The Rape Of Russia 7: Moving Towards The New World Order

Rothschild biographers record that men of influence and statesmen in almost every country of the world were in their pay, [1] and that most of the royalty of Europe was under their influence. [2] The Rothschilds as a collective dynasty in Germany, Austria, Britain, France and Italy, had amassed such wealth by the mid nineteenth century that nothing or no one was immune to the purchasing power of their coin. Though they kept tight control of their dynastic affairs through intermarriage within the family, they offered a facility for other men to pursue great political ambition and profit. Chosen men. They influenced appointments to high office, had almost daily communication with the great decision makers, [3] and through them, controlled politics from behind the curtain. The Rothschilds valued their anonymity and since they generally operated their businesses behind the scenes, their affairs have been heavily veiled in secrecy through the years. [4] Their traditional system of employing semi-autonomous agents across the world was unsurpassed, [5] but it was their power over banks, investment and finance which was truly was colossal. Their modus operandi was to rescue ailing banks or failing industrial conglomerates with large injections of cash, and thereafter use them as fronts for their own ends. Every banker identified in this chapter who undermined Czarist rule and financed and aided the Bolsheviks, can be closely linked to the Rothschilds: The Warburg and Disconto-Gesselschaft banks in Germany; Olof Aschberg and Nya Banken in Sweden, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., J.P. Morgan bank and Guaranty Trust on Wall Street, Morgan Grenfell in London. They were all complicit.

When the Warburg bank in Hamburg was about to collapse in 1857, the Rothschilds injected vast amounts of money into it. [6] From that point in time M.M. Warburg Bank and its partners operated effectively as Rothschild fronts. Their enormous financial clout enabled the bank to grow from a tiny concern with a single office and a handful of staff into one of the largest and most important banks in Germany. The Warburg brothers, who have featured heavily in every aspect of war loans and financing, acted as covert agents of Rothschild. Max, who was their leading banker in Germany, and reputedly head of the German espionage system during the war, [7] also played a major role in financing both Lenin and Trotsky and enabling the ‘sealed train’ journey across Germany. Fritz Warburg was in Stockholm during the war as coordinator of major financial transactions between Germany and the Bolsheviks, and according to British intelligence reports he also had close contact with the notorious Parvus. [8]

Paul Warburg in New York was the leading agent who fronted the drive to establish the Federal Reserve System for the Secret Elite. Paul was senior partner with Jacob Schiff in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Bank which was effectively a Rothschild front. The Schiff and Rothschild forebears had actually lived in houses in the same building they shared in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt am Main, and Jacob Schiff was yet another Rothschild agent. The American authorities clearly believed that he and his powerful banking associates were  deeply implicated in the Russian revolution.

  

A file in the U.S. State Department, ‘Bolshevism and Judaism’, dated November 13, 1918, asserted that there could be no doubt that the ‘Jewish Firm’ Kuhn, Loeb & Company and its partners ‘started and engineered’ the revolution in Russia. The report added that Max Warburg had also financed Trotsky, and that Olof Aschberg and Nya Banken were involved. [9] These were key players whose detailed involvement we have already covered in previous blogs. [10]

Jacob Schiff, who had been promoting anti-Czarist activities in Russia since the Russo-Japanese War more than a decade earlier, paid for a large proportion of the pro-Bolshevik propaganda and bribes for the workers and soldiers in the Petrograd garrison in the run up to both the February and October, 1917, revolutions. Professor Antony Sutton believed that it was a mistake to call the Bolshevik Revolution a Jewish plot because gentiles like J.P. Morgan and William Boyce Thompson were also involved, [11] but Thompson was a loyal Morgan man and J.P. Morgan and the entire Morgan Empire were very firmly connected to Rothschild influence. [12]

Writing in 1974, Professor Sutton was clearly unaware that virtually the entire international banking cabal was linked through a complex chain that led back to the Rothschilds in London and Paris. For example, Olof Aschberg and his Nya Banken in Stockholm were directly linked to the Guaranty Trust in the United States. Guaranty Trust was closely associated with the J.P. Morgan circle, and that, in turn, was covertly under the influence of the Rothschild Empire. Aschberg and Nya Banken fed money to the Bolsheviks from these banks, and from the Warburg Bank in Germany which was likewise under Rothschild control. Mainstream historians relate that ‘Germany’ financed and facilitated Lenin’s takeover in 1917, but it was not the German government, it was German banking institutions which were ultimately controlled by the Rothschild dynasty.

