THE EMPIRE OF

 

“The City”

 

(World Superstate)

 

by E. C. Knuth

 

[Part 4]

The Five Ideologies of Space and Power

1. “One World” Ideology

2. “Pan-Slavic” Ideology

3. “Asia for the Asiatics”

4. Pan-Germanism

5. Pan-American Isolationism

The 130 Years of Power Politics of the Modern Era

 

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“I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.”

— Patrick Henry

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 1946, by E. C. Knuth

Milwaukee, Wis.

Previous Edition, Copyrighted May 22, 1944

Chapter XI, Copyrighted Feb. 22, 1945

Printed in U. S. A.

 

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Table of Contents PAGE

 

Introduction …………………… 5

I. The Fundamental Basis of Internationalism …………………… 7

II. Geopolitics and the Background of Modern Wars …………………… 11

III. The Eastern Question …………………… 17

IV. The Concert of Europe …………………… 23

V. The European Concert Ends in the East …………………… 26

VI. The New Order of Freedom …………………… 34

VII. The New Order Ends in the East …………………… 43

VIII. The Liberals Against the Conservatives and War ………………. 50

IX. The Money Power in Power Politics …………………… 59

X. The Secret Sixth Great Power …………………… 67

XI. A Study in Power …………………… 72

XII. The Problems of The Peace …………………… 79

XIII. The Five Ideologies of Space and Power …………………… 86

XIV. Conclusion …………………… 98

 

Index …………………… 106

 

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VI

THE NEW ORDER OF FREEDOM

British approval of our entry into the new world Balance of Power was open and wide-spread; and the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the British Colonies, made this comment on the secret pact between Britain and America:

 

“We now see our cousins across the water entering the lists and sharing in a task which might have proved too heavy for us alone.”

 

The London Saturday Review quoted:

“The American Commissioners at Paris are making this bargain, whether they realize it or not, under the protecting naval strength of England, and we shall expect a material quid pro quo for this assistance . . . we expect her assistance on the day, which is quickly approaching, when the future of China comes up for settlement . . .”

The pact between the British and American internationalists was made in the utmost secrecy, but many of the leading statesmen and educators of that day sensed what was going on, and many of the great speeches and articles in opposition to this fantastic conspiracy were included in “Republic or Empire?” by William Jennings Bryan, published in 1899; and among these is a speech delivered at the University of Michigan on February 22, 1899, by former Congressman Charles A. Towne, in which he said in part:

“. . . upon the decision by the American people of problems now imminent depends the future weal or woe of our country, and hence that of the human race for ages to come . . . by a considerable portion of the public press the language of distrust of present tendencies is ridiculed as a form of hysteria or denounced as an attack on the Government, and that a man who ventures to raise a cry of warning is either charitably characterized as a fit candidate for a lunatic asylum or violently assailed as an enemy of his country . . . It is to mix up in alien quarrels, which we have deprecated always and with special emphasis of late, at precisely the time when by all indications they are about to culminate in the most colossal and destructive war of modern times.”

It would appear from the words of Mr. Towne that the treatment of “isolationists” has not changed in the 44 years that have passed; nor has British censorship and control over American sources of foreign news changed in the 65 years since Lieut. E. V. Greene commented on that control in his “Army Life in Russia” of 1878. (See footnote next page.)

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Immediately after the nations of the world had been lined up in the “New Order,” the long-awaited rebellion of the Chinese Nationalists broke out. The British organization to meet this menace functioned well and the cream of the British,  French,  Russian, German, Japanese, American, Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies soon gave the Chinese a severe beating for their aspirations of National freedom in what was known as the “Boxer War” of 1900. China was assessed an indemnity of $750,000,000 for her brutal aggression, later reduced due to American intercession and renunciation of her share. To impress upon the Chinese the utter dissolution of their national entity, the soldiers of all nations were marched through their “Forbidden City,” thus desecrating their holy of holies.

With the other Great Powers of Europe locked up in the “policy of encirclement” on the continent of Europe by the overwhelming sea-power and imposing military and commercial over-balance of the new British Balance of Power, there was inaugurated an era of almost unrestricted territorial acquisition and plunder. The first was the attack and seizeur of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic in the Boer War of 1899-1902, in the face of rather feeble and futile German protest; in which a mobilized British force of 448,435 eventually defeated 60,000 to 65,000 Boer soldiers.

