The Balfour Declaration 7: Clandestine Plots Scupper A Peace Initiative.

Conscious that the final resolution to the war would be critical to the Zionist claims on Palestine, their British and American leaders became increasingly involved in a secretive network aimed at influencing government policy. The three month period between April and June 1917 was peppered with urgent cables between Louis Brandeis in Washington and, Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild in London, updating each other about privileged meetings, current opinions and actions to be taken to advance the Zionist plan.[1] Unknown to elected politicians and cabinet members in both countries, these men operated a clandestine cell of Zionist interest whose specific purpose was to normalise, validate and protect the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Their targets were A J Balfour in Britain and President Woodrow Wilson in the United States. The British foreign secretary was known to be sympathetic; the American president had yet to indicate his approval.

Even before America had formally declared war on Germany (6 April, 1917), the London cabal insisted that increased pressure be brought on the President to support the Zionist cause. Every opportunity which presented itself had to be taken. Urged by the American Ambassador at London, Walter Page, the British Government decided to send a distinguished commission to the United States on the day before America declared war on Germany. [2] America’s entry profoundly altered the ground rules because neutrality was no longer an issue for the Atlantic powers, but did not change the ultimate aim to crush Germany. Lloyd George chose the near seventy-year old Arthur Balfour, former prime minister and current foreign secretary, to lead the charm offensive to Washington.

A J Balfour’s mission to the United States in 1917 proved a crucial turning point. The foreign secretary had been primed by Weizmann to speak with Brandeis when he was in Washington. The two men were introduced at a reception in the White House on 23 April and Balfour was reported to have greeted the Judge with ‘ You are one of the Americans I had wanted to meet.’ [3] Why, other than to gauge the strength of American-Jewish support for a homeland in Palestine? They met several times, but not in the White House. Over the following days and unknown to the President, his Supreme Court Judge and the visiting British foreign secretary had their first private breakfast together. [4] What was a on the menu for discussion was kept secret.

Balfour was in Washington to bolster the Allied cause and he and the President’s main advisor, Mandell House, specifically discussed the terms which might be imposed on Germany once it had been destroyed. On 28 April, Balfour produced a map of Europe and Asia Minor (one of the terms used to cover the Middle Eastern states largely within the Ottoman Empire) on which was traced the results of the secret treaties and agreements with Britain and France which will be examined in a later blog. They had, in Houses’ words, ‘divided up the bear-skin before the bear was dead.’ [5] Interestingly, Constantinople no longer featured as a probable Russian possession [6] but there was no indication of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. None.

One he was informed of this, Brandeis felt obliged to intervene. He had a forty-five minute meeting with Wilson on 6 May to assure him that the establishment of a Jewish Palestine was completely in line with the President’s concept of a just settlement. The British Zionists wanted assurance that their American compatriots approved the general plan for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and would publicise their support. Pressure had to be applied on both sides of the Atlantic. On 9 May, Brandeis sent a cable to James Rothschild in which he announced the American Zionist approval for the British programme. [7]  This was followed by another secret morning discussion with Balfour and on 15 May, Brandeis reported back to Weizmann and Rothschild that their objective had been successful. The precise wording in his cable demonstrated the extent to which the leading Zionists on both sides of the Atlantic were actively influencing their respective governments. Brandeis’s cable read: ‘Interviews both with President and Balfour were eminently satisfactory confirming our previous impressions as to reliable support in both directions. Presented views in line with your program [but] was assured that present circumstances did not make Government utterances desirable.’ [8] Private conversations between the President and the visiting foreign secretary were secretly passed across the Atlantic without compunction in contravention of a variety of secrecy acts. Whose national interest was being served?

Louis Brandeis continued to press Wilson for a public commitment to a Jewish homeland, but caution was advised. His cable to James Rothschild on 23 May stated that Balfour told him: ‘if we exercised patience and allowed events to take their natural course, we would obtain more’. According to Brandeis, President Wilson was reluctant to make a public declaration because the United States was not at war with Turkey. So much for the notion that Judge Brandeis limited his activities to matters of law. His secret collusion with British Zionists should have raised concerns about a conflict of interest but that paled into insignificance when compared with his involvement in destroying a clandestine American peace-mission to Turkey.

In early June 1917 an extremely concerned Louis Brandeis made an urgent call to London. The Zionist plans were suddenly threatened by an unexpected and unwelcome intervention about which none of them had the slightest warning. Brandeis discovered that a secret American delegation, headed by the former United States Ambassador at Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, was on its way to Switzerland. Its purpose was to convince Turkey to break away from the German-Austrian alliance, an action which would have radically altered the geo-political situation when the war ended. Indeed, if successful, it would have shortened the war.

Former ambassador Morgenthau believed that a combination of German domination and war famine was making life unbearable in Turkey. Even the Young Turks had become ‘heartily sick of their German masters’ [9] Henry Morgenthau thought that he understood the Turkish mind. His plan was to go to Switzerland to meet former members of the Ottoman cabinet and offer generous peace terms and ‘any other means’ (by that he meant bribes) to encourage them to abandon their allies. Initially Robert Lansing the US secretary of state, talked over the proposal with Arthur Balfour. The British foreign secretary suggested that since Switzerland was ridden with spies, Morgenthau should use Egypt as a base… as if Egypt wasn’t riddled with spies? It afforded the very plausible excuse that the American delegation was concerned with the condition of Jews in Palestine. Lansing agreed and an American Zionist, Felix Frankfurter, was added to the official delegation. One flaw surfaced almost immediately after Morgenthau set off for Europe. The mission had been sanctioned without due consideration to its possible consequences for Zionism.

Judge Louis Brandeis learned about the venture after the Americans had departed for a rendezvous with their Allied compatriots in Europe. [10] He immediately understood the mortal danger which any such rapprochement with the Turks would bring to the Zionist ambitions. Brandeis alerted Chaim Weizmann. They both realised that these negotiations could completely undermine their carefully constructed plans. In June 1917 there was no Jewish homeland. The very concept was at best paper-talk and had yet to be formally accepted by any of the major powers. A generous settlement for the Turks which might have left Palestine and Arabia intact, would have destroyed the Zionist ambitions before the world war had ended.

In London, Weizmann’s contacts at the foreign office confirmed Brandeis’s anxiety. He learned that the proposed British contingent which was scheduled to join Morgenthau contained envoys whom he did not consider as ‘proper persons’ for such a mission. [11] Since when did unelected observers make decisions on who was or was not a ‘proper person’ to undertake a foreign office assignment? Weizmann turned to C P Scott his Manchester journalist friend, and within a matter of days was invited to speak behind closed doors with foreign secretary Balfour, recently returned from Washington.

What emerged was an astonishing acknowledgement of Zionist complicity in scuttling the American mission. In complete secrecy, Balfour appointed Chaim Weizmann as the British representative to meet Morgenthau. Not a career diplomat. Not a Jewish member of the House of Lords or Commons. He gave the task to a ‘proper person’. The leader of the Zionist movement in Britain, Chaim Weizmann, was formally appointed by the foreign office as Britain’s representative to a secret mission which, had it been allowed to progress unmolested, could radically have shortened the war. Weizmann was given a formidable set of credentials, his own intelligence officer and the responsibility to stop Henry Morgenthau in his tracks.[12]

Chaim Weizmann grasped the opportunity. The Secret Elite chose to use him for their own ends. Their ultimate plan not only for Palestine, but the entire Middle East, would have been seriously compromised had Morgenthau successfully disengaged Turkey from the war. For the Zionists it was imperative that their ambition for a homeland in Palestine was approved by one of the great Powers before the fighting ceased. Chaim Weizmann, accompanied by Sir Ronald Graham [13] and Lord Walter Rothschild met Balfour again. They put one condition on the table. The time had come for a definitive declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This had to be acknowledged – urgently, incase an unexpected peace closed down the opportunity. Balfour agreed. In fact he did more than agree. He asked Chaim Weizmann to submit a form of words that would satisfy the Zionist aspiration, and promised to take it to Lloyd George’s War Cabinet.[14] Here was the golden chance which could not be missed. This was the starting point for the formal declaration which would be endorsed by the war cabinet and called The Balfour Declaration.

Behind the scenes in America, Louis Brandeis succeeded in completely overturning the original position held by Robert Lansing at the Department of State. The plan which had been given official sanction had to be scuppered. On 25 June, while Morgenthau was en-route across the Atlantic on the SS Buenos Aires, an urgent telegram was sent from Washington to Balfour alerting the British to Morgenthau’s arrival in Europe. Lansing specifically stated that ‘it is considerably important that ‘Chaim Weizmann meet Mr Morgenthau at Gibraltar’. [15] How extraordinary. Secretary Lansing requested that his own former ambassador should meet Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the British Zionists before proceeding further. On the same day he instructed the American Ambassador (Willard) at Madrid to ensure that, as soon as he landed, Morgenthau fully understood that he was ordered to go to Gibraltar to meet Weizmann. This instruction was to be sent by ‘special red code strictly confidential’ [16] Who was in charge of American foreign policy, Lansing or Brandeis? No matter. They certainly meant to stop Morganthau.

While the choice of Weizmann as the main British negotiator was inspired, it was little wonder that his involvement, and indeed the whole mission, was a closely guarded secret. The Americans were halted in Gibraltar, ostensibly to agree how the Turks might be approached. With all the weight and authority of his Zionist credentials, Chaim Weizmann pressed Morgenthau on his intentions. Why did he imagine that the Zionist organisations on either side of the Atlantic supported his actions? Did he realise that his proposals would compromise everything that Jewish organisations had been working towards? Realising what he was up against, Morganthau abandoned the mission within two days of Weizmann’s onslaught. He back-tracked to the comfort of Biarritz and left France on 12 July without informing Ambassador Willard of his future plans. [17]

His ego seriously dented, Morgenthau dispatched his own heart-felt complaint to Washington. Given the ease with which diplomatic telegrams could be intercepted, the Americans were appalled. He received a stinging rebuke from Lansing’s office which was as much for international consumption as it was for Morgenthau’s. The telegram read: ‘Department surprised and disturbed that your text seems to indicate you have been authorised to enter into negotiations which would lead to a separate peace with Turkey… Final instructions were to deal solely with the conditions of Jews in Palestine…under no circumstances confer, discuss or carry messages about internal situation in Turkey or a separate peace.’ [18] The aims of the Secret Elite and the political Zionist organisation began to move in tandem. Consider carefully what had happened.

Brandeis had interfered directly with the US State Department policy. Furthermore, he did not hesitate to pass secret information to Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild in London so that Morgenthau’s plans would be thwarted, nominally by the British government. Weizmann, in turn, was ushered in as the foreign office solution. Though by 1917 he was a naturalised British citizen, Chaim Weizmann was no diplomat or civil servant. He was a Zealot for an unbending cause. By pitting a most able and skilled Jewish negotiator against a moderate (at best) American-Jewish diplomat, the Secret Elite approved an inspired appointment. Weizmann crushed Morgenthau with deep-felt passion. At an even deeper level of conspiracy Brandeis had nailed his colours, not to Old Glory, but to the Zionist flag borne by Chaim Weizmann and James Rothschild.

Weizmann the zealot lived for one purpose in 1917. His determination was absolute. He wrote to Philip Kerr, a Milner protege and one of Lloyd George’s ‘secretaries’: ‘Some Jews and non-Jews do not seem to realise one fundamental fact, that whatever happens we will get to Palestine.’ [19] And what of Louis Brandeis? He chose to promote and protect the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in favour of an action which could well have ended the war before American troops landed in Europe. American lives or a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Did Louis Brandeis ever consider that thought?

Long after these events, in September 1922, President Warren G Harding affirmed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine against the advice of his officials in the state department. [20] One of but a few who spoke out against a well-organised Jewish lobby was Professor E.B. Reed of Yale who had served as a Red Cross worker in Palestine for three and a half months in 1919. He testified that the Zionist programme would bring oppression to the Arab majority in Palestine, that it was illegal and violated Arab rights. [21] In his memoirs, Chaim Weizmann recalled, incorrectly, that Professor Reed was a Senator. What annoyed him was Reed’s accusation that the leaders of the Zionist movement were unworthy men, and that he (Weizmann) had prolonged the war by two years by undermining the Morgenthau mission. [22] Strange that Weizmann remained in such stubborn denial. Truly, he and his associates, had prolonged that damned war.