Jacob Schiff, the Warburgs, the Rothschilds and other predominantly Jewish international bankers, undoubtedly harboured considerable hatred for the Czarist regime in Russia because of the persecution of their co-religionists, and justifiably so, but their reasons for bringing about the Bolshevik Revolution ran much deeper than religious persuasion. This was not about love for the Bolsheviks, nor concern for the victims of Czarism or the ordinary downtrodden Russian Jews. This was about business and future plans for control of the world. However it would be simplistic to label the revolution entirely as a Jewish plot. As we have clearly shown, the Secret Elite in the person of its most influential leader, Lord Alfred Milner, was complicit in supporting the Bolshevik uprising.

Before the new world order could be created, destruction of the old order was essential. They aimed to topple the Czarist Empire and bleed it dry. At the same time their friends and co-conspirators in Britain concentrated on demolishing the old order in Europe; the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, above all, the German Empire. Theirs was not a Christian, Church of England or Jewish plot; their religion was control and what had begun in Oxford as a mightily influential group of imperialists, determined to control a world built on their values, found it necessary to expand their power base.

The Secret Elites including the New York money power promoted revolution and communism for their own ends just as they promoted political Zionism for their own ends. They were but building blocks towards their globalist dream. In the same month as the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the Balfour Declaration was signed in London. Co-incidence? A chance happening that no-one had foreseen? If you wonder why this fact has not been widely considered in history, ask yourself: who owns history? Answer: the Secret Elite; the men of immense power and wealth who have sponsored and published the versions of history of which they approve.

Louis Marshall, a leading American Zionist and legal representative of Kuhn, Loeb bank wrote in 1917 that ‘The Balfour Declaration, with its acceptance by the Powers, is an act of the highest diplomacy. It means both more and less than appears on the surface. Zionism is ‘but an incident of a far-reaching plan: it is merely a convenient peg on which to hang a powerful weapon.’  [13]

Professor Carroll Quigley was likewise very clear about this: ‘The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. [14]

Bolshevism and Zionism were funded and supported by the Secret Elite as they embarked on their ‘far reaching plan’, their nightmare vision of a New World Order. And times were changing as 1917 became 1918. The downfall of Imperial European Empires was no mistake. It was the end product of the wasteful and debilitating world war which, most did not realise, had just months, not years to run. For sure, it had to be prolonged until Germany was crushed, exhausted, removed from the pinnacle of world trade and influence. That had always been the bottom line for the British elite. That was why they engineered the First World War. [15]

What has been uncovered is the early development of another alliance on a completely different sphere to international diplomacy as was understood by most politicians and the general public. The switch in accumulations of wealth predicated on the world war drained the prosperity of Europe and reallocated a great deal of international financial power in Wall Street. London was by no means finished, but as providers of investment capital, the role became more evenly shared between the trans-Atlantic money-powers than ever before. The determination of the Secret Elite to create a one-world English-based order took on a transatlantic hue, an Anglo-American Establishment was finding form. Banks which may be labelled American or British or German or Belgian had common roots though they competed in the world markets. But how was that going to express itself?

How, by the end of the war, could they refocus their control of politics, the press, and the universities, the key drivers of Professor Carroll Quigley’s original thesis? To find evidence of the change in emphasis and ownership we will ultimately have to scrutinise their activities, not just in Russia, but within the background agreements which attended the Treaty of Versailles. But we are running ahead of the narrative.