The next move was to restore the status quo of China as the sole province of international finance, and with a nucleus of an overseas army released by the victory over the Boers to hold in check the reactions of the other European powers; the eviction of Russia from her warm port on the open Yellow Sea was inaugurated by the treaty of January 30, 1902 with Japan. The Japanese war machine was rapidly built up with British financing and in July of 1903 a demand was made on Russia to abandon her position on the Kwantung Peninsula. Russia had spent $300,000,000 in improvements since she had leased Port Arthur from Li Hung-Chang six years before, and the Jap challenge aroused a large measure of scorn in Russia, tempered only by the knowledge that this was a British challenge. (See footnote.)

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In “Barriers Down” published in 1942, Kent Cooper, General Manager of the Associated Press, discloses a 20 year battle fought since the end of World War I for the right to give the American people the truth about the news of Europe and the world, and he gives it as his opinion that the control of (page 7) “the greatest and the most powerful international monopoly of the 19th Century” in developing international attitudes and prejudices has been an undisclosed cause of wars for the past 100 years; that (page 264) the mischief planted during the fifteen years following World War I had become too great for the new relationship of the Associated Press to overcome.

He develops (page 106) that the determination of France and England to keep Germany encircled by small allied nations, was supported by Reuters and Havas with their own “cordon sanitaire.” Havas, the allied French agency, is a subsidiary of the French Government; and an impressive array of practical and historical fact would indicate that most French governments of the past 100 years have been subsidiaries of the French House of Rothschild in practice if not in theory.

Mr. Cooper states (page 21) that the account is that international bankers under the lead of the House of Rothschild had acquired an interest in the three leading European agencies (Reuter, Wolff and Havas). Reuters, whose headquarters were in Old Jewry, near the Bank of England, in the City, was the chief of the three. It was the staggering presumption of this firm that the news of the world was its own private property, to be withheld, to be discolored to its own purposes, or to be sold to whom and where they directed. Rengo of Japan was obliged to pay a territorial “Franchise” fee, plus a service fee for news furnished. When Rengo attempted to buy news from the Associated Press; Reuters assessed a “service” fee on the Associated Press for the “right” to sell news to Rengo.

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There followed several months of inconclusive diplomatic interchange, and then, on the night of February 8, 1904, a Japanese torpedo flotilla sped into the harbor of Port Arthur, and with the Russian warships brightly illuminated and off guard, and with a large part of the crews on shore; inflicted terrific damage, sinking two battleships and a large cruiser. Many will recall the immense jubilation of the controlled American jingo press at this brilliant Japanese feat, and many of those of middle-age should still have a vivid recollection of the overwhelming wave of pro-Japanese sentiment that swept this country.

 

The Japs then transported nearly one-half million men over one thousand miles of open water and fought the two most massive engagements of modern times within eight months of the outbreak of the war, the battles of Liao-Yang and Mukden; the latter involving about 750,000 men and casualties of 130,000 men in less than a week. The Russians outnumbered the Japs, but were utterly crushed in a campaign of marvelous military efficiency, under the command of Field Marshal Oyama. The Jap ally had justified himself,  and there was entered into immediately a new treaty in August 1905, signed concurrently with the signing of the Treaty of Peace between Japan and Russia, which bound Britain and Japan to immediately come to the assistance of each other, even if only one power was to attack. In the secret parts of this treaty there was undoubtedly included the removal of Germany from Kiaochow in the coming and planned World War I, and the award to Japan of the islands of the German Marianas, Caroline and Marshall groups stretching about 5000 miles east and west and 3000 miles north and south across our path to the Philippines; thus bracketing and nullifying our position in the Philippines, projecting the Japanese sphere of influence 5,000 miles closer to our shores and making the Pacific a Japanese lake.

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When John Hay, in a characteristic assumption of sanctimonious hypocricy, remonstrated with the Russian Minister at Washington in May, 1903, stating that the inevitable result of the policy of aggression being pursued by Russia would be the dismemberment of China, Count Cassini shouted: “This is already done. China is dismembered and we are entitled to our share.”