1.https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/XXII_THE_BALFOUR_MISSION_TO_THE_UNITED_STATES
2. Blanche E C Dugdale, Arthur J Balfour, Vol II, p. 231.
3. Richard Neb Lebow, Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40. No. 4 (Dec 1968) p. 507 footnote 22.
4. Charles Seymour, Mandell House vol.II pp. 42-3.
5. What an enlightening insight. The Tzar having been deposed, all promises to Russia could be abandoned with all haste.
6. Richard Neb Lebow, Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 40. No. 4 (Dec 1968) p. 508 footnote 26.
7. Ibid.
8. Nevzat Uyanik, Dismantling the Ottoman Empire: Britain, America and the Armenian Question, pp. 62-63.
9. Memorandum of Henry Morgenthau’s Secret Mission, 10 June 1917, Robert Lansing Papers, Box 7, Folder 2. Quoted in Uyanik, Dismantling the Ottoman Empire, p. 63.
10. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 246.
11. Ibid., p. 247.
12. The British chief of staff in Egypt responsible for the safety of the Suez Canal. Married to daughter of Viscount Milner’s great friend, Lord Midleton. [I. S. Munro, ‘Graham, Sir Ronald William (1870–1949)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33505]
13. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 256.
14. United States Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1917, (FRUS) Supplement 2, The World War (1917) p. 109.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 127.
17. Ibid., p. 129.
18. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 227.
19. S.J. Res. 191, 67th Congress, 2 Session, Congressional Record, Vol. LX11, part 5, p.5376.
20. The Lodge-Fish Resolution, Herbert Parzen, American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol. 60. no. 1 Zionism in America, (September 1970, p. 71.
21. Irwin Oder, American Zionism and the Congressional Resolution of 1922 on Palestine, Publications of the American-Jewish Historical Society, Vol. 45, No.1 (September 1955.) p. 44.
22. Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 251.

The Balfour Declaration 5: Zionism in America; The Rise of Louis Brandeis

Russian persecution also precipitated a wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to America in the first decade of the century, [1] but attempts to organise Zionist societies across the United States failed to ignite early enthusiasms. With two or three exceptions, the wealthy Jews in America would have nothing to do with Zionism in any shape or form.[2] The settled and prosperous upper-class, mostly German Jews, believed in assimilation. Their wealth and social position proved to them that the melting pot analogy was working. Above all, they did not want anyone to question their loyalty to America or embrace an ideology that might rock their well-provisioned boat by advocating the creation of a foreign country specifically for Jews.[3] That might prove an uncomfortable transformation, especially if the argument focussed on the theft of an already Arab country or a the need for Jews to go and live there.

On the other hand it appeared that some poorer immigrants, were becoming more vocal in their support, though it was not backed by an evident desire to move from the ‘Land of the Free’ to the sands of Palestine. The Jewish leaders in America, Jacob Schiff and Rabbi I.M. Wise claimed that ‘America is our Zion’.[4] The Jewish community in America was at best divided. There was no groundswell in the Zionists’ favour and the State Department dismissed them as a minority political group without money, influence or social standing.[5] They were not listening. Slowly a generation of new Zionists began to assert itself amongst the aspiring middle-classes of teachers, lawyers, businessmen and professors. They required a leader to champion their cause.

The flag-bearer for Zionism in the United States, Louis Brandeis, was a Boston lawyer hailed as a champion of the people. As early as 1890 he had created a legal storm with an article in the Harvard Law Review, a Citizens Right to Privacy.[6] In 1905 he successfully challenged the J P Morgan banking and financial conglomerate over a proposed railroad merger, raged against the abuses of monopolies and championed women’s working rights in a high-profile court case against the State of Oregon.[7] Brandeis was widely considered dangerous by his opponents because he couldn’t be bought. Outrageous anti-Jewish rants were vented against him by magazines and journals owned or part-financed by the New Haven Railroad Company when he spoke out against their abuses.[8] Unbowed and unbroken Brandeis fought them and won.

Louis Brandeis was attracted to Zionism fairly late in his life. He first came into contact with Eastern European Jews amongst the New York garment workers whom he supported in the great strike of 1910. Burgeoning anti-Semitism in Boston and his own encounters with prejudice influenced his attraction to the Zionist cause and in an interview with the Jewish Advocate in 1910 he openly acknowledged his sympathy for Zionism. [9] Within two years it had become his life’s purpose.

On 30 August, 1914, barely a month into the war, an extraordinary conference of American Zionists took place in New York at which Louis Brandeis, the Boston Lawyer, was unanimously elected leader of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs. His reputation electrified the Jewish community. Here was a leader of national standing with the reputation of a fearless champion of the people.[10] He brought respect and authority to this post and under his direction a stream of other leaders in American Jewish life were attracted to the Zionist movement. He believed in a cultural pluralism in which ethnic groups retained their unique identity as did Americans of Scottish, Irish, German or any other nationality. His message was that there was no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry. Although some European Zionists viewed this as an anaemic adaptation of their own passion,[11] Brandeis ’s approach to Zionism succeeded in encouraging far greater support in America for a ‘homeland’ in Palestine. That did not, however, infer their intention to go and live there.[12] Ever.

Brandeis’s magnetism in Jewish circles was further enhanced by President Wilson’s surprise decision to appoint him to the vacant position on the Supreme Court on 28 January, 1916. [13] His many detractors gave vent to their anti-jewish bile in a firestorm of protest. Newspapers called Louis Brandeis a red-hot radical; the Sun declared that it was the Senate’s duty to ‘protect the Supreme Court from such an utterly and ridiculously unfit appointment’. According to The Press President Wilson had never made a worse mistake than his nomination of Brandeis. It added, ‘if he fails to withdraw it, the United States Senate should throw it out.’ [14] The Zionist leader had to endure six months of unrelenting abuse from opponents before winning Senate approval in June 1916.

The transformation of Mr Brandeis into Justice Brandeis should have reduced his active involvement in the Zionist movement. Not so. Louis Brandeis’s influence and power increased a hundred-fold. Clearly his official involvement in overt Jewish matters should have been reduced to a minimum, but he held on to all the reins of influence.[15] He remained in daily communication by telephone, telegraph and conference with all the other leaders of the movement, and little escaped his attention. Brandeis was in the business of recruitment. He clearly understood the power that ordinary Jewish voters could wield at the ballot-box. But the struggle within American Jewry for control of their own community between the exceptionally wealthy few and the masses, descended into bitter accusation and counter-accusation.

Jacob Schiff, the New York financier, head of the great Kuhn Loeb banking firm was the foremost Jewish financier in the United States. His philanthropy towards Jewish causes was legendary. Nevertheless, in June 1916 he was shocked by the personal attacks levelled against him. He had originally held himself aloof from Theodore Herzl and overtly political Zionism and in a speech at the Central Jewish Institute, he was reported to have said that Jews in Russia had brought many of their troubles upon themselves because they ‘kept apart as a separate people’. [16]

Schiff always claimed that he had been misrepresented by the pro-Zionist Jewish press; that he had been unfairly and improperly maligned. He told the New York Times that he had been warned that his opposition to the Jewish Congress movement would result in such an attack. Schiff revealed that the Zionists were determined to undermine Jewish confidence in him in a well orchestrated plan; that whatever he said, they would attack him. He was gravely hurt by the allegations and swore that Zionism, Jewish nationalism, the Congress Movement and Jewish politics in any form was thereafter a closed book.[17] Schiff’s anger subsided later and he was persuaded to help the Jews in Palestine, provided the project could be presented to him as unrelated to Zionism.

The message was clear. Zionism was not to be crossed, even by the richest of its own co-religionists. There was an unsubtle message in this character assassination. No matter how rich, how influential, how generous, no-one would be allowed to criticise the Zionist agenda. No-one. Many others have suffered similar fates since.

Louis Brandeis grew in stature. He had the President’s ear. Precisely why remains a matter of conjecture. Allegations have been voiced that Wilson was blackmailed into making the appointment by a lawyer, Samuel Untermeyer. This has never been proved. [18] Formerly, as an adviser to Woodrow Wilson, Brandeis helped to broker the compromise that led to the adoption of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 without which U S bankers could not have financed the world war.[19]

Viewed from that angle one might question the purity of his anti-trust reputation. Though he should have kept his responsibilities as a Supreme Court Judge separate from the workings of the Department of State, which had responsibility for all international dealings, Brandeis made his views on Palestine clear. He approached Woodrow Wilson directly on the issue of Palestine and ‘obtained verbal assurances’ on his and the allied policy in Palestine. In an article in the New Statesman and Nation in November 1914, he argued that Palestine should become a British protectorate. [20] Consider that date. In November 1914, the idea that Palestine should become a British Protectorate was planted by an American Zionist three years ahead of the more general Balfour Declaration. In what depth of fertile soil did it germinate?

For very many Jews who had suffered directly from Russian brutality, supporting the Allies was emotionally difficult. Many could not understand how the British in particular could fight side by side with the hated Romanovs. Brandeis saw beyond that hatred. Above all, he knew that America had to be involved in any international congress which would be empowered to settle the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. He looked to Chaim Weizmann, his fellow Zionist leader across the Atlantic to help find a form of commitment which would deliver Palestine to the Jews.[21]

1. Sampter, A Guide to Zionism, p. 71.
2. Ibid, p. 73.
3. Donald Neff, Fallen Pillars, Chapter 1, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/fallenpillars.htm
4. Ibid.
5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/fallenpillars.htm
6. Warren and Brandeis, Harvard Law Review, Vol. IV    December 15, 1890 No. 5, The Right To Privacy.
7. Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908).
8. George R Conroy, editor of the ironically titled magazine, Truth, penned a much quoted and often re-quoted allegation against Brandeis that linked him to the Jewish banker Jacob Schiff. It was one of many wild allegations made against Louis Brandeis to discredit him.
9. Jonathan D Sarna, Louis D Brandeis: Zionist Leader, Brandeis Review, winter 1992.
10. Sampter, A Guide to Zionism, p. 81.
11. Neff, Fallen Pillars, Chapter 1, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/fallenpillars.htm
12. Donald Lloyd Neff was an American historian and journalist. Originally from Pennsylvania, he spent 16 years working for Time, and was a former Time bureau chief in Israel. He also worked for the Washington Star. It is said that his work was erased from history for reporting on Palestine.
13. New York Times, 29 January 1916. p.1.
14. Ibid. p. 3.
15. Alphas Thomas Mason, Brandeis – A Free Man’s Life, p. 451.
16. New York Times 5 June 1916.
17. Ibid.18. A number of magazines and internet blogs have carried this story. No proof has been produced.

19. Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, pp. 220-21.
20. Mason, Brandeis – A Free Man’s Life, p. 452.
21. Ibid., pp. 451-2.

 

The Balfour Declaration 3. Peeling the Onion: Secret Collusions.

The November 1917 Balfour Declaration was the final product of many interested parties with whom the Secret Elite was intimately involved. For over a century historians and journalists have focussed attention on the final outcome, the Balfour Declaration itself, but the process through which that brief letter of support was constructed clearly demonstrated the collusion of governments and lobbyists which spells out a conspiracy which has been ignored or airbrushed from the received history of the time. Take for example the role of Alfred Lord Milner, the central influence inside the Secret Elite and unelected member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet.  At a previous Cabinet meeting on 4 October 1917, participants had considered a draft declaration written by Milner himself and influenced by his Round Table acolytes.

His draft specifically supported the view that the government should ‘favour the establishment of a National Home for the Jewish Race’.[1] The capitalisation of the term National Home was later altered, as was the very Milnerite phrase, ‘Jewish Race’. Lord Milner was a very precise thinker. While the words National Home implied that the Jewish people throughout the world should have a defined area to call their own, his version favoured ‘the establishment’ of such a place. It did not imply a return to a land over which they had assumed rights. Secondly, Alfred Milner held Race in great esteem. He defined himself with pride as a British ‘Race Patriot’.[2] His wording was a mark of respect. Others feared that it was a dangerous phrase which might be interpreted aggressively. It clashed with the concept of Jewish assimilation, like Jewish – Americans, and hinted that as a faith group, Jews belonged to a specific race of peoples. Consequently, his version was toned down.

Secretly, the War Cabinet decided to seek the opinion on the final wording of the declaration from both representative Zionists ( their phrase ) and those of the Jewish faith opposed to the idea of a national homeland. It is crucial to clearly understand that inside the international Jewish community there was a considerable difference of opinion in favour of, and against this idea of a Jewish ‘homeland’. That these groups were apparently given equal standing suggested that the Jewish community in Britain was equally split on the issue. They were not. The number of active Zionists was relatively small, but very influential.

