Uncovering
The Forces For War
by
Conrad K. Grieb
[Part 3]
EXAMINER BOOKS
P. O. Box 144-Station Y
NEW YORK 21, N. Y.
Copyright. 1947
ANONYMITY
“So you see, my dear Coningsby, the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” — Coningsby (page 233, Century Edition, 1903) by Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield.
(First published in 1844)
VI
Contents
Foreword
1. British-American Rapprochement 1
2. British-German Cleavage 7
3. “Roping in America” — 1917 15
4. Twenty Years Armistice 27
5. “Roping in America” — 1941 49
6. Other Influences 73
7. Conclusions 89
Appendices:
No. I President Lincoln and the International Bankers of His Day 91
No. II British Concentration Camps In the Boer War 93
No. III The War in South Africa, by J. A. Hobson 95
No. IV Democracy and Social Instability, by J. Middleton Murry 99
No. V Winston Churchill in India 101
No. VI Winston Churchill on War 101
No VII Walter Rathenau Predicted Germany Today 103
No. VIII Austria Before Hitler, by Dr. Joseph Eberle 104
No. IX Danzig and The Corridor, by W. H. Dawson 106
No. X Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith 107
No. XI Theodore Herzl Confutes Nathan Ohrbach 108
Bibliography 110
Index 112
Books For Collateral Reading 117
VII
“One does not need to be endowed with an abnormally vivid imagination in order to foresee that for us to guarantee Germany’s Eastern frontier would be an act of sheer criminal lunacy.” — R. W. Walmsley, London Economist, 14th Nov. 1931 (p. 914).
Sir Walter Layton, M.A., C.B.E., Editor of The Economist, commented on the letter above as follows:
“We are apt to judge, when we look into the East Europe settlement, that its terms are inequitable and they ought not to be perpetuated even if they could be.” (Page 899.)
VIII
CHAPTER FIVE
“Roping in America” 1941
“The ‘Intelligentsia,’ supported by a special few with personal axes to grind is hell bent for war. A small but brilliant galaxy of political, academic, elite and socialite stars is driving 130 million Americans against their wishes and judgment into war: not just a war against Germany as in 1917, but a futile war to stop foreign revolution a war that may last for a generation, cost millions of lives and billions of dollars, and accomplish nothing but the transformation of America into a social, economic and political shambles.” (THE WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE REIGN OF TERROR, George Cless, Jr., Scribner Commentator, December, 1940.)
We now enter the period of the interventionist battle against attempts to keep America clear of the Second World War. A number of authoritative books are available which outline the efforts made to involve the United States in the coming catastrophe. Some are:
Porter Sargent, “Getting U. S. Into War.”
Quincy Howe, “England Expects Every American to Do His Duty,” and “Blood Is Cheaper Than Water.”
Sidney Rogerson, “Propaganda In the Next War.”
Walter Johnson, “Battle Against Isolation.”
H. C. Gratton, “The Deadly Parallel.”
Hubert Herring, “And So To War.”
“Never since the days of ancient Rome has so much power remained concentrated in so few hands for so long a period as in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and its overseas empire,” writes Quincy Howe in the foreword of ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY AMERICAN TO DO HIS DUTY. But now . . .
[Page 49]
“The British Empire needs the support of the United States. It has had that support with various degrees of enthusiasm in every crisis, for over a hundred years. During many of those years, American support was comforting but not indispensable. Since 1914 it has become imperative and it has sometimes been given with disastrous effects upon the United States.” (AND SO TO WAR, page 116, Hubert Herring.)
To be remembered is the visit of Sir George Paish to this country in the summer of 1940. Senator Wheeler stated in the Senate, August 26, 1940, that Sir George had said to him:
“I am responsible for getting the United States into the last war. I am over here now and I am going across the United States on a speaking tour. I am going to get this country into this war.”
The United States since the turn of the century has become the great pawn in world power politics.
Then there is the Polish diplomatic correspondence discovered in Warsaw by the Germans. Count Jerzy Potocki, Polish Ambassador to the United States, wrote from Washington, January 16, 1939, to the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw (from photostatic copies of the original documents):
January 16, 1939
Embassy of the Republic of Poland
In Washington
No. 3/ SZ-tjn-4
Re: Conversation with Ambassador Bullitt (confidential)
To His Excellency, the Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs in Warsaw:
“. . . From my conversation with Bullitt I had the impression that President Roosevelt had acquainted him in detail with the views of the United States in the present European crisis Bullitt is to report to the Quai d’Orsay and is also to convey these views in his conversation with European statesmen. The content of these directions, of which B. informed me in our half hour conversation is as follows:”
—————
Printed in part in New York World Telegram, March 29, 1940.