1. E.C. Knuth, The Empire of the City, p. 70.
2. Griffin, Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 233.
3. Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 23-25.
4. Derek Wilson, Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynasty, pp. 98–9.
5. Knuth, Empire of the City, p. 68.
6. Niall Ferguson, House of Rothschild, p. 65.
7. Ron Chernow, The Warburgs, p. 12.
8. See Blog; Rape Of Russia 2: Strange Bedfellows for Socialist Revolutionaries, posted on 17/10/2012.
9. A.N. Field, All These Things, vol.1. http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/field_an/things_01.html
10. Spence, Hidden Agendas.
11. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, p. 189.
12. Ibid.
13. Louis Marshall in a letter to Max Senior, dated New York, September 26, 1917. Quoted in B. Jensen, The Palestine Plot, https://www.scribd.com/document/16563284/Jensen-The-Palestine-Plot-Quote-History-of-Zionism-1987
14. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 324.
15. See:  Docherty and Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War.

Commission For Relief In Belgium 12: Hoover, Servant Not Master

One of the essential skills that the shrewd investor requires is the ability to recognise the moment to sell and move on. The really successful investor has an additional edge; insider information. Herbert Hoover was blessed with well concealed contacts who advised and directed his career paths so that he was guided into safe waters from the storm that would surely follow the closure of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. Towards the end of 1916 Hoover wanted out. For nearly two and a half years he had fronted the international funding for the relief programme and had accrued good impressions upon which he intended to build.

Herbert Hoover could rightly claim to number among his friends, Sir Edward Grey and his acolytes in the British Foreign Office [1] and President Wilson’s special advisor, Colonel Edward Mandel House and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. The Secret Elite on both sides of the Atlantic knew that Hoover had doggedly mastered the successful implementation of Belgian Relief to the advantage of all. His New York office manager, William Honnold told him confidentially that President Wilson intended to create a Relief organisation in America to co-ordinate and collect funds. Hoover instantly saw this as an opportunity for a position within the Wilson government. He confided to an associate in November 1916, ‘I would like to get out of Europe and I would like to get out with dignity’. [2]

In the post-Somme aftermath the war took a desperate turn for Germany. Britain began to apply its naval blockade seriously and Germany struggled through a damagingly poor harvest thanks to their access to Belgian foodstuffs and Romanian grain. In a global context, grain prices continued to rise alarmingly and the Allies found it increasingly onerous to fund relief for Belgium.

Hoover tried to set up a new mode of finance for the CRB which would remove the burden from Britain and France who were financing the Commission with loans from America. The solution was to raise an American loan rather than continuing to channel funds firstly to Britain and France which they then fed into the CRB. J.P. Morgan and his banking associates knew well that the Allies could not continue to support Belgium indefinitely and they advised Hoover to suggest a more direct approach. [3] In December 1916, he confidently reported that: ‘The bankers include Morgans, Guaranty Trust, and all other important groups, who are acting entirely out of good feeling’ were prepared to support the loan. Bankers acting entirely out of good feeling … an oxymoron surely? Hoover then proceeded to advise his men in Europe that the French and Belgian governments should settle the details with Morgan’s bank in London. [4] Clearly it was impossible for J.P. Morgan to advocate a relief loan which his banks could fund through the Federal Reserve System, from which they would make considerable profit, but if the suggestion came from the head of the CRB, it had much more chance of being approved by Congress.

When Hoover set off for America on 13 January 1917 with the clear objective of refocusing his career, the omens for the CRB were not auspicious. The Miners’ Battalion from New South Wales formally requested that their State Relief Fund Committee stop sending money to support Belgian Relief because they could see that the Germans were seizing the food supplies. [5] Apart from New Zealand, the people of New South Wales had contributed more per head of the population than any other state in the world and this was publicly recognised by King Albert of the Belgians. [6] According to one report, Australian soldiers had seen so many instances of relief food going to the German troops that the CRB was asked to return $220,000 of as yet unspent money. [7] Several continents away, Hoover’s men ignored the Australians’ serious and well-founded allegations and produced a ‘barrage’ of positive, fawning articles in the New York Times in recognition of their leader’s achievements. [8]

