy--there
are many more undesirable Gentiles in the world than there are
undesirable Jews, for the simple reason that there are more Gentiles.
None of the Jewish spokesmen today mention the political cause, or if
they come within suggestive distance of it, they limit and localize it.
It is not a question of the patriotism of the Jew, though this too is
very widely questioned in all the countries. You hear it in England, in
France, in Germany, in Poland, in Russia, in Rumania--and, with a shock,
you hear it in the United States. Books have been written, reports
published and scattered abroad, statistics skillfully set forth for the
purpose of showing that the Jew does his part for the country in which
he resides; and yet the fact remains that in spite of these most zealous
and highly sponsored campaigns, the opposite assertion is stronger and
lives longer. The Jews who did their duty in the armies of Liberty, and
did it doubtless from true-hearted love and allegiance, have not been
able to overcome the impression made upon officers and men and civilians
by those who did not.
But that is not what is here meant as the political element in the
Jewish Question. To understand why the Jew should think less of the
nationalities of the world than do those who comprise them is not
difficult. The Jew's history is one of wandering among them all.
Considering living individuals only, there is no race of people now upon
the planet who have lived in so many places, among so many peoples as
have the Jewish masses. They have a clearer world-sense than any other
people, because the world has been their path. And they think in world
terms more than any nationally cloistered people could. The Jew can be
absolved if he does not enter into national loyalties and prejudices
with the same intensity as the natives; the Jew has been for centuries a
cosmopolitan. While under a flag he may be correct in the conduct
required of him as a citizen or resident, inevitably he has a view of
flags which can hardly be shared by the man who has known but one flag.
The political element inheres in the fact that the Jews form a nation in
the midst of the nations. Some of their spokesmen, particularly in
America, deny that, but the genius of the Jew himself has always put
these spokesmen's zeal to shame. And why this fact of nationhood should
be so strenuously denied is not always clear. It may be that when Israel
is brought to see that her mission in the world is not to be achieved by
means of the Golden Calf, her very cosmopolitanism with regard to the
world and her inescapable nationalistic integrity with regard to herself
will together prove a great and serviceable factor in bringing about
human unity, which the total Jewish tendency at the present time is
doing much to prevent. It is not the fact that the Jews remain a nation
in the midst of the nations; it is the use made of that inescapable
status, which the world has found reprehensible. The nations have tried
to reduce the Jew to unity with themselves; attempts toward the same end
have been made by the Jews themselves; but destiny seems to have marked
them out to continuous nationhood. Both the Jews and the World will have
to accept that fact, find the good prophecy in it, and seek the channels
for its fulfillment.
Theodor Herzl, one of the greatest of the Jews, was perhaps the
farthest-seeing public exponent of the philosophy of Jewish existence
that modern generations have known. And he was never in doubt of the
existence of the Jewish nation. Indeed, he proclaimed its existence on
every occasion. He said, "We are a people--One people."
He clearly saw that what he called the Jewish Question was political. In
his introduction to "The Jewish State" he says, "I believe that I
understand anti-Semitism, which is really a highly complex movement. I
consider it from a Jewish standpoint, yet without fear or hatred. I
believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of
common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance
and also of pretended self-defense. I think the Jewish Question is no
more a social than a religious one, notwithstanding that it sometimes
takes these and other forms. It is a national question, which can only
be solved by making it a political world-question to be discussed and
controlled by the civilized nations of the world in council."
Not only did Herzl declare that the Jews formed a nation, but when
questioned by Major Evans Gordon before the British Royal Commission on
Alien Immigration in August, 1902, Dr. Herzl said: "I will give you my
definition of a nation, and you can add the adjective 'Jewish.' A nation
is, in my mind, an historical group of men of a recognizable cohesion
held together by a common enemy. That is in my view a nation. Then if
you add to that the word 'Jewish' you have what I understand to be the
Jewish nation."
Also, in relating the action of this Jewish nation to the world, Dr.
Herzl wrote--"When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the
subordinate officers of the revolutionary party; when we rise, there
rises also our terrible power of the purse."
This view, which appears to be the true view in that it is the view
which has been longest sustained in Jewish thought, is brought out also
by Lord Eustace Percy, and re-published, apparently with approval, by
the Canadian Jewish Chronicle. It will repay a careful reading:
"Liberalism and Nationalism, with a flourish of trumpets, threw open the
doors of the ghetto and offered equal citizenship to the Jew. The Jew
passed out into the Western World, saw the power and the glory of it,
used it and enjoyed it, laid his hand indeed upon the nerve centers of
its civilization, guided, directed and exploited it, and then--refused
the offer * * * Moreover--and this is a remarkable thing--the Europe of
nationalism and liberalism, of scientific government and democratic
equality is more intolerable to him than the old oppressions and
persecutions of despotism * * * In the increasing consolidation of the
western nations, it is no longer possible to reckon on complete
toleration * * *
"In a world of completely organized territorial sovereignties he (the
Jew) has only two possible cities of refuge: he must either pull down
the pillars of the whole national state system or he must create a
territorial sovereignty of his own. In this perhaps lies the explanation
both of Jewish Bolshevism and of Zionism, for at this moment Eastern
Jewry seems to hover uncertainly between the two.
"In Eastern Europe Bolshevism and Zionism often seem to grow side by
side, just as Jewish influence molded Republican and Socialist thought
throughout the nineteenth century, down to the Young Turk revolution in
Constantinople hardly more than a decade ago--not because the Jew cares
for the positive side of radical philosophy, not because he desires to
be a partaker in Gentile nationalism or Gentile democracy, but because
no existing Gentile system of government is ever anything but
distasteful to him."
All that is true, and Jewish thinkers of the more fearless type always
recognize it as true. The Jew is against the Gentile scheme of things.
He is, when he gives his tendencies full sway, a Republican as against
the monarchy, a Socialist as against the republic, and a Bolshevist as
against Socialism.