[Page 50]
“1) A new impulse in foreign policy inspired by President Roosevelt who sharply and emphatically condemns the totalitarian states.
2) The War-preparations of the United States on sea, on land and in the air which are being executed at an increasing speed at the colossal expense of $1,250,000,000.
3) The emphatic opinion of the President that France and Britain must make no further compromise with the totalitarian countries and must not allow themselves to be led into discussions regarding territorial changes.
4) A moral assurance that the United States are abandoning their policy of isolation and in case of war are ready to grant active support to Britain and France, America being prepared to place her whole financial and material resources at their disposal.”
POTOCKI
In the face of this secretly declared foreign policy of the United States, what is likely to be the foreign policy of Britain? Freda Utley comments on this follows:
“Chamberlain and his group were forced to abandon the policy of appeasement by pressure from the Left at home, and their own growing doubts concerning Germany’s intentions. The United States also played its part by exerting moral pressure on England to wage war on Germany next time the latter erupted. The anger, indignation, and contempt of the American people, as voiced by their press and their politicians, at the Munich settlement, were inflamed, if not actually instigated, by Communists and their fellow travelers, just as similar feelings were fanned in England and France. Read such liberal American journals as the New Republic and the Nation in the fall of 1938 for the clearest expression of Commintern propaganda at that time; propaganda concerned to make the American people believe that Chamberlain had sacrificed Czecho-slovakia out of fear of communism and love of fascism.”
[Page 51]
“If the influence of the Commintern had been confined to such journals as these and to the Left intellectual circles they represent, the damage would not have been great. But the Commintern line was reflected in almost the whole American Press and in the great English liberal and labor daily newspapers, influenced not only by false prophets, the facile journalists or blind idealists, from the Webbs and Louis Fischer to Vincent Sheean, Dorothy Thompson and Heywood Broun, but by the great majority of columnists and commentators. All these ‘liberals’ played down Soviet atrocities, purges, executions, and liquidations; and played up Germany’s. They represented the world as divided up into Satanic aggressor powers and virtuous democratic powers, with Stalin’s Russia endeavoring, as the purest of the pure, to awaken France and England to their duty to crush Germany” (THE DREAM WE LOST, page 313.)
Let us turn to the domestic situation in the United States. Count Jerzy Potocki reported on it to his Government as follows:
Washington, January 12, 1939
Embassy of the Republic of Poland,
in Washington (Confidential)
No. 3/SZ tjn 3
Re: Internal political situation in U. S. A. (Public Opinion against Germany, the Jewish question)
To His Excellency, The Minister for Foreign Affairs in Warsaw:
“Public opinion in America nowadays expresses itself in an increasing hatred of everything Fascist, hatred of Chancellor Hitler and in fact everything connected with National Socialism. Above all, propaganda here is entirely in Jewish hands. Jews own practically 100 per cent of the broadcasting stations, cinema, organs and periodicals. Although American propaganda is somewhat rough-shod, and paints Germany as black as possible — they certainly know how to exploit religious persecutions and concentration camps — yet, when bearing public ignorance in America in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people here have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe. Nowadays the majority of Americans regard Chancellor Hitler and National Socialism as the greatest evil and the greatest danger that have befallen the world.”
[Page 52]
“The whole situation in this country constitutes an excellent forum for all classes of public speakers and for refugees from Germany and Czecho-Slovakia who are not backward in inflaming American public opinion with a torrent of anti-German abuse and villification. All these speakers extol American liberty and compare it with conditions in the totalitarian countries. It is interesting to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign — which is primarily conducted against National Socialism — no reference at all is made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part of the democratic group of countries. Thanks to astute propaganda, public sympathy in U. S. A. is entirely on the side of Red Spain.”
“Side by side with this propaganda an artificial war-panic is also created. Americans are induced to believe that peace in Europe is hanging by a thread and that war is inevitable. No effort is spared to impress upon the American mind that in event of a world war the U. S. A. must take an active part in a struggle for freedom and democracy.”
“President Roosevelt was first in the field to give expression to this hatred of Fascism. He had a twofold purpose in mind: firstly, he wanted to divert American public opinion from difficult and complicated domestic problems, particularly, however, from the struggle that was going on between Capital and Labour. Secondly, by creating a war-panic and rumors of a European crisis, he wanted to induce Americans to endorse his huge program of armaments, as that program was in excess of normal American requirements.”