Furthermore, the War Cabinet sought the American President’s opinion on the proposed Jewish homeland in Palestine.[3] The minutes of the 245th meeting of the War Cabinet in London revealed that Woodrow Wilson was directly involved in the final draft of the Declaration. So too was his minder, Colonel Edward Mandell House [4] and America’s only Jewish Chief Justice, Louis Brandeis, [5]  both of whom telegrammed different views to the British government. [6] On 10 September, Mandell House indicated that the President advised caution before proceeding with a statement on a future Jewish homeland; on 27 September, Judge Brandeis cabled that the President was in entire sympathy with the declaration. Much can change in politics inside two and a half weeks.

As each layer of the onion is slowly peeled away from the hidden inner core of the eponymous Declaration, it becomes apparent that the given story has glossed over key figures and critical issues. There are hidden depths to this episode that mainstream historians have kept from public view and participants have deliberately misrepresented or omitted from their memoirs.

The previous minutes of the War Cabinet Committee held on 3 September 1917, showed that the earlier meeting had also been crammed with Secret Elite members and associates including Leo Amery, formerly Milner’s acolyte in South Africa. [7] Item two on the agenda revealed that ‘considerable correspondence… has been passed between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (A.J.Balfour) and Lord Walter Rothschild…on the question of the policy to be adopted towards the Zionist movement.’ [8] What? ‘Considerable correspondence’ had been exchanged between Lord Rothschild and the Foreign Office; not a letter or enquiry, but considerable correspondence. A copy of one of these letters sent from the Rothschild mansion at 148 Piccadilly on 18 July 1917 has survived in the War Cabinet minutes. What it reveals shatters the illusion that the British government’s promise of support for a Jewish national home in Palestine stemmed exclusively from the foreign office under the pen of Arthur Balfour. Lord Rothschild’s letter began:

‘Dear Mr. Balfour,
At last I am able to send you the formula you asked me for. If his Majesty’s Government will send me a message on the lines of this formula, if they and you approve of it, I will hand it on to Zionist Federations and also announce it at a meeting called for that purpose…’ [9]

He enclosed his (Rothchild’s) recommendation for a draft declaration. It comprised two sentences: (1) His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people. (2) His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organisations.’ [10]

Balfour’s reply ‘accepted the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted…and [we] will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them.’ What? How do you ‘reconstitute’ a country? It might be interesting to consider the precedent that was being set. Could this mean that one day America might be reconstituted as a series of native Indian reserves or parts of England as Viking territory? Astonishingly, the Zionist movement was invited to dictate its designs for British foreign policy in Palestine. [11] This was not some form of loose involvement. It was complicity. Lloyd George’s government, through the war cabinet, colluded with the Zionist Federation to concoct a statement of intent that met their (Zionist) approval. Furthermore, it was agreed that such an important issue, namely the future of Palestine, should be discussed with Britain’s allies, and ‘more particularly with the United States’. [12] This action had all the hallmarks of an international conspiracy.

How many lies have been woven around the design and origins of the Balfour Declaration? Lord Walter Rothschild was the chief intermediary between the British government and the Zionist Federation. In this capacity he had been involved in the process of creating and formulating a new and explosive British commitment to the foundation of a Jewish home in Palestine. More than that, Rothschild and his associates sought to control ‘the methods and means’ by which it would be created. This mindset never wavered in the years that followed.

What influences had been activated to bring Lloyd George, in conjunction with Woodrow Wilson, to such a position by November 1917? Behind the scenes, who was pulling the strings? Who were these Zionists, and why were they given such immense support from the Secret Elite and, in particular, their British political agents? How could a minority group, suddenly command such power on both sides of the Atlantic? An exceedingly small minority group of no previous political or religious influence, whose ideology had been dismissed by many leading Rabbis as contrary to true Jewish belief, emerged as if from nowhere to strut the world stage. This did not happen by chance.

It happened by design. This we will demonstrate over the next few blogs.

1. National Archives: CAB 23/4/19 WC 245, p. 6.
2. A M Gollin, Proconsul in Politics, p. 401.
3. National Archives: CAB 23/4/19 WC 245, p. 6.
4. National Archives:GT – 2015.
5. National Archives:GT – 2158.
6. National Archives:CAB 23/4/19 p. 5.
7. National Archives:CAB 23/4/1. WC. 227, p. 1.
8. National Archives:GT-1803 – The Zionist Movement.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. National Archives:CAB 24/24/4.
12. National Archives:CAB 23/4/1. WC 227, p. 2.

America 1917: 4. Morgan / Rothschild, Wall Street Goes To War.

If the Zimmermann telegram was an absurd intrusion and diplomatic own-goal, it was not in itself, cause for war. If the German decision to revert to all-out submarine warfare in the Atlantic was unquestionably aggressive, it had hardly dented the overwhelming power of the American merchant marine’s massed fleets before President Wilson made his decisive move. Both actions, take together, certainly edged the United States towards the precipice because these issues were whipped up into a frenzy by a highly controlled and organised pro-British press. What matters here is; who was pulling the proverbial strings?

American newspaper editors and owners played a critical role in fomenting public opinion for war in 1917, similar to that of Lord Northcliffe in pre-war Britain. Indeed control of the press in the United States was even more calculated and orchestrated than its British equivalent. Congressman Oscar Calloway of Texas exposed the machinations of the money power as it expanded its influence over the fourth estate in order to swing public opinion towards a ‘necessary’ war. On 9 February 1917 he placed the following statement on the Congressional Record:

‘In March 1915 J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding and powder interests and their subsidiary organisations got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapermen in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States’ [1]

Congressman Calloway revealed that Morgan’s twelve chosen men assessed the worth of over 170 newspapers across America and came to the conclusion that by purchasing twenty-five of the most famous titles, they could literally control the policies and direction of public opinion. An agreement was quietly reached through which monthly payments were paid to them through the House of Morgan. A compliant editor was placed in each paper to supervise and edit the ‘news’. Questions of American preparedness for war were raised in the context of alleged German aggression and Mexican duplicity. The governments’s financial policy came under fire as did ‘other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.’ [2] Be certain; J.P. Morgan and his associates sat in the driving seat and carried American public opinion towards the slaughterhouse of a world war … in order to protect their obscene profiteering and future intentions. Taking America to war was not a forgone conclusion even although the Germans had given up any hope of equal-handed neutrality. The people had to be manipulated.

The crucial factor lay at the heart of Wall Street where the money power decided that the time to abandon the illusion of neutrality had come. America had to go to war or their combined losses would have broken the back of the economy. Though fact, it has been vehemently denied ever since. Typical of this attitude is the claim from the American historian Charles Tansill: [3]

‘There is not the slightest evidence that during the hundred days that preceded America’s entry to the World War the President gave any heed to the demands from ‘big business’ that America intervene in order to save investments that were threatened by possible Allied defeat.’ [4]

What nonsense. America’s economy was inextricably linked to an Allied victory. Had the British and French been forced to come to terms with Germany after 1917, potential losses would have been catastrophic. And in April 1917, Wall Street was aware that the balance of forces in Europe had suddenly swung in favour of the Kaiser when his cousin the Czar, was deposed.

Thomas W Lamont, of Morgan Bank, estimated that half a million Americans, many from the wealthy and influential east coast establishment, had invested in loans to the Allies.[5] Consider these words;  half a million wealthy influential people had a vested interest in an Allied victory. Do you imagine that they sat quietly waiting to see how their investment fared as Britain and France haemorrhaged their youth in the slaughter-filled stalemate on the Western Front which could only get worse after the Czar had been deposed and Russia opted out of a hopeless war? This was but the tip of the iceberg of vested interest.

Allegedly, Woodrow Wilson tried to the last to bring about peace, but failed. But how genuine were his intentions?

If President Wilson had hoped to convince the banks that they should stop extending credit to the warring nations to give him time to coax them towards peace, he was deluded. Too many financial opportunities presented themselves which allowed New York to corner the market while competitors were crippled by war. [6] American banks had been building great stores of foreign securities as well as lending directly to London and Paris. National banks in America held around $15.6 million dollars of foreign securities in 1914. Within two years that sum had multiplied tenfold to $158.5. By September 1916 the total amount of foreign securities stood at almost $240 million which naturally thrust Wall Street into a pre-eminent global position from where it could fund the massive increase in its domestic war industries. [7] With such a formidable war-chest to hand, could the money-power really have contemplated anything other than a victorious war? No.

One immediate consequence of the German decision to embark on its unrestricted U-Boat campaign in 1917 was the immediate panic it caused to traders along the busy eastern seaboard. American shipowners refused to send their vessels into the Atlantic war zone and goods purchased in the United States by the Morgan banks sat idle on the wharves. Profit was threatened; the American economy, intimidated. Morgan asserted his influence with the White House. Jack Morgan was shameless. On 4 April 1917 he wrote a letter to the President pledging his support and reminding Wilson of his connections:

‘We are most heartily in accord with you as to the necessity of the United States assisting the allies in the matter of supplies of materials and of credits. To these matters we have been devoting our whole time and thought for the past two years. I write to assure you again that the knowledge we have gained in those two years of close association with the allies in these matters are entirely at the disposal of the United States government at any time…’[8]

What he omitted to say was that he had devoted his ‘time and thought’ over the last two years to making a fortune from the war. His position of sole supplier and agent for the British government brought him immense wealth and prestige. This reminder could hardly have been better timed. It was almost as if he was saying to the President, you know I can handle the money supply…just get on with the war. Two days later when war was declared, the House of Morgan held the reins of real monetary power in the United States. Through his connections with ‘Colonel’ Mandell House and President Wilson, J P Morgan took effective control of the major international loans emanating from the USA once all previous restrictions had been removed.

On 24 April 1917, President Wilson signed a war finance bill which opened the Federal Reserve’s floodgates and removed any possible liability from Morgan’s banks. Every which way was profit on the Midas scale. $200 million was loaned to Britain immediately. All formal banking technicalities were removed. The New York Times reported that in order to speed matters up the American Treasury would not even wait until British bonds arrived in New York. Subscribers were given four months to pay in instalments as ‘had been suggested by banking interests and others to Treasury Secretary McAdoo with strong endorsement’. Of course they gave Secretary McAdoo their full endorsement. It was their idea; Christmas and Thanksgiving rolled into one. What joy. As the New York Times added, ‘ Little if any of the sum would be spent abroad. Virtually the entire loan to the Allies will be spent in this country for foodstuffs, munitions and supplies.’ [9] Subscriptions from American banks exceeded the initial sum of $200 million by 10.AM on the day of issue, and Secretary McAdoo increased the first limit to $250 million.

Consider what had happened. J.P. Morgan spent the first two years of the war using his banking and financial associates to sell British securities on the American market and spend the money on the weapons of war and all its accessories in America. His agents controlled the orders for steel and armaments, for cotton, wheat and meat, for the transportation of these goods across the Americas and the maritime fleets that crossed the oceans. A single example of what this actually meant can be gleaned from the post-war investigation set up under Congressional Investigation into the munitions industry in 1934. The Du Pont company admitted that J P Morgan & Co. acted as agents, under sales contracts aggregating $351,259, 813 . 28, which accounted for almost 72% of the total military business carried out for the British and French governments during the war. At a mere 1% commission, Morgan made a profit of $3,512,598, from that alone. [10]

Once America abandoned its sham neutrality, Morgan became the prime agent for Wilson’s government at war. Loans which he had issued and underwritten on behalf of the Allies were guaranteed by the State. It was impossible for his banks to lose money. The American economy continued to flourish. The British and French tax-payer would eventually be required to repay their debts. It was as if he was a Rothschild. Indeed. The reader might well ask: where were the Rothschilds?

Let the record show that the Rothschilds remained where they always were; at the centre of the money-power, though not necessarily under their own name. J.P. Morgan’s personal affiliation with the House of Rothschild dated back to 1899, from which point he represented Rothschild interests in the United States. [11] The first telegrams of the war sent to Morgan & Co. in New York, were from Rothschild Freres in Paris as early as 3 August 1914. That is before Britain had even declared war on Germany. The French government, anticipating some of the problems ahead, had approached both Rothschild and Morgan, Harjes & Co. (their French bank) for a loan of $10,000,000, but initially the Americans could not circumvent their own government’s insistence that such a loan was ‘inconsistent with the true spirit of neutrality.’ [12]  It was Lord Nathaniel Rothschild in London who personally advised Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer [13] before J.P. Morgan was chosen as the sole purchasing agent for Britain.

While the financial autocrats pulled the strings behind the scenes, Woodrow Wilson was also driven by personal ambition. As America’s president, his place on the world stage had an immediacy which demanded he exercise power before his time had passed. He looked to the future in the belief that victory would place America at the centre of a new world order and boost his chance of a third term in office. His pronouncements had a touch of papal authority, or might have had, if his new allies accepted his naive declarations. But we will come to the Fourteen Points in due course and wonder at their meaning.