Herbert Hoover always appeared to be in the right place at the right time. He had been in London at the outbreak of war in 1914, in Berlin with Arthur Zimmermann and the banker Max Warburg in 1915, [9] and in Brussels during Edith Cavell’s trial. [10] Back in Washington on 31 January 1917, he met with President Wilson on the same evening that Germany announced the commencement of its unrestricted submarine warfare. [11] Within three days two CRB ships, the Euphrates and the Lars Cruse carrying 2,300 tons of Maize had been sunk. [12] All Relief shipping was suspended. In the ensuing rush to safe harbour two CRB ships made it to Rotterdam, a further two were torpedoed, and the remainder sought refuge in British ports

The British government declared that it would be ‘a crime on their part’ to allow cargoes of foodstuffs, which were needed immediately in Britain, to be put at risk from German torpedoes and duly ordered that the food be unloaded. [13] Twenty-five thousand tons of merchandise purchased in Britain was instantly held back. Forty-five thousand tons of foodstuffs was ‘unavoidably’ detained and a further forty thousand tons already on the high seas destined for Belgium was ordered into British ports. [14] Allegedly the food was to be held in storage, though not indefinitely, until the Germans gave cast-iron guarantees of their safe transportation. [15] At a stroke, one hundred thousand tons of food was lost to Belgium and sold to, or requisitioned by Britain. [16]

Hoover was faced with an immediate personal dilemma. What would the consequences be for him if he disbanded the CRB? His distrust of Francqui and the CNSA was profound. He sent an urgent cable to London: ‘I wish to make it absolutely clear: the CRB must be liquidated and disappear’, except as a purely benevolent soliciting agency in the USA. ‘The whole of the files must be transferred to New York’. [17] He insisted that a definitive break had to be made if relief was to continue, that the separation had to involve the complete ‘dissolution’ of the original CRB, and that he would ‘positively refuse’ to surrender its money, its organisation or its ships, on any other terms. [18] Who did he think he was? On his instruction alone, the international relief programme was to be liquidated. All the files had to be gathered together and sent to New York. What motivated Herbert Hoover was self-preservation. To hell with Belgian Relief; so much for the starving poor. This was the action of an endangered dictator whose first thought was to close down the operation and remove all evidence of wrong-doing. What caused this panic? Did he suddenly realise that if someone else took charge, the CRB’s true purpose would be unmasked?

That same evening he attended a special dinner in the Astor Hotel in New York as chief guest of five hundred of the State’s most prominent citizens. Though not an official Pilgrims Society meeting, it boasted all the trappings of the elite. In the full knowledge of his absolute instructions to London, the speech he apparently improvised was cynically disingenuous: ‘If we must retire … then other neutrals must take up this work. The world cannot stand by and witness the starvation of the Belgian people and the Belgian children … the obligation of the American people towards Belgium continues.’ He stood on the platform of the Astor Hotel and delivered these words, having just ordered that the whole programme be liquidated. His gall knew no bounds. In justifying what had taken place he declared that ‘the German army has never eaten one tenth of one per cent of the food provided. The Allied governments would never have supplied us with $200,000,000 if we were supplying the German army’. [19] The assembled elite audience swallowed every syllable of the lie.

We do not know what pressure was brought to bear on him, but next morning Hoover sent a second urgent cable to London to stop the liquidation. Everyone was instructed to stay at their posts. Hoover had erred. The ‘great humanitarian’ had over-recached himself. He was answerable to a higher authority. The Secret Elite would decide if and when the CRB and the feeding of Germany would come to an end.