[Page 53]
“Commenting on Roosevelt’s first purpose, I must say that conditions on the American Labour Market are constantly growing worse; unemployment today already totals 12 millions. Federal and State administrative expenditure is increasing daily. The billions of dollars which the Treasury spends on relief work is the only factor which at present maintains a certain amount of peace and order in this country. So far there have been only the usual strikes and local unrest. But no one can say how long this State subsidy will continue. Public agitation and indignation, severe conflicts between private enterprise and enormous trusts on the one hand, and with labour circles on the other, have created many enemies for Roosevelt and caused him many sleepless nights. As to Roosevelt’s second purpose, I can only add that, as an astute politician and expert on American mentality, he has succeeded in quickly and adroitly diverting public opinion from the true domestic situation and interesting that opinion in foreign policy.”
“The modus operandi was perfectly simple. All Roosevelt had to do was to stage correctly, on the one hand, the menace of world-war brought about by Chancellor Hitler, while on the other hand, a bogey had to be found that would gabble about an attack on the U. S. A. by the totalitarian countries. . . . The Munich Pact was indeed a godsend to President Roosevelt. He lost no opportunity in translating it as France’s and England’s capitulation to bellicose German militarism. As people say in this country, Hitler drew a gun on Chamberlain. In other words, France and England had no choice and had to conclude a most shameful peace.”
[Page 54]
“Furthermore, the brutal treatment meted out to the Jews in Germany as well as the problem of the refugees are both factors which intensify the existing hatred of everything connected with German National Socialism. In this campaign of hatred, individual Jewish intellectuals such as Bernard Baruch, Lehman, Governor of New York State, Felix Frankfurter, the newly appointed Supreme Court Judge, Morgenthau, the Financial Secretary and other well-known personal friends of Roosevelt have taken a prominent part in this campaign of hatred. All of them want the President to become the protagonist of human liberty, religious freedom and the right of free speech. They want the President to punish all anti-Semitic agitation. This particular group of people, who are all in highly placed American official positions and who are desirous of being representatives of ‘true Americanism,’ and as ‘Champions of Democracy,’ are, in point of fact, linked with international Jewry by ties incapable of being torn asunder. For international Jewry — so intimately concerned with the interests of its own race — President Roosevelt’s ‘ideal’ role as a champion of human rights was indeed a godsend. In this way Jewry was able not only to establish a dangerous centre in the New World for the dissemination of hatred and enmity, but it also succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike camps. The whole problem is being tackled in a most mysterious manner. Roosevelt has been given the power to enable him to enliven American foreign policy and at the same to create huge reserves in armaments for a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for.”
“It is easy for American domestic policy to divert public opinion in this country from an increasing anti-Semitic feeling. This is done by talking of the necessity for defending faith and individual liberty against the menace of Fascism.”
JERZY POTOCKI
Ambassador of the Republic of Poland
[Page 55]
Despite these powerful forces in the United States working for war, official quarters in Britain as late as March, 1939, had hopes of winning an economic war against Germany in their effort to avoid a resort to arms. We here quote a few short excerpts from a report by the Polish Ambassador in London to his Minister of Foreign Affairs:
Political Report No. 6/2
Embassy of the Republic of Poland
ER/MR-No. 57-tj-122 London, March 9, 1939
Mr. Hudson’s Trade Mission
“Today I lunched with Mr. Hudson, the Parliamentary Secretary for Overseas Trade . . . He is of the opinion that Italy’s economy is so exhausted that she could afford to take no measure which would be detrimental to Britain. He also displayed much optimism in his judgment of the German problem and told me that, in his opinion: ‘We are already almost out of the danger zone!’”
“Germany, he added, is especially desirous of an economic understanding, Herr Funk being among those who advocated this most strongly. . . . The British Government were moreover determined not to abandon a single European market and not to renounce their economic advantages in favour of the German Reich. This attitude, however, did not mean that Great Britain wanted to contest Germany’s first place in the various Central European market’s which the latter country held for physical, geo-political and other reasons.”
“Here Mr. Hudson expressed his confidence in a favourable development of events by saying: ‘Today we are making negotiations in the economic sphere and shattering the German barter system. In the autumn we shall induce Goering to come to London, within a year we shall have brought about an agreement restricting armaments, within 18 months we shall have completely done away with the painful problem of colonial raw materials; in this manner we shall secure peace and reestablish the shattered political equilibrium.’”
[Page 56]
“The confidence thus displayed by Mr. Hudson in his Berlin discussions does not, however, prevent him from thinking about and mentioning a ‘Policy for developing means of resistance.’ In characterizing the attitude taken by his country, he asserted that British policy had now abandoned the methods and slogans of the last twenty years and had returned to those of her more aggressive days at the end of the nineteenth century, i. e. the time of Joseph Chamberlain. This necessarily meant a return to jingo tradition.”