The final word on the impact of the financial – industrial – munitions lobby which unquestionably pushed America into war should come from President Wilson’s close friend and biographer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, Ray Standard Baker. He believed that the die was cast from the outset, observing;  ‘…by the end of 1914 the traffic in war materiel with the Allies had become deeply entrenched in America’s economic organisation and the possibility of keeping out of the war by the diplomacy of neutrality no matter how skilfully conducted, had reached vanishing point. By October, possibly earlier, our case was lost.’ [14] It was only a matter of time, of when America would go to war, not whether America would become actively involved. The occasion of war might well have been unrestricted submarine warfare but the cause was lay in Wall Street. The American economy faced wipe-out if the Allies failed to win the terrible war of attrition. Neither could be allowed.

1. Congressional Record, 64th Congress of the United States, February 9 1917, p. 2947. Reported in the New York Times on 14 February 1917.
2. Ibid.
3. Charles Tansill was Professor of History at the American University. He prepared the official volume on World War I responsibility for Congress and in 1927 edited another volume for the Library of Congress entitled “Documents on the Formation of the American Union.” His America Goes to War was considered the officially accepted view.
4. Charles Cannon Tansill, America Goes to War, p. 657.
5. Bailey, A Diplomatic History, p. 644.
6. Nomi Prins, All The President’s Bankers, p. 47.
7. Ibid.
8. letter from JP Morgan to President Wilson April 4, 1917, Wilson Papers vol. 41.
9. New York Times, 25 April 1917.
10. Hearings before the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, US Senate S.Res. 206.
11. W. G. Carr, Pawns in the Game, p. 60.
12. Hearings before the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, US Senate S.Res. 206. exhibit 2040, p. 7505.
13. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, p. 70.
14. Ray Standard Baker, The Life & Letters of Woodrow Wilson, p.181. This was cited in evidence against J P Morgan in Hearings before the Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, US Senate S.Res. 206, p. 7566.

America 1917: 3. Why Did Wilson Go To War?

If on 4 March 1917, President Woodrow Wilson believed his own rhetoric when he proclaimed that America stood ‘firm in armed neutrality’ why was it necessary some twenty-nine days later, to advise a joint Session of Congress that they would have to go to war to defend and protect democracy? On April 6, 1917, America duly declared that war [1] after the Senate approved the action by 82-6 and the House of Representatives by 373-50.

In the Senate, a few voices were raised hopelessly against what they deemed ‘a great blunder’. Opposition inside the House of Representatives pointed out that no invasion was threatened, no territory at risk, no sovereignty questioned, no national policy contested nor honour sacrificed. [2] Be assured of one important fact. There was no outcry for war amongst ordinary American citizens. No excited crowds took to the streets. At Wellington House in London, the nerve-centre of British propaganda, the manipulators of truth were concerned that the American Press carried ‘no indications of enthusiasm except in a few Eastern papers’. [3] In the United States, citizens were genuinely unsure why the nation was at war, but loyalty to the flag has always carried great weight. Enlistment statistics threw an interesting light on American society. Before 1917, the Eastern seaboard editors, lawyers, bankers and financiers, teachers and preachers, leaders of ‘society’ in New York and Washington alike, had berated the Western states for their alleged unpatriotic attitude towards war. In the event, recruiting figures showed that the response from the western states was greater than their compatriots along the eastern seaboard.[4] How often do the movers and shakers turn into moaners and shirkers and fail to step up to the mark?

There was no instant Kitchener-effect in America. British propagandists watched this lack of enthusiasm with real concern. Woodrow Wilson set up the Committee on Public Information on 14 April to rouse the public to ‘righteous wrath’.[5] Two and a half year’s worth of Wellington House propaganda was at hand for regurgitation and dissemination. Even so, from 1 April until 16 May, total enlistment was a mere 73,000 men. [6] By June 117,974 men had joined the regular army, but the rate was falling. In July only 34,962 joined the ranks; in August it was 28,155; in September, 10,557. [7] This simply could not continue. A conscript army was required.

On 18 May, 1917, the sixty-fifth Congress passed a Military Act to enable the President to temporarily increase the strength of the army, and the ‘draft’ became law.[8] For all his talk of brokering peace between the waring factions in Europe, and many reported attempts at reconciliation, President Wilson led his country into war, provided the manpower to be sacrificed and stirred the hatred and propaganda necessary to popularise the slaughter on the western front. Why? Why within months of his re-election on the proud boast that he had kept America out of the war, was everything reversed; every assumed position revoked; every implied promise, broken? Some historians insist that Germany forced President Wilson into a declaration of war through two acts of blundering stupidity. Emphasis on such a focus has successfully deflected attention away from much more powerful interests which Wilson could not ignore.

On 17 January 1917, British code-breakers partially deciphered an astonishing message from the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann to his Ambassador in Washington. Though the analysts in Room 40 at the admiralty in London could decipher some of the essential message, the new code which had been delivered to the German Embassy in Washington by the cargo U-boat Deutschland in November 1916, had not been fully broken. Senior British cryptographs were trying to reconstruct this particular code but had made only sufficient progress to form an incomplete text. [9] From their initial reconstruction it appeared that Zimmermann had requested the German ambassador to the United States, Count Johann von Bernstorff, to contact President Carranza of Mexico through the German embassy in Mexico City and offer him a lucrative alliance. ‘Blinker’ Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence, took personal control. His grasp of effective propaganda was second to none. Hall knew that once the full text was available it had to be carefully handled both to protect the anonymity of Room 40 and convince the Americans of its authenticity.

Room 40 focused on the ambassadorial messages between Berlin and the American continent and on 19 February the full text of Zimmerman’s instructions to his Mexican ambassador was traced. It had been sent to Washington by a wireless channel which Wilson and House had previously allowed Germany to use for secret discussions on a possible peace initiative. This effrontery added insult to injury. Once Admiral ‘Blinker’ Hall held the decoded and translated text in his hands, he knew that he had unearthed a propaganda coup of enormous importance. Zimmermann’s telegram read as follows:

‘Washington to Mexico 19 January 1917.

We intend to begin on 1 February unrestricted submarine warfare. We shall endeavour in spite of this to keep the USA neutral. In the event of this not succeeding we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following terms:-
Make war together
Make peace together
Generous financial support and an undertaking on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The settlement in detail is left to you.
You will inform the President of the above most secretly as soon as the outbreak of war with the USA is certain, and add the suggestion that he should on his own initiative invite Japan to immediate adherence and at the same time mediate between Japan and ourselves.
Please call the President’s attention to the fact that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England in a few months to make peace. (signed) Zimmermann.’ [10]

After ensuring that they could conceal how they had obtained the telegram, the British Foreign Office released it to Walter Paget, the American ambassador in London, who promptly sent it to the State Department in Washington. Woodrow Wilson received the transcript on 24 February 1917. He was stunned to discover that the Germans had abused the cable line which he had insisted they be allowed to access for peace negotiations. [11] It took President Wilson four days to release the telegram to the Associated Press and following expressions of disbelief, he authorised Senator Swann of Virginia to announce in the Senate on 1 March 1917, that the Zimmerman note to Mexico was textually correct. Robert Lansing made a similar pronouncement from the State Department. Clearly the American public was not easily convinced. Even in 1917, they were suspicious of government pronouncements.

If the reader scans the infamous Zimmermann line by line, it quickly becomes apparent that its ludicrous nature verges on lunacy. Alliances are not forged by telegram. Vague promises of generous financial support, of a detailed settlement being left in the hands of the Mexican government and the subsequent ‘reconquering’ of vast tracts of America, did not make sense. Though the Mexicans gave no immediate response, the Japanese Ambassador authoritatively dismissed the proposition. They had no intention of being suckered by a spurious telegram. And why did Zimmermann describe Germany’s submarine tactics as ‘ruthless’? The whole incident seemed contrived.

One major American newspaper-owner firmly rejected the Zimmermann story. William Randolph Hearst had kept his stable independent of the British censor. Just as he had refused to swallow wholesale war guilt, atrocity or war aims propaganda, Hearst cabled his editors that ‘in all probability’ the Zimmermann note was an ‘absolute fake and forgery.’ He believed that the object was to frighten Congress into giving the President the powers he demanded. Hearst’s anxiety was that ‘the whole people of this country, 90 percent of whom do not want war, may be projected into war because of these misrepresentations..’ [12] He also accused the president’s advisor, ‘Colonel’ House of being a corporation lobbyist. Hearst was at Palm Beach in the weeks before America entered the war and his private telegrams to his editors and those of other newspapers, were later made public in an attempt to discredit him.[13]

Though publication of the telegram aroused some anger in the West and mid-West states, American newspapers generally chose to omit any reference to the fact that the proposed alliance would only take place after America had declared war against Germany. [14] The original note had been passed to the American embassy in London in such secrecy that the State Department could not reveal its origins to enquiring journalists. [15] Indeed the propaganda value was diluted by a suspicion that it was a forgery, as Hearst and his newspapers insisted until, to the immense relief of British and American war-mongers, the naive Zimmerman acknowledged that he was the author. At a press conference on 2 March, Zimmermann was invited by the Hearst correspondent in Berlin, W. B. Hale, to deny the story.

He chose instead to confirm that it was true. [16] In modern parlance, it was a spectacular own goal. Some have said that the Zimmermann telegram incident was the “overt act” that brought the United States into the war. It was not. Woodrow Wilson did not ask Congress to declare war until 3 April 1917, fully six weeks after the British delivered the telegram to him.

So why did Woodrow Wilson take the irredeemable step to war? Sympathetic historians were very clear as to the cause. German militarism. The diplomatic record left no room for doubt. ‘ It was the German submarine warfare and nothing else that forced him [Wilson] to lead America into war.’ [17] Newton D Baker, Secretary of War came to the same conclusion, but wrapped it carefully inside a moment of caution. He wrote that ‘ the occasion’ of America entering the war was the resumption of submarine warfare. [18] Don’t confuse the words ‘cause’ and ‘occasion’. Indeed, consider that sentence again, but replace ‘occasion’ with ‘excuse’.

The German government had announced an unrestricted submarine campaign on 31 January, 1917. From that date U-boat commanders were ordered to sink all ships, neutral and belligerent, passenger or merchant inside a delineated Atlantic and North Sea zone. Despite perfunctory American protests, the British blockade had begun to take its toll in Germany from late 1916. Hunger was to be a weapon of war which both sides could use to advantage. German strategists were aware that such a tactic was likely to bring America into the war, but had concluded that Britain could be starved out before America had time to raise an effective fighting force and bring it into the European theatre. As it stood, America could hardly offer the Allies much more assistance as a belligerent than it currently did as a neutral,[19] but one unforeseen consequence hit home quickly. American shipping was temporarily paralysed.[20] Great quantities of wheat and cotton began to pile up in warehouses. The American economy faced dangerous dislocation. American merchant shipping clung to the safety of their shoreline and trade stood still.

Look carefully at the twin ‘causes’ of America Declaration of War, the Zimmermann telegram and Germany’s unrestricted submarine campaign and you will find flaws. The first was not a ‘casus belli’. It was a propaganda coup to soften the American public’s attitude to war, to stir indignation into resentment and stir the fear factor. No matter how ridiculous the notion that Mexican troops could invade Texas, New Mexico or Arizona, the very suggestion of an alliance through which three huge American states might be ceded to Mexico, placed Germany in a particularly bad light. Zimmermann admitted he was the author, but the clandestine nature by which the British secret service ensured that the information was passed to Washington, and the extent to which the Americans covered all traces of British involvement, leaves questions hanging in the air. Did Zimmermann have a cerebral meltdown? Was he secretly trying to prepare for any eventuality? No matter, it was not the cause of war.

Greater weight may be placed on the general insistence that unrestricted submarine warfare brought about Wilson’s fateful decision. Historians have thrown a vast array of statistics into the equation to prove the importance of this single factor. In the first month of the unrestricted warfare at sea 781,500 tons of merchant shipping was lost.[21] While it is true that after Woodrow Wilson’s warning in February, ten American freighters, schooners or tankers were sunk, nine by submarines and one by a mine (laid originally by the Royal Navy), loss of American lives totalled 24 seamen. In total, 38,534 gross U.S. tonnage was sunk. [22] Was this sufficient to be a cause of war? The pro-war newspapers gave vent to their outrage when it was reported that three American ships, Vigilancia, City of Memphis and Illinois had been sunk on 18 March. The New York World screamed that ‘without a declaration of war, Germany is making war on America.’ The New York Tribune claimed that Germany was acting on the theory that already war existed; The Philadelphia Public Ledger demanded that Wilson’s administration take immediate action insisting was its duty to respond, while the St Louis Republic was confident that the President and his advisors would act with wisdom. [23]

What wisdom? Certainly a very small number of American lives had been lost at sea. Unarguably the Zimmermann telegram was a piece of effrontery … but was it sufficient reason to put the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans at risk? Or were there darker influences?

1. Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Presidential Proclamation 1364 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/woodrow_wilson.php
2. H C Peterson, Propaganda for War, pp. 321-2.
3. American Press Resume (A.P.R.) issued by the War Office and Foreign Office. “For Use of the Cabinet”, 18 April, 1917.
4. A.P.R. 30 May, 1917.
5. Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 325.
6. A.P.R. 6 June, 1917.
7. Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 324. footnote.
8. 65th Congress, Session 1, CH. 15 1917. H.R. 3545.
9. Patrick Beesly, Room 40, pp. 207-8.
10. http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/zimmermann.htm
11. Rodney Carlisle, The Attacks on US Shipping that Precipitated American Entry into World War 1. http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol17/tnm_17_3_41-66.pdf
12. Telegram to SS Carvalho, 2 March 1917.
13. New York Times 11 December 1918.
14. Peterson, Propaganda, p. 314.
15. Bailey, A Diplomatic History, p. 643, note 28.
16. Beesly, Room 40, p. 223.
17. Charles Seymour, American Diplomacy During the World War, p. 210.
18. Paul Birdsall, Neutrality and Economic Pressures 1914-1917, Science and Society vol. 3, No. 2. (Spring 1939) p. 217.
19. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, p. 641.
20. Millis, Road to War, p. 400.
21. Peterson, Propaganda, p. 318.
22. Carlisle, Attacks on American Shipping that Precipitated the War , The Northern Mariner, XVII, no. 3, p. 61. http://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol17/tnm_17_3_41-66.pdf
23. New York Times, 19 March 1917.

America 1917: 2. Promises Given, Promises Broken.

The 1916 election proved to be very close indeed. What matters in an American Presidential election is the Electoral College vote of which, in 1912, there were 530, so the winner had to reach a minimum of 266.

When the first returns from the Eastern States were announced, Republican Charles Hughes appeared to have won by a landslide. By seven o’clock on 7 November it was certain that Wilson had lost New York and the other populous Northeastern States with their heavy votes in the Electoral College followed in swift succession; New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin and Delaware went Republican. It was a rout.[1] Apparently.

Election extras were quickly on the streets bearing huge portraits of ‘The President Elect, Charles Evans Hughes’. As night fell on Washington, strange forces spread across the United States. President Wilson’s private secretary, Joseph Tumulty was instructed not to concede. He was reported to have received a mysterious, anonymous telephone message warning him ‘in no way or by the slightest sign give up the fight.’ [2] Remarkably the American historian and New York Herald Tribune journalist, Walter Millis wrote ‘Who it was he never knew; perhaps it was a miracle.’ Absurd. Ridiculous. Preposterous. Must we always be taken as fools? How many anonymous callers have the telephone number of the President’s private secretary or could order him not to concede the election? Malpractice was afoot.

In London, The Times pronounced, ’Mr Hughes Elected’ in a Republican landslide. Its sober conclusion was that Mr Wilson has been defeated not by, but in spite of his neutrality. [3] The Kolnische Volkrientung cheered that ‘German-Americans have defeated Wilson’, while in Vienna, the Neue Freie Presse claimed that Hughes had been elected to bring an end to an era where ‘the Steel Trust and the Bethlehem works may still make further profits and that the price of munitions shares may be whipped up still further while Morgan further extends his financial kingdom.’ [4] The inference was that the people had turned against the military – industrial profiteers. But they were all running ahead of themselves.

At daybreak on 8 November, while the New York Times conceded Wilson’s defeat, Tumulty remained unmoved. He was quietly informed that the rot had been stopped at Ohio by a margin of 60,000 votes. Colonel House ordered the Democratic Headquarters to put every county chairman in every doubtful state across America on high alert. They were urged to exercise their ‘utmost vigilance’ on every ballot box.[5] How odd that such instructions should be issued on the day following the election. What did House know that others did not? Projections of a Hughes’ victory shrank from certainty to doubt until the entire election result hung on the outcome from California. Secret Service agents and US Marshals were drafted into the largest Californian counties to guard ballot boxes and supervise proceedings. California, with 13 Electoral College votes in 1916, was pivotal to determining the winner. On 8 November, the Electoral vote stood at 264 to Wilson and 254 to Hughes.

Before the mystical, middle-of-the-night change of fortune, the Democrats had conceded California to the Republican challenger, but they declared their decision premature. After a two day recount, Wilson was declared winner by a mere 3,420 out of a total of 990,250 Californian votes cast. Talk of election-fraud and vote-buying prompted the Republican party to file legal protests, [6] but nothing significant materialised. They were effectively too late. While scrutiny of the returns showed minor vote-tallying errors, and affected both sides, these appeared to be random. Nothing fraudulent could be proved.

An angry and suspicious Republican Party refused to concede the election. The final recount in California showed that Wilson had gained 46.65% of votes cast and Hughes 46.27%. The Republican candidate baulked at accusing his rival of fraud. His final statement acknowledged ‘in the absence of absolute proof of fraud, no such cry should be raised to becloud the title of the next President of the United States.’ [7] ‘Absolute proof’ set a very high level of certainty. In New Hampshire the lead changed hands during the canvassing of returns and Wilson won the State by a mere 56 Votes. [8]

Vested interests jumped to close down the Republican options. In London, The Times could not believe that ‘the patriotic and shrewd men who manage the electioneering affairs of the Republican Party will attempt to impugn that decision [Wilson’s claim to victory] without clear and conclusive evidence.’[9] Consider the pressure that was heaped upon Charles Hughes. War in Europe raged on. A newly elected government in the United States would have brought about a complete change in all of the key cabinet posts with consequent dislocation of existing ties. Imagine the confusion if a President Hughes had to appoint new ambassadors, new consuls, new State Department staff, new White House staff and so forth.

Woodrow Wilson (left) and Charles Hughes. We will never know who truly won the 1916 election

Colonel House told the President that ‘Germany almost to a man is wishing for your defeat and that France and England are almost to a man wishing for your success.’[10] They weren’t wishing for his success, they were dependant on it. In the end, Wilson won more popular votes overall, ( 9,129,606 – 8,538,221) and no clear evidence of malpractice could be found. On 22 November Charles Hughes accepted the election result as it stood. His acquiescence did not go unrewarded. Charles Evans Hughes became United States Secretary of State between 1921and 1925, a judge on the Court of International Justice between 1928 and 1930, and Chief Justice of the United States from 1930 to 1941. His son, Charles Evans Hughes junior, was appointed Solicitor General by Herbert Hoover.

Primed by his jubilant backers, Woodrow Wilson demonstrated an unexpectedly theatrical touch at the start of his second term in office. Not since George Washington had a president delivered his first formal presidential address to the Senate itself. Wilson did this on 22 January, 1917 in a barnstorming speech which created the impression of an enlightened, benevolent master-statesman to whom the world ought to listen. He called for ‘peace without victory’ because:

‘Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.’[11]

As rhetoric, this was stout stuff. As policy, it did not last for long. He claimed that his soaring vision for peace and the future was based on core American values unshackled by entangling alliances.[12] The shining centrepiece of his dazzling new utopia was to be a League of Nations which could enforce peace. The Senate sat mesmerised and many rose to salute him at the end of an impressive performance. Democrats waxed lyrical with claims that Wilson’s speech ‘was the greatest message of the century…the most momentous utterance that has a yet been made during this most extraordinary era…simply magnificent…the most wonderful document he has ever delivered.’[13] His Republican rivals were more circumspect in their appraisal, describing it as ‘presumptuous’ and ‘utterly impractical.’

American newspapers split opinion in predictable fashion. The New York World saluted his principles of liberty and justice; the Philadelphia Public Ledger declared that Wilson’s oration was inspired by lofty idealism and the Washington Post thought it constituted a shining ideal. The conservative New York Sun caustically remarked that having failed for four years to secure peace with Mexico, Wilson had no business lecturing the world on the terms for peace with Europe, while The New York Herald warned that ‘Mr Wilson’s suggestion would lead to the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon nations…propaganda for which ‘has been in evidence for a quarter of a century.’ [14]

In Europe reaction was naturally selfish. The British government refused to countenance his proposal first and foremost because he had added a passage on freedom of the seas which challenged their divine right to dominate the oceans. Having shed rivers of blood on the fields of Flanders and beyond, the Europeans were not attracted to ‘peace without victory’. The French novelist, Anatole France, a Nobel Prizewinner for literature, likened peace without victory to ‘bread without yeast…mushrooms without garlic…love without quarrels…camel without humps’. [15]

But Wilson strode that world stage for darker reasons. Who, one wonders, whispered in his ear that all of his visionary pronouncements could not deliver a place at the high table of international settlement at the end of the war if America was not a participant? He could not logically take part in the final resolution of the conflict unless the United States was a full partner in absolute victory. Peace without victory was an empty promise, a misdirection to the jury of hope.

On 4 March 1917, President Woodrow Wilson gave his second inaugural address to Congress and proclaimed that America stood ‘firm in armed neutrality’ but warned that ‘we may even be drawn on by circumstances…to a more active assertion of our rights’.[16 ] Twenty-nine days later, on 2 April, he again addressed a joint Session of Congress. This time his purpose was to seek their approval for war with Germany. In a lofty speech he revisited the same moral high ground with which the Secret Elite and their agents in Britain had previously gone to war. With claims about saving civilisation, it might have been penned by Sir Edward Grey:

‘It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilisation itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts-for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.’ [17]

America was encouraged to war in order to fight for democracy. The phrase has a familiar ring. What had caused this violent swing from peace to war in barely four months?

1. Cuddy, Irish Americans and the 1916 Election, American Quarterly vol. 21, no 2, Part 1 p. 235.
2. Walter Millis, Road to War, America 1914-17, p. 352.
3. The Times, 8 Nov. 1916, p. 9.
4. The Times, 18 Nov. 1916. p. 7.
5. Millis, Road to War, America 1914-17, p. 353.
6. Foley, Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, p. 202.
7. New York Times, 11 November 1916.
8. Foley, Ballot Battles: p. 431.
9. The Times, 13 November, 1916, p. 9.
10. H. C. Peterson, Propaganda for War, p. 281.
11. Woodrow Wilson: Address to the Senate of the United States; World League for Peace, 22 January, 1917.
12. Ibid.
13. New York Times, 23 January, 1917, Scenes in the Senate .
14. New York Times, 23 January, 1917. Wilson’s Senate Speech – Press comments
15. Alfred Carter Jefferson, Anatole France: The Politics of Skepticism, p. 195.
16. http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/wilson1917inauguration.htm
17. Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Address to a Joint Session of Congress Requesting a Declaration of War against Germany, 2 April, 1917. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65366

America 1917: 1 He Kept Us Out Of War.

William Jennings Bryan U.S. Secretary of State

One of the great myths of the First World War is that the United States was not directly involved until April 1917, at which point a coalition of circumstances demanded her formal involvement. Such a convenient interpretation has covered the lie of American neutrality virtually from the day that war was declared by Britain. If neutrality included the vast production of munitions for one side, the enormous loans and credits provided for that same side, the active propaganda which was pumped out, if not exclusively for one side, certainly heavily weighted towards that one side, the provision of vital food supplies and every avenue through which the Allies were aided in their war, then you might argue that America remained neutral. It remains an intrinsically false argument.

Yet the United States was not formally at war with Germany and Austria-Hungary for one overwhelming reason. The people did not want to be dragged into someone else’s conflict. There was no political consensus in favour of war. An active group of upper and upper-middle class businessmen advocated military preparedness but many public figures hated the prospect. Of these, President Wilson’s first Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, was the most outspoken and he had the honesty to resign as Wilson increasingly came under the influence of his minders, Edward Mandell House, and the Wall Street money-power. They supported Robert Lansing as Secretary Bryan’s replacement. A more outspoken opposition to American involvement came from German and Irish communities, but the bottom line was clear. The American people did not want to see American troops sacrificed in Europe. This was not their war.

How and why was America suckered into the conflict despite the overwhelming popular view against, demands examination. The first question to be asked focusses on the President himself.