Herbert Hoover found it difficult to stomach the fact that the CRB was not his to dissolve. In Brussels, Brand Whitlock, the head of the American Legation, wanted to leave the relief programme intact under the control of the Spanish and Belgian agencies. Hoover, who passionately disliked and distrusted Francqui and the CNSA, advocated a Dutch takeover. The confusion continued with a flurry of instructions to Brand Whitlock and the CRB office in Brussels, but on 5 March 1917 Hoover wrote a long and confidential letter to Vernon Kellogg in Belgium which betrayed his real objective. A full month before America declared war on Germany, Hoover primed his key men in Belgium for the eventuality. They were instructed to ‘do nothing to create the impression that he [Hoover] was running away from the Relief.’ He had clearly been briefed by the Secret Elite to adopt their basic tactic of making sure that the blame would be pinned on Germany, or the State Department if it ordered the Americans to leave. If the CRB was ‘compelled to abandon its mission’, Hoover instructed that it was to be ‘absolutely’ liquidated as a business and released from all financial obligations. [20]

When this instruction reached Brussels, Whitlock believed that ‘Hoover must be losing his head’. [21] He raged that though Hoover was three thousand miles away, he thought that he knew better than the men on the ground in Belgium, and ‘was able to impose his brutal will on the [State] Department.’ [22] To an extent he was. Hoover had cultivated his friendship with the President’s Advisor, Edward Mandel House, another Secret Elite agent close to the Morgan banking influence. Furthermore, Hugh Gibson, his strongest ally in every way, had been dispatched from the American Embassy in London to the State Department in Washington. Once again his trusted right hand man was employed where Hoover wanted him; at the heart of American foreign policy.

And so it came to pass as they ordained. On 23 March, three CRB ships were sunk, and the US State Department ordered Brand Whitlock and all American members of the CRB to withdraw from Belgium. [23] When the diplomatic staff departed on 2 April, Prentiss Grey and three CRB accountants were left behind ‘to close the books’ and train up their successors. [24] Hoover himself dealt with the business end of his London office. Euphemistically, his purpose was to wrap up the loose ends. The wrap-up became a full-blown disposal of incriminating evidence.

On 6 April, 1917, America declared war on Germany.

A solution was found for the CRB, one which Hoover could still control yet took him out of the direct firing line. He (more probably his Anglo-American patrons) proposed the establishment of a ‘Comite Neutre de Protection et Secours’ under the high patronage of the King of Spain and the Queen of Holland, and the immediate patronage of the Ambassadors and ministers of Spain and Holland. They were to provide the guarantees formerly undertaken by the Americans. The Commission for Relief in Belgium proposed to continue its financial control over the purchasing and shipping of food and the supplies would be turned over to the CNSA in Belgium and Comite Francais in the north of France. [25] Hoover, again reversing all that he had originally proposed, decided to remain as overall chairman of the Commission.

Make no mistake, the provisioning of Germany continued. In his half yearly report to Berlin from February to July, 1917, Baron von der Lancken wrote: ‘we have continued successfully to export to Germany, or distribute to our troops, appreciable quantities of food. Certain parts of the agreement have been voluntarily exploited [by the Belgians]. The advantages which Germany accrues through the relief work continues to grow.’ [26]

In May 1917, America agreed to appropriate $75,000,000 to support the revised Commission. Although credited to the British and French governments, the funds were to be spent, as before, by the CRB. The only matter to which Congress would not give its approval was a $2,000,000 gift which Hoover requested to cover his administrative expenses. [27] He knew no shame. In formally withdrawing his request, Hoover cited the alternative solution to cover his costs. ‘As we have been compelled to resell a large quantity of foodstuffs bought but which we were unable to ship due to the suspension of our operations for a period at the outset of the submarine war, we have made a considerable profit on these goods against which we can debit the Commission’s overhead costs …’ [28] In other words, when Congress refused to pay for his administrative costs, he used the money from the sale of foodstuffs earmarked for the ‘starving poor’ of Belgium. So much for charitable giving.

Does anyone still think that the Commission for Relief in Belgium was anything other than a convenient front to prolong the agony of war while the racketeers made their fortunes?

Herbert Hoover was appointed Food Commissioner for the United States by President Wilson in May 1917, [29] ‘fresh from his triumph on the Belgian Relief Committee’. [30] It was but another step in his corrupt ascent to the 31st Presidency of the United States of America.