Of this fateful spring Karl von Wiegand wrote:
“On April 25, 1939, four months before the German invasion of Poland Ambassador William Christian Bullitt called me to the American Embassy in Paris to tell me:”
“’War in Europe has been decided upon.’”
“‘Poland,’ he said, ‘had the assurance of the support of Britain and France, and would yield to no demands from Germany.’”
“‘America,’ he predicted, ‘would be in the war after Britain and France entered it.’” (Chicago Herald-American, Oct. 8, 1944.)
Confirming this, Arthur Sears Henning wrote on November 12, 1941:
“From the outbreak of the war the President has been under fire for permitting, if not encouraging, William C. Bullitt, American Ambassador to France and other American diplomats to encourage France and Poland to get into the war with promises of American support.” (Washington Times Herald.)
Of the Churchill cables to Roosevelt, David Sentner wrote in the New York Journal American, June 19, 1945:
“. . . that the Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence allegedly was following a course to bring the United States into war with Great Britain against Germany . . . Among the cables which were decoded (by Tyler Kent) and the contents revealed, Rep. Hoffman (R., Mich.) said ‘It is alleged there was one sent by Churchill in October, 1939, in which Churchill then British Lord of the Admiralty states:”
[Page 57]
“‘I am half American and a natural person to work with you. It is evident we see eye to eye. Were I to become Prime Minister of Britain we could control the world.’” *
It is anyone’s judgment whether the United States was trying to “rope in England” for a crusade in the cause of “human rights” or whether England was trying to “rope in America” to save the Empire from the growing menace of world trade by barter. Hilaire Belloc had written a significant editorial, CAN WE ROPE IN AMERICA? in The Weekly Review, London, on January 6, 1938, which we reprint in full:
“The immediate practical question in English politics has nothing domestic about it: for we have in truth no domestic politics. We are so united a country that no domestic question divides us. Our poor are delighted to be managed at a profit by our rich, we are always persuaded that, if any of us suffers, the foreigner anyhow suffers a great deal more and we are quite content with the purity of our public life and the magnificence of our public men.”
“But in problems involving the said foreigners and the said public men and ourselves, in matters of international relationship it is otherwise. The Irish affair, which is the most important of all, we get over by taking for granted that it is not there. Ireland is excluded from our press, and not one of us in a thousand pays the least attention to it, or to the Irish Race, in Australia, Canada, America, or to the Irish religion. But what a few people do by this time appreciate, and what most people are beginning vaguely to feel, is the increasing menace to our wealth. We are menaced by serious rivals who want to get hold of that wealth. One important section of our wealth is derived from tribute beyond Singapore.”
*See THE CASE OF TYLER KENT, John Howland Snow, noted in bibliography.
[Page 58]
“As money lender (that is, bankers) we have levied on the Far East a regular toll, increasing in magnitude, for nearly a hundred years. We get five and six per cent and over from the labour of yellow men; who are still precariously and have long been securely, in our fee. We get profits from our exchange of goods with them; we get profits out of insurance upon their lives, upon fire, upon trade risks; we get, or have got, direct payment in salaries from them, paid to our public school men whom we send out as managers and officials of every sort; we get a big slice of their taxes as payment for ‘accommodation,’ and all the rest of it. Much the greater part of this wealth, steadily pumped out of the Far East, finds its way to England and maintains a respectable proportion of our population, some in idleness, others in not very laborious ease.”
“The Japanese want this revenue and at the moment of this writing are in a fair way to get it. They want to deflect the wealth that is now paid into our pockets as money lenders, managers, insurers, exchangers, officials, and even missionaries, into their pockets. They propose to do this by force of arms and they have already gone a long way towards succeeding.”
“Now how can they be stopped? Only by a superior force in action or by threat of such force sufficient will give them pause. Can we do that single-handed? We cannot, because we have not sufficient strength. We have no land force available for the purpose and sea power nowadays does not exercise the control it did thirty years ago. Even if it still could do what used to be claimed for it, we could not use it single handed because the attempt to do so would at once arouse an overwhelming coalition against us. The French in their present condition, though they have similar (vastly inferior) interests in the Far East, are not to be relied upon. The hopes we had of Russian interference have failed, the international clique which still rules from Moscow with Stalin as its vigorous figurehead, knows very well that foreign war would be the end of it.”
[Page 59]
“There remains the United States.”
“It is commonly said up and down Europe that we can make the United States do what we like. That idea is based upon the vague and misleading word, ‘Anglo-Saxon,’ but also upon the actual and recent experience of the last 20 years. We got the U. S. into the Great War on our side, and what was more extraordinary, we managed, in the debt business, to make France the villain of the piece. We have got them to feel with us against modern Italy, and we have got them to talk of ourselves as ‘a democracy’ — which is prodigious.”