Woodrow Wilson’s first term in office from 1912-1916, was predicated on an election victory subscribed to and underwritten by the ‘money-power’ in New York. [1] He campaigned under the banner of ‘New Freedom’ and opposition to big business and monopoly power,[2] yet like many presidents, before and after, his actions turned his promises to lies. However the daunting task of defeating the incumbent Republican President William Taft, who had steadfastly attacked the powerful business combinations in the United States, seemed beyond any realistic expectation.

Taft was popular. The Supreme Court’s legal actions against Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Company were decided in favour of his government. [3] In October 1911, Taft’s Justice Department brought a suit against U.S. Steel and demanded that over a hundred of its subsidiaries be granted corporate independence. They named and shamed prominent executives and financiers as defendants. Big business was thoroughly shaken. William Taft earned many powerful enemies. Clear favourite to win a second term in office in 1912, Taft’s chances of success were destroyed by a well-contrived split in the Republican party. Financed by J P Morgan’s associates, the former Republican, Theodore Roosevelt created a third force from thin air, the ‘Progressive’ Bull Moose Party and at the ballot box in November 1912, Wilson was elected President with 42 per cent of the vote; Roosevelt gained 27 percent and Taft could only muster 23 percent. The split Republican voted totalled 7.5 million while Wilson and the Democrats won with just 6.2 million. [4]

1916 promised to offer better prospects for the Republican Party. The schism with Roosevelt and the Bull-Moose was closing fast. Wilson’s supposed neutrality was so transparently false that certain sectors of the American electorate were drawn to his opponent, the Republican, Charles E. Hughes, a former Supreme Court Judge. German-Americans and Irish-Americans had been particularly annoyed by what they believed was President Wilson’s partisan behaviour and were expected to vote Republican. These groups could not be ignored and came under sustained attack for what the President termed, ‘disloyalty.’ In his annual Message to Congress on 7 December 1915, Woodrow Wilson ranted against those born under foreign flags and welcomed ‘under our generous naturalisation laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life… who seek to make this proud country once more a hotbed of European passion.’[5]

He expressed contempt for those who held fast to their original national identities because they did not put American interests first. These he termed ‘hyphenated Americans’.[6] Wilson’s attitude towards German-Americans was harsh. They had watched from across the Atlantic as their former homeland was bounced into a debilitating war by a British Establishment, financed and supplied by America.

By 1916, there were important and influential groups of ‘hyphenated Americans’. As the table below shows, almost 11,000,000 Americans had comparatively recent German, Austrian or Hungarian ancestry. If the Irish community was added, the total approached 15,500,000.

Table 1. 1910 Census of the United States: Total population 91,972,266 [7]

Defined by place of birth, by persons, both of whose parents were immigrants from that country or one of the parents was foreign born;

German – American 8,282,618
Austria – Hungarian – American 2,701,786
Irish – American 4,504,360
English – Scottish – Welsh – American 3,231,052
Russian – Finnish – American 2,752,675
Italian – American 2,098,360
Note: The U.S. Census of 1910 did not take into account renumbers of foreign-born grandparents or the huge numbers of immigrants from Europe who had settled in America over the previous two and a half centuries.

Puck Cartoon. Wilson asks why the immigrant wants a full vote when claiming to be only half American.

Social tensions diluted Democratic support amongst the American – Irish community. Though many Catholics were not Irish, and not all Irish were Catholic, there was a strong affinity between race and religion on the eastern seaboard states of America. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, Wilson made himself even more unpopular by refusing to endorse an appeal for clemency for Roger Casement.[8] The President’s support for the anti-clerical President Carranza in Mexico gave rise to the claim that Wilson was anti-Catholic.[9] The New York weekly newspaper, The Irish World, accused his Administration of ‘having done everything for England that an English Viceroy might do.’[10] Quite a calculated insult by any standard. In truth racism and bigotry lay centimetres from the surface of many American voters.

Little was said of another nascent power-block which was beginning to find its political feet; the hyphenated Jewish-American. The spread of Zionism in America brought with it a fresh wind of political influence.Though still in comparative infancy by election day 1916, certain pro-Zionist Jewish-Americans like Wilson’s newly appointed Supreme Court Judge, Louis Brandeis, were held in high esteem inside the Jewish community. Though Brandeis, and by default, Wilson who appointed him, were initially lambasted in the press.[11] It appeared to have little direct effect in November 1916. That would later change.[12]

Woodrow Wilson had one important advantage, the economy. At the outbreak of war in Europe, America was wallowing in a depression more serious than that of 1907-8, but the war trade brought phenomenal prosperity. [13] The very Trusts which Wilson had spoken against were profiteering on a scale hitherto unknown. Thanks to the massive order book from Britain and France, managed exclusively by the JP Morgan- Rothschild banks, the military-industrial complex thrived, as did the communities around them. There were more and better-paid jobs. On 21 August 1915 Secretary to the ( US) Treasury, McAdoo told President Wilson (his father-in-law,) that ‘Great prosperity is coming. It is, in large measure, already here. It will be tremendously increased if we can extend reasonable credits to our customers’. [14] The customers on whom he was focussed were Britain and France. Wilson’s America forged an economic solidarity with the Allies which made nonsense of neutrality, yet the tacit promise from the Democrats to the American nation in the 1916 election was that ‘He Kept Us out of War’. That was true, as far as it went. The inference was that Woodrow Wilson would continue to keep America out of the war, but the President never claimed that he would continue this policy. Indeed it would have been political suicide to whisper a call to arms. It would also have shortened the war.

1. Anthony Sutton, Federal Reserve Conspiracy, pp. 82-3.
2. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 76.
3. Paolo Enrico Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft. pp. 154–157.
4. http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1912
5. Albert Shaw, President Wilson’s State Papers and Addresses, p. 150.
6. Hans P. Vought, The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot, American Presidents and the Immigrant, 1897-1933, p. 96.
7. Thomas A Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, p. 611.
8. Roger Casement was at that time a hero of the Irish Republican movement because of his support for and involvement in, the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916.]
9. Edward Cuddy, Irish Americans and the 1916 Election, American Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2, Part 1, Summer 1969, pp. 229-231.
10. Irish World, 24 June, 1916.
11. For example, the New York Times urged the U S Senate to throw out Brandeis’s nomination New York Times, 29 January 1916. p. 3
12. See chapter 28 in forthcoming book, Prolonging The War.
13. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, p. 622.
14. Paul Birdsall, Neutrality and Economic Pressures, Science and Society, Vol. 3, no. 2, (Spring 1939) p. 221.

First World War Hidden History Blogs – an update

We appreciate the number of blog readers and followers who have continued to support our drive to demonstrate clearly how the  First World War was justified, prolonged and deliberately aimed at the destruction of Germany and her allies. Over the past nine months we have been focussed on completing the second book spanning the years 1914-1919. It will be entitled, Prolonging The Agony and published by Trineday in the United States in the autumn / fall. As soon as the production work is completed we intend to post directions from the blog to the publishers so that you can get hold of a copy should you want to read the entire narrative and have it was a historical record. The revelations contained within its covers unmasks many of the myths of ‘The Great War for Civilisation’. It is a history that the establishment does not want to acknowledge, yet year on year, has been forced to concede, as the evidence of their collusion and lies grows ever more obvious.

Over the next two years we intend to examine the period from late 1916-1919 in a series of blogs which will be unrepentantly contentious. As the First World War was deliberately prolonged, so the opportunities for racketeers and armaments suppliers, millionaire bankers and financiers and political opportunists, expanded exponentially and the Secret Elite, whom we have regularly  exposed, began to extend into the trans-Atlantic, Anglo-American establishment, first documented by Professor Carroll Quigley. [1]

In July 1917, the great war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, [2] wrote a letter to his regimental masters in his capacity as a Second Lieutenant of the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. It was read aloud in the House of Commons on 30 July by his friend and Member of Parliament for Northampton,  Lees-Smith, and might well have resulted in a court martial and Sassoon’s execution. It read:

‘Lt. Siegfried Sassoon.
3rd Batt: Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
July, 1917.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of agression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.’ [3]

Ponder the key words here. Sassoon wrote his outcry in wilful defiance of military authority because he believed as a fighting soldier, that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who could have ended it. He no longer considered it a war of defence and liberation but of aggression and conquest. Had the reasons for war been clearly set at the start, the end would already have been attainable by negotiation ( the peace that Britain and France refused to entertain). He could no longer be involved with prolonging these sufferings at the Front for objectives which he described as evil and unjust. He castigated the politicians for their lies for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. He blamed deception and callous complacency with which those at home accepted the agonies which continued in the trenches. This is the very vocabulary which we have used repeatedly to try to come to grips with the horrendous fact that young men across Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia and, by 1917, America were being sacrificed. Sassoon’s very words; being sacrificed. Slaughtered, abandoned, surrendered to a faceless evil. It was  young men across the world who were betrayed … for the aims of a Secret Elite who sought to control a one world power for themselves. These words sit at the core of our thesis that the First World War was deliberately prolonged.  What Sassoon could not point out were the names of the elite cabal involved in this monstrous charade.

Our future blogs will prove beyond argument that this evil was deliberately prolonged just as Sassoon stated. When The Times reported that the letter had been read aloud in Parliament [4] the ruling powers had already taken steps to nullify his brave outburst. For Siegfried Sassoon was a very brave soldier who had won the Military Cross for his actions on the Western Front and had received several commendations for his leadership and decisiveness. This was not a man who could be thrown into prison or executed as a traitor. No. The official conclusion, which the War Office had prepared in advance, was that Sassoon was not responsible for his actions because he was suffering from a nervous breakdown. They decided that there ‘must be something wrong with an extremely gallant officer’ and had him sent to a special hospital for shell-shocked officers at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh. It was by far the easiest solution for Lloyd George’s government to avoid of the wrong kind of publicity. [5]

Between 1917 and 1919 momentous changes were brought about because of the prolonged war which impacted severely on the future direction of a fast-changing world. These events did not ‘just’ happen. Each on its own has grown into further and future power struggles, with consequent misery and disaster.

In 1917 two immensely significant events helped destroy the old world order. In Russia, the once-mighty Czar and his royal family were forced to abdicate before being summarily shot by the rising force of bolshevism. What ensued involved hidden forces from the American banking dynasties, the money-power, which bled Russia of her wealth before abandoning her to the misery of Lenin’s secret police. We will demonstrate how Lord Alfred Milner and his Secret Elite colleagues were intimately involved in the downfall of the Romanov dynasty.

A second momentous event was not awarded  its proper significance at the time. In 1917, the British government sent a letter to Walter Rothschild and the Zionist Federation of Great Britain intimating that it sympathised with, and approved, the idea of a future Jewish homeland in Palestine. Though a range of conditions and understandings concerning the rights of the native arabs were also inferred, the Balfour Declaration, as the letter became known, was to have far-reaching consequences. It was not as it has been politely portrayed by sympathetic historians. As events became manipulated by the nascent Zionists, this action also prolonged the war, and, unknown to the general public, had deep rooted links in America.

By 1918, as the relentless stalemate appeared to have no foreseeable end, Germany was driven to seek an armistice. But the war was not over. Far from it. Had the Germans not been completely deceived by the lofty pronouncements from President Wilson and his mythical Fourteen Points, they would never have surrendered. Yet, because historians and politicians have distorted the true facts, we have long believed that the First World War ended in 1918. It did not. From 1918-1919 war against Germany and her allies continued to be waged through the cruel strangulation of a total food blockade to deliberately crush the German people. Her women and children, her starving troops returning from the front line, and her old and disabled became the victims of a merciless allied revenge. Starvation became the weapon of attrition until the crippling and false Treaty of Versailles was signed in mid-1919; until the Anglo-American establishment was satisfied that Germany had been crushed.

If these statements of intent cause you a deep intake of breath, bear with us. All of these great issues deserve close analysis. We start with the convenience of America’s entry to the fray after an election which championed the President who had previously kept the United States out of the war, Woodrow Wilson. Let the story unfold.

[1] The Anglo-American Establishment written by Professor Carroll Quigley is the seminal work on the elite cabal in England which developed after 1919 into a much more powerful trans-Atlantic power-group.

[2] For a brief but informative piece on Sassoon’s life and works see http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/sassoon_siegfried.shtml

[3] The letter can be read in full at; siegfried-sassoon.firstworldwarrelics.co.uk/html/protest.html

[4] The Times, 31 July 1917, p. 6.

[5] Ibid., p. 8.