[1] George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, p. 298.
[2] Ibid., p. 300.
[3] George I. Gay and H.H. Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 158, p. 278.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Hawara and Normanby Star, Vol. LXXII, 6 January, 1917, p. 4.
[6] Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February, 1934 in the obituary for William A Holman, President of the New South Wales Belgian Relief Fund.
[7] John Hamill, The Strange Career of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags, p. 348.
[8] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 311.
[9] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Documents 134 -137, pp. 241-248.
[10] Brand Whitlock, Letters and Journals, 9 October 1915. http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Whitlock/bwTC.html
[11] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 312.
[12] Gay and Fisher, Public Relations for the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 240, p. 361.
[13] Ibid., p. 354.
[14] The Times, 17 March, 1917, p. 8.
[15] Sir Maurice de Bunsen statement to the Associated Press, New York Times, 6 March 1917.
[16] Hamill, The Strange Career, p. 348.
[17] Hoover cable 93 to CRB-London office, 13 February 1917.
[18] Nash,The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 320.
[19] New York Times, 14, February, 1917.
[20] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 326.
[21] Whitlock, Letters and Journals, 4 March, 1917.
[22] Ibid., 13 March, 1917.
[23] Tracy Barrett Kittredge, The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, 1914-1917, primary source edition, p. 418.
[24] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 339.
[25] Kittredge, The History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, pp. 435-442.
[26] Michael Amara et Hubert Roland, Gouverner En Belgique Occupee, p. 298.
[27] Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 358.
[28] Gay and Fisher, Document 168, p. 286.
[29] New York Times, 4 May, 1917.
[30] The Times, 20 July, 1917, p. 5.

The Commission For Relief In Belgium 3: The Well-Connected American

Hoover the ‘humanitarian’ re-branded himself in the first weeks of the Great War as the saviour of the many thousands of Americans stranded on the wrong side of the Atlantic by the unexpected outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914. Most were tourists, school teachers with students, businessmen and the like. Four different support groups had been organised promptly to help distressed Americans get home safely, but Hoover was not initially involved with any one of them. The first American Citizens Committee was led by Fred I. Kent, vice-president of the Banker’s Trust Co. [1] and the diplomat, Oscar Straus. Its Headquarters were sited in London’s Savoy Hotel. [2] At the American embassy, the recently appointed US Consul, Robert Skinner, could barely cope with enquires and angry demands for instant repatriation in the early chaos of those August days. This was not what Skinner had expected when he took up the post, but he worked closely with the ambassador and embassy staff to address the pressing problem he had inherited. It was chaos.

Step forward Herbert Clark Hoover. Watch carefully how he operated. Hoover let nothing stand in his way to gain control of a situation from which he could make money. He manipulated officials, lied about his circumstances, invented credentials, leaned heavily on government contacts in America and Britain and emerged triumphant. This was how Hoover did business.

Fred Kent and his American Citizens Committee had prompted the US Ambassador, Walter Page to seek funds from Washington to enable their stranded citizens to return quickly to the United States. Congress instantly approved an advance of $2,500,000 in gold on 5 August and sent it across the Atlantic on the USS Tennessee that same day. [3] Hoover smelled an opportunity and pushed his way to the fore. He claimed that Robert Skinner telephoned him in person and asked for his help. Skinner’s version was that Hoover appeared out of the blue and offered his assistance.

Hoover next telephoned an associate in America, Lindon W. Bates, and asked him to approach the Wilson administration in Washington to appoint him as a special commissioner to handle the return of stranded Americans. [4] He convened a meeting of fellow mining engineers and trusted associates and had himself appointed chairman of a ‘Committee of American Residents in London for Assistance of American Travellers.’ He called Bates again on 6 August to announce that he had ‘today been elected President of a Relief Committee established in London by American residents to look after the 40,000 stranded Americans.’ [5] He did not mention that it was his own, self-styled, unauthorised committee.