“Can we rope them in to fight, or threaten to fight, the Japanese? It is a question of the most poignant interest, and it is a question that will be answered in a comparatively short time one way or the other.”
“The advantages we have in the working of American opinion and policy are very great, and they have been used in the past with so much success that those who think we shall still win the trick and have much to say for themselves. We are the only people of the Old World who use the same printed word, and largely the same spoken word, as the Americans. Much more important than that mechanical advantage is the spiritual advantage of a literature largely in common with them and an interpretation (or myth) of general history held largely in common with them. But much more important than any other factor is the religious factor. Vastly different as we are from the Americans we have in common with them the set of moral ideas proceeding from men who dominated the English seventeenth century. Those ideas have of course been transformed in the last 200 years. You can make more out of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or Children, or out of the word ‘democracy,’ or out of ‘sanitation,’ than you can out of the Authorized Version, and much more than you can out of direct Calvinism, for the latter has now got to be diluted; but, roughly speaking, we know instinctively what will move American indignation and enthusiasm, even when it does not move our own. American opinion is inflammable, and just as we got up the cry, ‘To hell with the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs’ (which both begin with an ‘h’), so we might get a slogan for the Pacific.”
[Page 61]
“There are obstacles in the way. The chief of these is the very large American investment in Japan (17 times that of the British — Ed.). The next obstacle in importance is the realization by most Americans that we are much more interested than they are in stopping the Japanese advance, and that, if they come in, they will be coming in much more to our advantage than to their own. But those obstacles could be overcome. The mass of the American public has no experience, as we have, of modern war; its enthusiasm is, easily aroused; we have already got them to feel a sort of instinctive opposition to the Italians; and the Jews and ourselves combined and in alliance have got them to oppose the Third Reich.”
“Roughly speaking, we are about half way to our goal. Shall we be able to go the remaining half of the way and reach our goal? Shall we rope in America against Japan? That is the important question of the moment, and as this paper is free to tell the truth, the truth can be stated here in its simple and obvious terms. As things now stand, our chances are (to put it in American) about fifty-fifty.” (End of quotation.)
Now let us turn to Beverly Nichols, English and author and journalist. This is what he says about the alliance between England and the Jews referred to by Belloc:
“Let us regard anti-semitism from a purely utilitarian point of view. Is it for a moment conceivable that the British Empire which is of all institutions the most precarious and the most ramshakly could possibly tear out the Jews from its midst and continue to survive? The briefest consideration assures us that if it attempted such a drastic surgical operation, it would crash in ruins. It would crash as certainly as an ancient building on which the ivy had for centuries encroached.. You may call the ivy a parasite, you may suggest that It has stretched its tendrills too deeply into crevices, that It was eating into the very fabric of the stone. That may be true. But try to tear it away and you will bring down not only the ivy, but the entire structure.”
“Would it not be better to trim the ivy?”
“I do not think that the metaphor is either inappropriate or far fetched. The ivy is a parasite. The Jew is a parasite. But the ivy on an ancient structure is not only a parasite but a support. And the Jew in an ancient structure like the British Empire is not only an alien but an asset.” (NEWS OF ENGLAND, A Country Without a Hero, page 299.)
In the same year, 1938, Sidney Rogerson wrote in PROPAGANDA IN THE NEXT WAR:
“There remain the Jews. It has been estimated that of the world population of approximately fifteen million, no fewer than five millions are in the United States. Twenty-five per cent of the inhabitants of New York are Jews (now roughly 50 per cent — Ed.). During the Great War we bought off this huge American Jewish public by the promise of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, held by Ludendorff to be the master stroke of Allied propaganda as it enabled us not only to appeal to the Jews in America but to the Jews in Germany as well. Since then our attempts to implement our undertaking have landed us in difficulties with the indigenous Arabs, agitated by Italian propaganda, without satisfying the Jews. We have not satisfied the educated British Jews. How much less have we satisfied the more remote Jew community on the other side of the Atlantic. In addition, the recent realist policy of the British Government has been worked up into a propaganda of significant extent and intensity which represents Great Britain as being ‘half-Fascist’ — excuse the label — all ready and prepared to ‘sell the democratic pass’ and go ‘all-Fascist’ at the first convenient opportunity.”