Norman Dwight Harris in “Europe and the East,” published 1926, significantly states of British and Japanese co-operation in the affairs of Korea after the Sino-Japanese or Yellow War of 1895, that the Korean finances were re-established through Sir McLeavy Brown, a gifted British financial expert.

Already in 1900, with the Chinese revolution just in satisfactory solution by joint action of the Great Powers; the notorious international promoter of armaments, Basil Zaharoff, went to Japan to make a deal by which Rothschild controlled Vickers acquired armament and munitions plants in Japan with that prescient foresight of war profits ahead which marked the career of this man of whom Lord Beaverbrook said:

“The destinies of nations were his sport; the movement of armies and the affairs of government his special delight. In the wake of war this mysterious figure moved over tortured Europe.”

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The existence of this secret deal giving Japan these islands did not become known to America until Wilson sat down at the Peace Table at the end of World War I, and his objections to the various secret treaties that then came to light caused most of the secret deals to be revoked by the British,  but this deal was not revoked.

The affairs of the Far East were now stabilized; in the opinion of some Englishmen for one hundred years to come; and all eyes turned to the new district of dissension in Africa. On April 8, 1904, a secret treaty was signed between Britain and France stabilizing the relative positions of these nations in Africa; in plainer words, dividing Africa between themselves. Trouble immediately centered in nearby Morocco, an independent empire which was occupied by the French in accord with the treaty with Britain. Germany promptly protested the French action as a breach of the Madrid Convention of 1880, signed by 15 nations, which had defined the precise status of Morocco; and then to offset and meet the breach of this Convention had herself occupied the port of Casablanca. (See footnote.)

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From “A Short History of English Liberalism” by W. Lyon Blease published 1913 in England, Chapter XI re Liberalism Since 1906:

“In 1904 Lord Lansdowne made an agreement with France by which the two contracting Powers settled all their outstanding disputes. This was intended by its author to be only the first of a series of international agreements. It was converted by Sir Edward Grey into a weapon of offence against Germany,  the country upon which . . . the animosity of modern Toryism had definitely settled. The fortunes of Great Britain were bound up with those of France. The theory of the Balance of Power was revived, every diplomatic conference was made a conflict between France and Great Britain on the one side and Germany on the other, and in 1911 the lives and the wealth of the British people were endangered, not to maintain any moral principle or any British interest, but to promote the material interests of French financiers in Morocco.” (page 364.)

“When Germany proposed at a Hague Conference, that international agreement should abolish the system of destroying private property at sea, Great Britain refused even to discuss the point . . . The right to destroy her commerce was our most powerful weapon against her and as our peace policy was determined by our war policy, we preserved this relic of barbarism. The inevitable consequence of our diplomacy was to give German Jingoism an irresistible argument for the increase of the German Fleet. The increase in the German Fleet was described in threatening language by Mr. Churchill, and was matched by an increase in our own . . . There may have been information in the possession of the Foreign Office which justified this persistent hostility towards Germany That country may have been animated by some desire to destroy our commerce, or to appropriate our Colonies. So far as we are allowed by our governors to learn any facts at all, there is no more than a shadow of a foundation for such an assumption. Up to the end of 1912 we were bound straight for a conflict, of which not one Englishman in ten thousand knew anything definite, and not one in a thousand knew anything at all.”

(page 365.) (Note that this was written before World War I, published in 1913.)

“It is not the business of Great Britain to dictate to established Governments, or to go to war with them for the better regulation of their internal affairs. Nor is it the business of a British Government to refuse to make agreements with any foreign Government for the management of matters in which they are jointly concerned. But it is the duty of a British Government not to corrupt its own people by involving itself intimately with a Government whose methods are not only different but are utterly alien from its own. An alliance with France is bad only in so far as it is turned into a combination against Germany An alliance with Russia is in itself unnatural and horrible.” (page 367.)

These words written in 1913 by a Liberal Britisher about Britain apply with surprising exactness to the extent of the understanding and knowledge of the average American citizen as to why the United States is at war 30 years later.

(*) Bertrand Russell in “Justice in War-Time” (p. 168), published by The Open Court Publ. Co. in 1917.