Hoover meant business. Within 24 hours he had stationary printed with the new committee’s logo on the masthead. Like the proverbial cuckoo he moved in on Kent and the original American Citizen’s Committee and pushed them out of the nest, claiming with his customary disregard for fact that his rescue group was organised under  the ‘official auspices’ of  US Ambassador Walter Page whom, he alleged, had agreed to be honorary chairman. [6] The Ambassador had not been consulted. Indeed on 9 August, Ambassador Page pointedly did not invite Hoover to join a committee empowered to distribute $300,000 in advance of the arrival of the USS Tennessee. Instead, he appointed Fred Kent. Relationships deteriorated. When the Congressional money arrived in London on 16th August in the care of the US Under-Secretary of War, Henry Breckinridge, Hoover magnanimously proposed that they join forces, but was rebuffed in no uncertain manner both by the Under-Secretary and the Ambassador. [7] Why would they have surrendered a huge sum of public money to the care of an unknown American mining engineer resident in London?

Despite the clear antipathy expressed by both the American Ambassador and the Under-Secretary for War, a seismic change in their opinion occurred, literally, overnight. It was as if there had been divine intervention. The situation was completely turned on its head.  By the evening of 17 August, Hoover and his Resident’s Committee had been formally invited by the Ambassador to take over and manage the entire distribution of the funds. Why? How? Neither Page nor Breckinridge knew or had  worked with Hoover, so who instructed them that he should be entrusted not just with the money, but in his own words, ‘take over the entire distribution’? [8] Given that Kent had impeccable credentials in the United States as a high-profile banker from the J.P. Morgan stables and Straus was a government-favoured diplomat, what more could Herbert Hoover have to offer? He too was associated with the Morgan empire in New York, but Hoover’s connections traversed the Atlantic. He alone had Secret Elite backing from British politicians and business. That was the difference.

Hoover’s victory was absolute. He was given undivided management of the  congressional funds.  Page also authorised Hoover to use the money to reimburse any costs which had already been incurred by the Resident’s Committee. A ‘most opportune’ subsidy, as he later described it. [9]  This was not a change of heart; radical surgery had been involved.

In a private letter to President Wilson dated 23 August 1914, the Ambassador reported that ‘the organization and measures for helping our stranded people were energetic and right…’ thanks to the ‘Americans of ability who conducted the American Relief Committee.’ [10]  Did he mean Hoover? What pressures were exerted on Page and Breckinridge to bring about such a complete turn around? Who, within the darker recesses of Washington politics, could have authorised a decision so much at variance with the initial instincts of both the Ambassador and the Under-Secretary for War? This is a very important question, and one which will be asked over and again. Who was behind Herbert Hoover? Unquestionably Hoover had many friends in, and associated with, the Wilson Administration in Washington and, as we have shown, in London too.

When President Wilson approached Walter Page in 1912 with a view to his appointment as Ambassador to Great Britain, Page was reluctant to accept the position because he did not think that he could support himself in the necessary style, give lavish dinners and mix with the wealthy upper-class society of London. [11] Wilson arranged for his personal banker, Cleveland H Dodge of the National City Bank of New York to add $25,000 per annum to Page’s account [12] to sweeten the burden of office. Cleveland Dodge was the financial powerhouse behind Woodrow Wilson. [13]

Thus Britain was gifted an American Ambassador financed by a major stock-holder of the National City Bank,  who also happened to be one of America’s munitions magnates [14] and financial collaborator with J.P. Morgan. Hoover’s connections in Washington linked him to President Wilson’s right-hand-man, Colonel Edward Mandell House and the Morgan banking empire. Strangely, while House’s semi-autobiography, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, contains no reference to Herbert Hoover, a volume of correspondence about Hoover and his work in Belgium, sent between House and the President, can be found in Woodrow Wilson’s private papers. [15] What was House determined to hide? Why did he want to wipe out any reference to his links with Herbert Hoover?