[Page 62]
“This is being developed by the intense Jewish hatred of Germany, and from her of all dictator countries, and backed by the influence of the Catholic Church and undenominational liberals. At the moment we have a strong section of American opinion against us, but if war were to break out tomorrow between England and Germany this mass of opinion would have to come down on one side or the other and it will be marvelous indeed if German propaganda could succeed in bringing it down on theirs. In general the situation in the United States is more favourable to Great Britain than in 1914, in that the obvious centre of infection has been removed; but less favourable in that we have temporarily, at any rate, lost caste as a ‘democratic’ State because of the propaganda which represents us as truckling to or at least having truck with the ‘dictators.’ Though we are not unfavourably placed to keep the United States benevolently neutral, to persuade her to take our part will be more difficult, so difficult as to be unlikely to succeed. It will need a definite threat to America, a threat, moreover, which will have to be brought home by propaganda to every citizen, before the republic will again take arms in an external quarrel. The position will be naturally considerably eased if Japan were involved and this might and probably would bring America in without further ado. At any rate, it would be a natural and obvious object of our propagandists to achieve this, just as during the Great War they succeeded in embroiling the United States with Germany” (Page 147.)
On January 12, 1939, The Weekly Review (London) published a leading article, THE BANKERS ACT, which, because of its importance, we quote in full:
“A bitter struggle is going on as to how international trade and international financial relations shall be conducted in the future. On the one side are the banking nations — notably England and the United States — together with those countries which have found it expedient to side with them, and on the other, the authoritarian states of whom Italy and Germany are the leading examples.”
[Page 63]
“The quarrel, reduced to its simplest terms, consists in the question whether or not the usurious loan system shall continue to be the basis of international and in a secondary degree, national-dealings. A nation’s success in it is dependent upon two things which are supplementary to each other: a strong gold backing and the possession of the machinery of world banking. Granting the continuance of the system as a world habit, a country possessing these two advantages is able to impose its will on its other less fortunate neighbors. for it has the power to dry up their resources of wealth and make it impossible or very difficult for them to carry on. Nor is it an easy task to break the system and thus win economic freedom. This can only be done by determination on the part of the rulers of the revolting country backed by preponderant military strength.”
“Through all modern history the power exercised by money has been challenged by monarchies and the reason for this is that a monarchy is a monarchy only in name until it has subordinated to itself, and thus destroyed, the effectual supremacy of the banker. A banking monarchy is a contradiction in terms. It is thus not surprising that the new monarchies (for Germany though not strictly speaking a monarchy, possesses many of the characteristics of that type of government) now that they have attained to a position of military strength, should set their faces against any sort of subordination to the world banking system.”
“The battle is joined, and on a vaster scale than any similar struggle of the past.”
[Page 64]
“The methods adopted by the opponents of the money power have been largely forced upon them by circumstances and made possible by the strict disciplinary regime they have set up within their respective countries. They refuse foreign interest-bearing loans (and as far as possible repudiate those previously contracted), and obtain the imports that they require by direct exchange of goods, subsidizing where necessary, their own exports to an unlimited extent. Such subsidies, which are rendered possible by governmental control of labour, raw materials, etc., naturally cause strains and stresses in the internal economy of the population, especially since so large a proportion of the imported goods are the raw materials for armaments, but the currency of the country remains practically unaffected, and the disasters of headlong inflation are avoided.”
“On the, other side the banking nations, which depend for their prosperity on the issuing of loans, bearing high interest, to nations in economic difficulties, and on the speeding up of international trade to make the payment of that interest possible, are being hard hit by repudiation, contraction of their borrowing field, and a severe check upon international trade as they understand it. England is especially feeling the brunt of the attack, partly because she is of all nations the least self-sufficient, and partly because of the enormous expenditures on armaments that she has recently undertaken. Evidence of the strain she is feeling has been apparent in the steady fall in the value of the pound sterling.”
“At the end of last week the Government took action. It transferred no less than three hundred and fifty million pounds worth (reckoning at the present value of the pound) of bar gold from its function as backing to the currency to the new function of supporting the Exchange Equalization Fund, which is another way of keeping the pound from falling further, particularly when a serious beginning is made of subsidizing our own manufactured exports to compete with foreign subsidies. This action, which in itself amounts to no more than transferring one’s purse from one pocket to another, had the immediate effect of slightly raising the value of the pound; for those who control these things cannot refrain from admiration of any nation that publicly manipulates a large sum of money. But the ultimate intention behind the action is a more serious business. It is a challenge to the nations who are revolting from what has become the orthodox money system, to the effect that England is prepared to expend this gigantic sum in breaking the revolt.”
[Page 65]
“It is a proud gesture, but one unlikely to prove successful, for it is pitting capital against savings from labour. The savings will persist while the capital diminishes.”
“But the really tragic thing about England’s part in this struggle is not her possible failure but that she is on the wrong side. It is one thing for her to refuse for herself the authoritarian regimes of the continent; it is quite a different one to waste her resources on trying to perpetuate a system which is as subversive of freedom and productive of war as the most tyrannical of despotisms and far more widely extended.”