 

 

 

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener 5: An Act Of Heresy

Kitchener was not a man who relished being sidelined, despite which he remained in office after his role as Secretary of State for War was deliberately subverted by his enemies and detractors in 1915, when he went to Gallipoli to assess the situation on the government’s behalf. Decisions were taken behind his back. As The Times noted, ‘in the absence of Lord Kitchener’ a small War Committee had been set up to co-ordinate the government’s organisation for war. [1] It comprised, Asquith, A J Balfour, Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Reginald McKenna, with Sir Edward Grey available when required, and Kitchener when he returned from his visitation to Gallipoli and the Near East. [2] By late 1915, he knew exactly what he was up against. In terms of armaments, Lloyd George had grasped control of the War Office’s ordnance remit and subsumed it into a new department, the Ministry of Munitions. [3] Strategically, Sir William Robertson was appointed Chief of the General Staff on 21 December, effectively taking charge of strategy on the Western Front. Robertson’s focus was exactly in line with the ultimate aim of the Secret Elite. He advocated the concentration of war in Europe in order to bring Germany down. While lack of success on the Western Front and the failure at Gallipoli reduced Kitchener’s standing inside Cabinet, his popularity within the mass of the populace did not waver. In stripping Kitchener of major responsibility for strategy, Asquith was sufficiently astute to retain him in office.

Maurice Hankey, [4] the Secret Elite’s central cog inside 10 Downing Street, was the prime minister’s confidant and most valued advisor. Hankey had been secretary of the powerful think-tank Committee of Imperial Defence since 1908, and was the most knowledgeable and experienced strategist in the country. In Hankey’s diary for 8 December 1915, he noted that Asquith wanted to be rid of Kitchener who, ‘darkens his counsel and is a really bad administrator, and he evidently wants to find some way of fitting K. [Kitchener] into his scheme so that the Govt. can still use his great name and authority as a popular idol … Personally I can see no way of fitting him in without making him a cipher in every sense.’ [5] This was the problem. How could the high priests remove the people’s idol without losing their credibility? The only answer was to find him high profile but marginal tasks to keep him distanced from the centre of power.

But Kitchener had always been his own man. He cared nought for politicians and cast doubt on their capacity to act wisely. He expressed these concerns to Sir William Robertson with honest clarity: ‘I have no fear as to our final victory, but many fears as to our making a good peace.’ [6] Such intentions shook the Secret Elite and especially Alfred Milner. Alarm bells rang in the memory of those who served with Lord Milner in South Africa. Kitchener had interfered then, at the end of the Boer War, to bring about his peace. It had taken all of Milner’s considerable influence to stop Kitchener agreeing a date for the restoration of Boer self-government. [7] Milner had gone to war against the Boers to break the mould and recast the country, not negotiate a political peace. Peace terms implied compromise. Milner had admitted to his acolytes that there was no room for compromise in South Africa. But Kitchener ‘paralysed’ Milner, and in his view, betrayed the peace. [8] Consider again the main objective of the Secret Elite. They wanted to break the mould of Germany and recast the country and its colonies so that it would never again pose as a threat to the British ascendency. Surely Kitchener was not thinking about interfering in a European peace – in 1916?

Did Kitchener really see himself as the arbiter of a good peace? Yes, he did. And there was one very important source which corroborated Kitchener’s intentions. Lord Derby, [9] reflected on Herbert Kitchener’s state of mind in his diary in 1938. [10] Had this been published in the years immediately after the war when the official censor edited, withdrew or destroyed information that the government wanted to keep secret, Derby’s evidence would have been buried. Herbert Kitchener held very strong views that he intended to push to the fore when peace was eventually negotiated. Kitchener confided his philosophy to Lord Derby over dinner some three or four days before he sailed on his final journey. Derby took notes immediately afterwards so that he did not have to rely on memory at a later date. He recorded Kitchener’s absolute belief that ‘whatever happened’, at the end of the war, the peace negotiators should not ‘take away one country’s territory and give it to another’. The fate of Alsace and Lorraine was included in his statement: ‘I think if you take Alsace and Lorraine away from Germany and give them to France there will be a war of revenge.’ He was insistent that Germany’s colonies should not be taken from her on the basis that ‘if they have colonies they would go there peacefully and not want to engage in war for new territory.’ [11] His sense of a ‘good peace’ had nothing in common with the complete destruction of Germany.

Can you imagine the impact these words would have had inside the closed corridors of the Foreign Office. Kitchener’s sentiments ran contrary to all that the Secret Elite had worked towards. Leave Alsace and Lorraine as part of Germany? Let them keep their colonies? Good grief, would he next advocate the restoration of the Ottoman Empire? He still held influence in these eastern parts, and the British government had great ambitions for Persia after the war. Surely not. Kitchener spoke heresy. Such sentiments stood to undo the war against Germany which the Secret Elite had so carefully planned  [12]

Kitchener had also confided in Sir Douglas Haig [13] that only a decisive victory against Germany followed by a fair peace treaty, would prevent further wars in Europe. He had come to the conclusion that the war should not be about the conquest of Germany. [14] In the eyes of the Secret Elite, he had completely lost focus. Imagine if the concept of a ‘fair peace’ had been leaked to the men in the trenches. That the great man himself was thinking ahead towards peace, had implications for the murderous continuation of war. And not just peace, but a fair peace? To the powers behind the government it was unthinkable. Unimaginable. Consider the impact which Kitchener’s words would have had amongst his armies if in recognising that the war had become a stalemate, he advocated an end to hostilities. If it was put about that the commander-in-chief thought that enough was enough they would have cheered him to the echoes. It would have acknowledged that he thought more of the safety and survival of his own men than the continuation of a bitter struggle to the death with Germany, Kitchener had become more than just a liability. He was a danger to the Secret Elite’s ambitions. His future intentions put everything at risk.

Matters were exceptionally sensitive in 1916. There was much talk of peace and peace conferences. Most of it originated from America where President Wilson had an election to win and ‘peace’ was a vote-catcher. The war had reached a point of deadlock; victory was only likely to be achieved by the ‘guerre d’usure’, the war of exhaustion. Certainly, Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, was in regular touch with the President through the controlling offices of his White House minder, Edward Mandell House, [15] but peace was not an issue that any of the warring nations could be seen to contemplate. Yet a deal took shape. Mandell House and Grey jointly drafted a confidential memorandum on 22 February 1916 which was confirmed by the President. It proposed the restoration of Belgium, the surrender of Alsace and Lorraine to France, the acquisition of an outlet to the sea for Russia, and compensation to Germany in territories outside Europe. If Britain and France thought the time was right, President Wilson would propose that a ‘Conference should be summoned to put an end to the war. Should the Allies accept this proposal and Germany refuse it, the United States would probably enter the war against Germany.’ [16] Sir Edward Grey had actually worked with Edward Mandell House to construct a memorandum which by definition was a basis for a negotiated peace. [17] By the end of the year Grey would be replaced as Foreign Secretary by Arthur Balfour who was in the inner core of the Secret Elite. [18]

But what to do with Kitchener? He was an enigma indeed. After the horrendous casualties at Loos in September 1915, nine cabinet ministers urged Kitchener to force Asquith to accept conscription, but he would not be disloyal. The Prime Minister warned his Secretary of State for War that this move had been instigated by Lloyd George (whom Kitchener loathed) to undermine him, but added confidently ‘so long as you and I stand together, we carry the whole country with us. Otherwise the deluge.’ [19] He needed Kitchener to take the flack.

In June 1916, Asquith accused him behind his back of abdicating his responsibilities and lying. Undoubtedly it suited the prime minister’s purpose to deflect criticism away from himself. He derided Kitchener’s tortuous speech and his repetitive presentations [20] but was obliged to defend him in Parliament in a brief but brilliant oration which was cheered from all sides. [21] Kitchener, for his part, kept faith in Asquith. Lord Derby wrote in his diary that Kitchener was devoted to the prime minister and liked him very much indeed, which may partly explain why he stayed his post. [22] As Asquith sat down in Parliament on 1 June, the conservative leader Bonar Law leaned forward and whispered; ‘That was a great speech, but how after it shall we ever get rid of him?’ [23]

How indeed?

[1] The Times, 12 November, 1915, p. 9.
[2] Trevor Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 338.
[3] See blog Munitions 4: Lloyd George And Very Secret Arrangements. Posted on 24 June 1915.
[4] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 313.
[5] Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Vol. 1, 1877 – 1918. p. 237.
[6] Sir George Arthur, Kitchener vol. III, p. 299.
[7] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 570.
[8] Ibid., p. 551.
[9] Lord Derby, Edward George Villiers Stanley, 17th Earl aided Kitchener in promoting recruitment. In October 1915, as Director General of Recruitment, he introduced a scheme which included enlistment and conscription. Asquith made him Under-Secretary of State for War after Kitchener’s death. Derby was one of the few politicians whom Kitchener trusted.
[10] Randolph S Churchill, Lord Derby, King of Lancashire, p. 210.
[11] Ibid.
[12] The complete history of the Secret Elite’s drive to create a war with Germany is contained in Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor’s Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War, published 2013.
[13] PRO 30/57/53 Kitchener Papers.
[14] Royle, The Kitchener Enigma, p. 348.
[15] Edward Mandell House was President Wilson’s eminence grise in the White House. closely associated with the Morgan financial empire in New York, House was very much an anglophile who advised the President on all aspects of the war in Europe.
[16] Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years, Vol III, p 63.
[17] Ibid., pp. 68-71.
[18] Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 312.
[19] John Pollock, Kitchener, p. 453.
[20] George Casssar, Kitchener: Architect of Victory, p. 474.
[21] The Times, 1 June, 1916, p. 10.
[22] Churchill, Lord Derby, p. 210.
[23] Pollock, Kitchener, p. 471.

Commission For Relief In Belgium 13: As If It Had Never Happened

Herbert Hoover’s reputation could not have survived the war years without protection from his Secret Elite masters. Once he had been presented as the humanitarian face of the so-called relief programme, and his status transformed from unscrupulous and crooked mining-engineer to quasi-diplomat, he had access to the inner chambers of the American, British and German governments. Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) records show that  between 1914-1916 he had discussions with Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey [1], Prime Minister Henry Asquith [2] and Chancellor Lloyd George, [3] yet interestingly they blank him entirely from their official memoirs. Why? US President Woodrow Wilson and various Secretaries of State discussed policy with Hoover, as did German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmerman [4] and Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. [5] The Kings of Spain and Belgium and countless senior diplomats across Europe knew Hoover personally, yet their reticence on the subject of Belgian Relief speaks volumes

Critics were silenced, rebutted or otherwise dissuaded in order to protect his  reputation as the ‘great humanitarian’. The greater Hoover’s success at the CRB in prolonging the war, the stronger the Secret Elite’s cordon of protection was drawn around him. Almost everyone who spoke out or questioned him was crushed or discredited, beaten into submission or forced to retract their claims in the face of violent threats and legal retribution. It was as if his past history had never happened. Officially.

Convinced that Belgian Relief was  damaging the British war effort as early as April 1915, the Admiralty in London, asked naval intelligence to investigate Hoover’s background. Allegations were made that he was ‘untrustworthy, had sinister business connections with German mining corporations’, and that ‘his foodstuffs had passed into German hands.’ [6] His activities were subjected to a formal investigation headed by Sir Sidney Rowlatt who duly whitewashed his findings and gave his formal stamp of approval to the Foreign Office. Loyal member of the British establishment, Rowlatt was later responsible for the repressive Rowlatt Act in India which led to serious unrest in the Punjab and the shocking Amritsar Massacre in 1919. [7]

Hoover steadfastly lied about his business connections. Initially, he claimed to have resigned from his mining company directorships because the relief programme left him no time for private business. [8] He is famously quoted as saying, ‘let the fortune go to hell’, [9] yet records from Skinner’s Mining Manual show that he served on thirteen boards of directors in 1914 and on sixteen in 1915. By 1916 he not only remained on thirteen boards but was chairman of one and joint manager of both the Burma Corporation and Zinc Corporation. [10] His companies returned immense dividends during the war largely through the unprecedented increase in demand for metals and munitions. When rumours of his impropriety in the dealings of the Zinc Corporation surfaced in 1916, law suits followed. He approached the Foreign Office to directly intervene on his behalf, on the grounds that his work with the CRB was too important to the war effort. At his behest, the Ambassadors from Belgium and France wrote to the Foreign Office to stress Hoover’s vital role in Belgian Relief. The Foreign Office advised Hoover’s solicitor that, if ‘The Court’ sought their opinion about the importance of his work, they would willingly reply. The British establishment knew how to protect its assets.