Hoover allegedly ‘forsook his private pursuits’ and entered the ‘slippery road of public life’ [16] for the greater good of humanity. Events as they unfolded proved just how great a lie that was. He did not forsake his private pursuits.  In fact in order to take advantage of the excessive profits offered by the war, Hoover defied the international embargoes and Acts of Parliament by which the British government forbade trading with the enemy and bought cyanide from Germany for use in his mines in October 1914. At precisely the same time as he was thrusting himself forward at the Foreign Office as the one man who could save the starving in Belgium, he purchased a valuable shipment of the chemical from Germany through a Swiss agent. His cargo was shipped down the Rhine to Rotterdam and paid for by the Swiss agent so that the cash transfer could not be traced back to him. Since both Holland and America were neutral countries, the transaction was untouchable. Once his cyanide was safely in Rotterdam it could be forwarded to almost any port in the world that he chose. Hoover understood well how business found ways around legal barriers, tax liability and contractual obligations. He instructed his agent to use the word ‘stock’ rather than ‘cyanide’ when he cabled London to deceive the British censor. [17] His business ‘ethics’ did not include loyalty. If the Germans could supply a product at a lower cost, he bought from Germans; war or no war. The Secret Elite understood.

Indeed, contrary to the impression that he abandoned his predatory capitalist instincts in favour of charitable humanitarianism, Hoover continued to promote his own business interests from 1 London Wall Buildings. His Russian investments (sold at profit quite miraculously before the Revolution of 1917) still earned him a sound return as did his holdings at Lake View and Oroya in Australia. [18] His Zinc Corporation, which he formed while in partnership with Bewick, Moreing & Co. (of Kaiping infamy), flourished. [19] Though he did not attend the 1914 Annual General Meeting of the Burma Corporation in person due to his ‘duties connected with his position as President of the American Belgian Relief commission’, his brother, Theodore, attended as a Board member. [20] Hoover wrote the Chairman’s Report. It promised great wealth to investors, claimed that the company owned one of the ten most important mining discoveries since the turn of the century, and promised that the Burma Corporation would have ‘an important bearing on the future course of the world’s production of lead, zinc and silver’. With costs of extraction at £3 per ton and selling price a variable between £11-£18 per ton, expectations were high. [21] His prediction was no idle boast. Share prices later rose tenfold between August and December 1915. [22] Of course, war was raging across the globe and both sides paid high prices for the ores from which to manufacture death.

Herbert Hoover was no humanitarian.

[1] Fred I. Kent Papers (1901-1954). http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/MC077
[2] George H. Nash, The life of Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, p. 4.
[3] Chicago Tribune, 6 Aug 1964, at http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1964/08/06/page/123/article/widow-recalls-husbands-voyage-on-gold-ship-u-s-s-tennessee
[4] George H. Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, p.7.
[5] CRB Miscellaneous files, H1. Nash, op. cit., reference 22 page 386.
[6] New York Times, 8 August 1914, p. 3.
[7] Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, p. 10.
[8] Ibid., p. 10.
[9] Hoover to Page, 23 September, 1914. Reference 52, as cited in Nash, Herbert Hoover, p. 387.
[10] Burton J. Hendrick, The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, vol. 3, p.136.
[11] Ferdinand Lundberg, America’s 60 Families, p. 142.
[12] Ray Stannard Baker, (Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and confidante of Woodrow Wilson),  The Life and Letters of Woodrow Wilson, VI, pp. 33-4.
[13] Antony Sutton, The Federal Reserve Conspiracy, p. 78.
[14] Lundberg, America’s 60 Families, p. 142-3.
[15] The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol, 32. Princeton NJ, as quoted in Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, p. 96.
[16] Nash, Herbert Hoover The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, preface, p. x.
[17] Ibid., p. 16.
[18] John Hamill, The Strange Career of Mr Hoover Under Two flags, p. 318.
[19] The Mining Magazine, July 1916, p. 9.
[20] Elena S. Danielson, Historical Note on the Commission for Relief in Belgium, , in United States in the First World: An Encyclopaedia, edited by Anne Cipriano Venzon http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf6z09n8fc/entire_text/
[21] The Times, 23 December, 1914, p. 14.
[22] The Mining Magazine, July 1916, pp. 42, 103, 168,  232.