“If she desires appeasement, it is madness to attack the virtues of those with whom she would live in peace.” (End of quotation.)
A careful study of this article places an entirely different light on the “Fight For Freedom” we have heard so much about. It would appear that the so-called liberal, democratic nations, who happen to be at the same time the banking nations, have gathered to themselves the freedom of the whole world. They are engaged, with a great show of piety, in sharing it out in a kind of share-croppers proposition, with the nations who are proving themselves to be righteous. But apparently proof of righteousness is judged by a nation’s subservience to the banking interests, that is, to world finance.
It is not surprising, all facts considered, that there was to be no mediation of the Danzig-Corridor problem.
One reason, Winston Churchill, fickle helmsman-to-be of Britain’s Ship of State, now had other words to say than those he had said in the House of Commons on November 23, 1932 (see page 45).
[Page 66]
“Germany is getting too strong — we must smash Germany.” *
Assertedly these words were spoken to American General Robert Wood, who, according to his testimony, had been a luncheon guest at Churchill’s London flat. There was no one else present, “all I could give the Senators is my word as a gentleman,” said the General. (Hearings on S. 275, Lend Lease, February, 1941, pp. 338-390.)
And the twenty years’ armistice ended September 1, 1939.
The fighting war began in Europe and the battle to involve the United States began at home. For eight months after the restoration of Danzig to Germany there was no fighting of consequence. Had sanity ruled the governments of the liberal democracies they could have stopped the conflict. But there was no sanity.
England depended on the United States coming in — with good reason!
The war against Germany had been going on covertly from the time of Samuel Untermeyer’s startling broadcast. (See page 38.)
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*But in his Zurich, Switzerland address, September 19, 1946. the fickle Mr. Churchill said:
“I wish to speak to you today about the tragedy of Europe. This noble continent, comprising on the whole the fairest and the most cultivated regions of the earth, enjoying a temperate and equable climate, is the home of all the great parent races of the Western world. It is the foundation of the Christian faith and Christian ethics.”
“And what is the plight to which Europe has been reduced? . . . over wide areas a vast quivering mass of tormented, hungry, careworn and bewildered human beings gaze on the ruins of their cities and scan the dark horizon for the approach of some new peril tyranny or terror.” (See Appendix VII, page 103.)
“Among the victors there is a babel of voices, among the vanquished a sullen silence of despair.”
“I am now going to say something that will astonish you. The first step in the re-creation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany” (New York Times, September 20.)
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To the sixteenth convention of the B’nai B’rith, held some eight months before Pearl Harbor, Mr. Sigmund Livingston, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, submitted a written message wherein he rationalized American entry into the war as a necessary step for combatting anti-Semitism. He stated:
“No nation can stand by, oblivious to the perpetration of a great national wrong (the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis) without becoming an accessory to that wrong, if it has the power, either solely or jointly with others, to stop or remedy such wrong.”
Thus Mr. Livingston enunciated the doctrine that any American who upheld traditional American neutrality was an accessory to the crime of anti-Semitism in Germany. *
For various political, financial, racial and social reasons, influential groups in the United States favored involvement, regardless of the harm done to their own country and to the world. President Roosevelt and other highly placed Americans were among those who actively worked, not to keep America out, but to get America in. The Chicago Tribune published this report of the President’s war plans on December 4, 1941:
F. D. R.’S WAR PLANS!
Goal Is 10 Million Armed Men; Half to Fight in A. E. F. Proposed Land Drive By July 1, 1943, to Smash Nazis; President Told of Equipment Shortage
Washington, D. C., Dec. 3.— A confidential report prepared by the joint Army and Navy high command by direction of President Roosevelt calls for American expeditionary forces aggregating 5,000,000 men for a final land offensive against Germany and her satellites. It contemplates total armed forces of 10,045,658 men.
One of the few existing copies of this astounding document, which represents decisions and commitments affecting the destinies of peoples throughout the civilized world, became available to The Tribune today.
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*A Trial on Trial (page 62), Maximilian st. George and Lawrence Dennis, National Civil Rights Committee.
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It is a blueprint for total war on a scale unprecedented in at least two oceans and three continents, Europe, Africa and Asia.
The report expresses the considered opinion of the army and navy strategists that “Germany and her European satellites cannot be defeated by the European powers now fighting against her.” Therefore, it concludes, “if our European enemies are to be defeated it will be necessary for the United States to enter the war, and to employ a part of its armed forces offensively in the Eastern Atlantic and in Europe and Africa.”
July 1, 1943, is fixed as the date for the beginning of the final supreme effort by American land forces to defeat the mighty German army in Europe.