In legal proceedings taken against his Burma Corporation, he attempted to pervert the course of justice by claiming to have previously resigned from the company. His ‘resignation’ was a sham, a temporary convenience to avoid court proceedings. Back on the Board of the Burma Corporation, Hoover brokered a deal in December 1917 with the head of the CRB office in New York and Ernest Oppenheimer to develop gold mines in the Rand. He organised the finance chiefly through the CRB’s bankers, J P Morgan & Company and Morgan’s Guaranty Trust Company of New York. Thus the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa was born, a mining giant in its field from day one. [11]

Consider these connections. Hoover used the CRB banking agencies [12] to  broker a deal that rewarded him with a huge shareholding (plus options) which reaped him yet another fortune. Who was greasing whose palm?  Hoover’s access to ‘insider-knowledge’ brought him an enormous stroke of ‘good fortune’. Like Lord Rothschild some time before, he liquidated almost all of his direct Russian holdings in late 1916, just in time to avoid the consequent take-overs obligated by the Russian Revolution. Every one of his former Russian enterprises was confiscated. [13], and other unfortunates had to bear the consequent loss. Lies and evasion, deceit and malpractice were laced into Hoover’s mentality. Yet his illegal business practices were successfully covered up by his Secret Elite minders.

At the end of the war Herbert Hoover was given one final task in Europe by the Secret Elite. Their role in causing the war and supplying the German army during the conflict had to be kept buried. Any evidence of CRB impropriety, of its complicity with the German government of occupation in Belgium and of its role in prolonging the war would have been ruinous. Hoover faced a massive undertaking. With registered offices in New York, London, Brussels, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Lille and Buenos Aires, [14] official documentation for purchasing agents, shipping agents, insurance brokers, bankers and auditors, statisticians and clothing buyers, the CRB had left in its wake a multiple tonnage of bank transactions, ledger entries, accounts, deposits and records of international exchange. The list was potentially endless, at least, theoretically, because no independent records ever saw the light of day. They were systematically taken after the war by Hoover’s agents and shipped to the west coat of America. Ponder long and hard on this fact; the evidence was physically removed from its point of origin. It was to be as if the illegal importations to Germany and the malpractices of Belgian bankers and speculators had never happened.

We do not know what has since been destroyed or what languishes in the darker recesses of the Hoover Institute at Stanford, but a very determined and successful attempt was made to rewrite history while presenting Hoover as a great saviour of humanity. Our research proves that, in reality, he was a ruthless opportunist – a liar and cheat who browbeat, bad-mouthed and took advantage of the weak while greatly increasing his personal fortune throughout the war. And, had there been no CRB to supply Germany, the war would have ended as early as the Spring of 1915. Millions died while he and other millionaires thrived.

Bad as Hoover’s manipulation and removal of the CRB’s records was, it is of relatively minor importance compared to the outrageous theft of the historical record from all across Europe. In 1919 he was given this important task as the Secret Elite set about removing documentary evidence pertaining to the origins of the war. Once more he had to be re-invented. The ‘great humanitarian’ became a ‘lover of books and of history’ who wished to collect manuscripts and reports relating to the causes of the war because they would otherwise ‘easily deteriorate and disappear’. [15] Hoover certainly made sure that anything incriminating ‘disappeared’.

On the basis that his involvement was kept ‘entirely confidential’, Ephraim Adams, professor of history at Stanford University, a close friend of Hoover’s from their student days, went to Paris in April 1919 to coordinate a great heist of documentary evidence, official and unofficial, and dress it in a cloak of academic respectability. Adams resolved to keep a diary, but stopped after a week on the spurious excuse that he was making too many contacts and the work was a too interesting ‘to suffer interruption by recording them.’ [16] The task had to be undertaken immediately. Speed was of the essence. Adams was in Paris by 11 June with no plan of action, other than follow Hoover’s instructions that all the documentation was sent to Stanford University in California. It was about as distant a destination from the European theatre as could be imagined.

Nothing was too unimportant. Decisions about relevance would be left to a later date. Two years later Adams still hadn’t even begun the process of creating a catalogue on the rather spurious basis that doing so too early led to ‘disappointment and vexation’. [17] In Belgium, for example, access to government records was facilitated by ‘M. Emile Francqui, mining engineer and a banker of world reputation’. [18] Of course it was. Who else knew where all the important evidence was buried? Francqui, whose all-powerful Belgian bank, the Societe Generale ended the war cash rich and thriving beyond its dreams, [19] was the one man who knew exactly what had to be buried deep for all time.

Why have historians and investigative journalists failed to unmask this charade? Hoover and Francqui orchestrated the removal of documents that enabled the myth of Belgian Relief to flourish while masking its sinister role.

Hoover had many powerful friends. He persuaded General John Pershing to release fifteen history professors and students serving in various ranks of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe and sent them, in uniform, to the countries his agency was feeding. With food in one hand and reassurance in the other, these agents faced little resistance in their quest.  They were primarily interested in material relating to the war’s origins and the workings of the Commission for Relief of Belgium. They made the right contacts, ‘snooped’ around for archives and found so many that Hoover ‘was soon shipping them back to the US as ballast in the empty food boats’. [20] He recruited an additional 1,000 agents whose first haul amounted to 375,000 volumes of the ‘Secret War Documents’ of European governments. [21] Hoover allegedly donated a $50,000 ‘gift’ for the task. It would only have paid for around seventy of these agents for a year. It has not been possible for us to discover from what source the remaining nine-hundred men were paid.

Hoover’s backers claimed that there would only be ten years within which the most valuable material could be ‘acquired’. According to Ephraim Adams, Hoover himself estimated that the process of ‘collecting’ would go on for twenty-five years [22] but it could take ‘a thousand years’ to catalogue the material. The collection was accelerated to a ‘frenzied pace ’. [23] How convenient. The official propaganda insisted that the work was urgent, but it would take a millennium to catalogue. They were stealing history.

Hoover was the US Secretary of State for Commerce from 1921 and as a fitting reward for all of his sterling efforts on behalf of the Secret Elite, he became their chosen candidate in the US presidential election of 1928. His critics in America were systematically harassed or squashed. Books that exposed his malpractices were removed from shelves and whole editions pulped. Hoover had long employed sophisticated public relations to curry favour with the media. Pliant biographers and party hacks were supplemented by use of the FBI to perform background checks on would-be unsolicited authors. [24]

A campaign of determined denigration was launched against the crusading journalist Walter Liggett, whose well researched book, The Rise of Herbert Hoover stands testament to Hoover as a criminal businessman and opportunist, who strove to manipulate and remove the records of his past wrong-doing. [25] Liggett, a fearless reporter and newspaper editor who represented the best of American investigative journalism, was later gunned down for exposing syndicated crime. [26]

Tracy Kittredge, a loyal insider who worked with the CRB in Belgium, wrote a very comprehensive  history of the Commission for Relief in Belgium – now entitled the Primary Source Edition – in 1919. [27] Hoover didn’t like its content, so it remained unpublished. In 1942 he claimed that Kittredge’s work  was deemed ‘inaccurate and unreliable’ and was not be shown to anyone without clarification. [28] Hoover did not explain what the inaccuracies were, but we suspect that Kittredge’s criticism of Francqui and the bad blood between both the CRB and the CNSA was the cause. He ordered an associate to collect and destroy all copies of the unpublished work which had progressed as far as a bound proof. Fortunately for researchers, a few survived the cull. [29] Even when faced with official records from those who were there, the Secret Elite endorsed the party line; nothing irregular had ever happened. Any view to the contrary had to be suppressed.

The biography which most disturbed Hoover was John Hamill’s The Strange Career of Mr Hoover Under Two Flags. [30] It was a hugely controversial expose which resulted in an outpouring of indignation from the Hoover lobby who damned the book as a complete fabrication. Shortly after its launch, Hoover’s legal team reported that Hamill had signed a one hundred and eighty-four page repudiation, admitting ‘false conclusions’. Interestingly Hamill refused in court to admit that his work was entirely false and only went as far as to say that ‘my interpretations were in error in some instances.’ [31] It has since been suggested that Hoover’s own agent, George Barr Baker, wrote the repudiation using strong-arm tactics and thuggery. That is the same George Barr Baker who penned articles published in the New York Times about starving Belgian children, and visited the Pope as the CRB envoy. [32]

Hamill’s conclusion chimes absolutely with ours: ‘The whole scheme of Belgian Relief was planned for the purpose of securing the enormous food supplies of Belgium for Germany. The Belgian Relief …. was the cause of the prolongation of the dreadful war, with all its horrors and miseries, and the loss of millions of lives, including our more than 126,000 brave American boys (not to mention the wounded and crippled).’ [33] It was, and the extent to which the Anglo-American establishment went to cover all traces of its complicity, remains awesome.

And who today has heard of the Commission for Relief in Belgium? Where does it sit in the role of honour for World War 1? No-where. It has been systematically buried; as if it never happened at all. But there was one major political consequence.

On 4 March 1929 the great Belgian Relief ‘humanitarian’ was sworn is as President of the United States of America.

[1] George I Gay and H H Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 18, p. 19.
[2] George H Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, 1914-1917, pp. 69-70.
[3] George I Gay and H H Fisher, Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, Document 147 , p. 266.
[4] Ibid., Document 134, pp. 241-2.
[5] Ibid., Document 140, pp. 252-255.
[6] Nash, Herbert Hoover, p. 176.
[7] For further information on the Massacre at Amritsar in 1919, known also as the Jallianvala Bagh Massacre, see; http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/jbagh.html
[8] Nash, Herbert Hoover, p. 270.
[9] Walter Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover, p. 209.
[10] Ibid., pp. 210-211.
[11] http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Anglo_American_Corp._of_South_Africa_Limited.aspx
[12] The Commission for the Relief in Belgium, Balance Sheet and Accounts, published 1921 p. 86
http://libcudl.colorado.edu/wwi/pdf/i71185215.pdf
[13] Nash, Herbert Hoover, p. 274.
[14] The Commission for the Relief in Belgium, Balance Sheet and Accounts, published 1921.
[15] Cissie Dore Hill, Collecting the Twentieth Century, p. 1 at http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/8041
[16] Ephraim Adams, The Hoover War Collection at Stanford University, California; a report and an analysis, (1921), p. 7. https://archive.org/details/cu31924031034360
[17] Ibid.
[18] Adams, The Hoover War Collection , (1921), p. 36.
[19] After 1918, the Societe Generale continued its expansion, founding Banque Générale du Luxembourg. Banque Belge pour L’Etranger also grew, opening new branches in New York, Istanbul, and Hong Kong, among other cities. In addition, SG had banking interests in Portugal, Spain, and much of Eastern Europe. The year before its 100th anniversary, in 1922, the bank’s books showed credits amounting to BFr 4.1 billion and debits of BFr 2.1 billion. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/generale-bank-générale-de-banque-history/
[20] WhittakerChambers, Hoover Library http://whittakerchambers.org/articles/time-a/hoover-library/%5D
[21] New York Times, 5 February 1921.
[22] Adams, The Hoover War Collection, p. 5.
[23] Hill, Collecting the Twentieth Century, p. 1 at http://www.hoover.org/ publications/hoover-digest/article/8041
[24] Roseanne Sizer, Herbert Hoover and the Smear Books, 1930-32, State Historical Society of Iowa, Vol. 47, (Speing 1984) no. 4, p. 347.
[25] Walter Liggett’s The Rise of Herbert Hoover was published in 1932 by the H W Fly company. it can be read on; https://archive.org/details/riseofherberthoo011467mbp
[26] Stopping The Presses, the Murder of Walter Liggett by Martha Liggett Woodbury, his daughter, is an excellent expose of the corruption and sleeze in the USA in the 1920s and 30s and details the victimisation and persecution of a respected journalist who unmasked, amongst other crooks, Herbert Clark Hoover.
[27] Tracy Barrett Kittredge was a member of the Commission for Relief in Belgium from 1914-1917. The Guide to the Hoover Institution Archives includes his correspondence, reports, writing and newspaper clippings, but makes no mention of the book which Hoover ordered to be pulped. See Charles G Palm and Dale Reed, Guide to the Hoover Institution, p. 126.
[28] G Nash, Herbert Hoover, The Humanitarian, pp. 449-50.
[29] A copy held in the Library of the Free University of Brussels contains a note to the reader in French. It states that ‘the work is both a rare book and a document of real historical interest’. First printed in London in 1920 under the auspices of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation, the note states that Mr Kittrege’s writings included some criticism of ‘certain Belgian persons’ so it was decided, in the interest of good Belgian-American, ‘metre au pilon’ literally, to pound it to dust. The note is dated July, 1964.
[30] John Hamill’s The Strange Career of Mr Hoover under Two Flags, was published by W. Faro in 1931.
[31] New York Times, 5 January, 1933.
[32] New York Times, 21 December, 1916.
[33] Hamill, The Strange Career, p. 306.