A Plan For Encirclement
In the meantime, however, increasingly active participation is prescribed for the United States, to consist of the gradual encirclement of Germany by the establishment of military bases, an American air offensive against Germany from bases in the British Isles and in the Near East, and possible action by American expeditionary forces in Africa and the Near East. (End of quote)
That was December 4th, 1941, three days before Pearl Harbor.
The next day Britain’s Julian Huxley landed in New York and made this statement to the press:
“Personally, I hope Japan won’t back down and that you’ll have to go to war with her next week.” (New York Journal American, December 5, 1941.)
The joint proclamation by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill on August 14, 1941 their so called Atlantic Charter was the confirmation of a program for war already decided upon. On July 9th the President had written to Secretary of War Stimson asking that he explore “at once the over-all production requirements required to defeat our potential enemies.”
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The statement of former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to the Congressional Joint Committee of the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack brought from Mr. Hamilton Fish, former congressman from New York the following statement:
“The shocking and amazing revelations of former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson prove conclusively that charges made by me and other leading non-interventionists in Congress that President Roosevelt and his specially selected Cabinet of ardent and militant interventionists manoeuvred us into war against the will of 80 per cent of the American people.”
“The Stimson quotations from his dairy have done more to establish the fact that President Roosevelt and Secretaries Hull, Knox and Stimson deliberately planned and sought to involve us in a war with Japan and with Germany, through the back door, than all the testimony taken by the Pearl Harbor investigating committee.”
“Mr. Stimson openly states that the note sent by Secretary of State Hull on November 26, 1941, ten days before Pearl Harbor, was a war ultimatum to Japan. This is the main fact that the Democratic members of the committee sought so strenuously to keep out of the record, and actually denounced it as sheer politics and lies. This directly vindicates every statement made by non-interventionists prior to Pearl Harbor, who for years have been villified and smeared by paid agents for telling the truth.”
“The complete vindication now comes from no less a person than Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War at the time, who was appointed by President Roosevelt because of his pronounced international and interventionist views. The truth is mighty, and history does not lie.” (New York Daily News, March 26, 1946.)
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Oliver Lyttleton’s statement in London as reported by the United Press on June 20, 1944, justifies Mr. Fish’s criticism of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the interventionists. Mr. Lyttleton said:
“Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into the war.”
“Mr. Lyttleton authorized his secretary to say that he did not dispute the published version of his statement but that he made his remarks in an aside and phrased them badly.”
The campaign for intervention culminated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of this John J. O’Donnell writes in Capitol Stuff (New York Daily News, August 13, 1945);
“The reporters in Washington on that Sunday afternoon were as much shocked and surprised as were the Army and Navy commanders at Pearl Harbor. Certainly on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the newsmen didn’t know that F. D. R. definitely had threatened war on August 17 (It was on that Sunday, August 17, that the great decision of the Roosevelt-Churchill conference at sea was put into effect: Roosevelt, swift to keep his secret pledge to Churchill, called in Jap Ambassador Nomura and delivered the oral ultimatum. In effect, F. D. R. told Japan that if they didn’t stop making moves in the Pacific which disturbed Britain, then in its life and death struggle with Germany, the Japs could expect to be at war with the United States ) . . . Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was apparently better informed. . . . In September, 1944, she gave a highly significant interview printed in the Sunday magazine section of the New York Times. Times reporter Kathleen McLaughlin reported in her Sunday piece: . . . ‘she (Mrs. Roosevelt) recalls there was only a little more commotion than usual following receipt that morning (December 7, 1941) by the President of the historic message from Pearl Harbor. December 7 was just like any other D-days to us, it was far from the shock it proved to be to the country in general. We had expected something for a long time.’”
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Former Prime Minister Churchill has made some interesting comments on the entry of the United states into the War. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor he said in the House of Commons:
“When I survey and compute the power of the United States and its vast resources and feel that they are now in it with us, with the British Commonwealth of Nations, all together, however long it lasts, till death or victory, I cannot believe that there is any other fact in the whole world which can compare with that. This is what I have dreamed of, aimed at, and worked for, and now it has come to pass.” (February 16, 1942.)
Later we learn from His Majesty’s war time Prime Minister that the Atlantic Conference put its stamp of approval on a program of “blood, sweat and tears” for these United States. The Prime Minister said in the House of Commons:
“It has been the policy of the cabinet at almost all costs to avoid embroilment with Japan until we were sure that the United States would also be engaged . . . On the other hand, the probability since the Atlantic Conference, at which I discussed these matters with President Roosevelt, that the United States, even if not attacked, would come into the war in the East and thus make final victory assured. . . . has not been falsified by the events.” (January 28, 1945.)
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*See Boake Carter, page 5; Hilaire Belloc, page 60; Sidney Rogerson, page 63.
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