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In order to arrive at an amicable settlement, a conference of the Powers was called at Algeciras, lasting from January 16th to March 31st, 1906. The British-French oligarchy passed the initiative at Algeciras to President Theodore Roosevelt, who through Ambassador White informed Germany in harsh and unequivocal terms to get out of Casablanca, that America would not tolerate any German port on the Atlantic. Thus the pact of the Pacific was extended to the Atlantic and our partnership in the British Balance of Power asserted in no uncertain terms. America forced virtually complete recognition of French pretentious and of the division of Africa between Britain and France The financial oligarchy purchased Italy’s vote at this conference against her German ally, by awarding Tripoli, then a Turkish province, to Italy; and promising British aid in its capture.

It is an interesting coincidence that Theodore Roosevelt proposed the nomination of John Hays Hammond for vice-president of the United States on the Republican ticket of 1908. Mr. Hammond was one of the four men sentenced to death in 1896 as a result of the Jameson Raid in South Africa, an effort to seize territory for the British Empire. Cecil Rhodes paid an indemnity of $250,000 to free Hammond and his brother, Col. Francis Rhodes.

With the African difficulties settled (perhaps for one hundred years) the scene flashed to the “Middle-East.” Russia, balked in her efforts to attain a foothold on open water in the Near-East and in the Far-East, was now attempting to penetrate to the Persian Gulf. She had gradually occupied the northern half of Persia, while Britain had occupied most of the southern half to resist her, with a small neutral zone between In order to meet the Russian menace, the British-French oligarchy decided to subsidize a certain section of the Russian Government, and a loan was arranged in April, 1906, of which a British writer (*) said:

“The part played by the Foreign Office in advising the City is not easy to ascertain, but no one can doubt that our financial magnates were perfectly conscious of co-operating with the Foreign Office when they undertook to lend money to the Russian Government.”

The purpose of the loan was to strengthen the hand of those elements in the Russian Government favorable to International Finance, and to halt a growing tendency to an understanding with Germany

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The same British writer goes on to say:

“. . . incidentally, we could not but help the Russian Government in suppressing the Duma, in reconquering Poland, and in depriving the Finns of the liberties which the Tsar had sworn to defend. . .”

As a result of the British subsidy, the first Duma, whose probable pro-German leanings were greatly feared, lasted only ten weeks from May 9 to June 22, 1906. Although the Russian Emperor apparently was not in accord with this suppression of Russian liberty, its consequences eventually cost his life. Nor did the Anglo-Russian Agreement of August 31, 1907, made on the basis of the loans of the British and French bankers, end Russian pressure.

In November, 1910, Russia and Germany concluded the Potsdam Agreement, giving Russia a free hand in Persia. The same British writer states of this:

“From this time on, we became completely subservient to Russia in Persia, since we lived in terror of a rapprochement between the Tsar and the Kaiser.”

As usual the public was totally unaware of the wider scope of the power politics involved and accepted the stock tale of Persia taken over by the two adjacent powers due to discord in Persia itself.

The British took a peculiarly artful advantage of the public ignorance in America in this instance in having the new British controlled government of Persia (the Shah and his government had fled to Russia) appeal to the American Government to assist it in regenerating the finances of Persia, and so help it to restore order and restore the independence of Persia. The success of this superficially plausible and highly commendable undertaking would of course have meant complete and final defeat of the last Russian hope for access to open water, the dream of centuries.

Russian antagonism to this splendid and humane objective was then thoroughly capitalized and exploited with the aid of alleged American financial experts, causing wide-spread indignation in America. The British-French loans to Russia had at this time reached vast proportions, as. indicated by subject matter from the “Pan-Germanism” of Prof. Usher quoted heretofore; and this, together with the storm of American hostility, raised the weight of the Russians allied with the International Financiers so as to cause Russia to recede from her stand; giving to British diplomacy another mighty victory in the policy of encirclement. (See footnote.)

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Of the part played by Britain in the conflict of 1907-1912 with Russia which followed their agreement of August 31, 1907, to divide Persia between themselves, and which added much to the misery and poverty of the people of Persia Mr. Arthur Bullard stated in an article which appeared in the Century Magazine for December, 1915, on “The British Foreign Policy and Sir Edward Grey”:

“From a humanitarian point of view the British record in Persia is the blackest in recent history. It is on a par with their Chinese opium war and their ultimatum to Portugal in 1790.”

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The foundation for The Great War, which had been started on May 1, 1898, was now nearly ready. Germany had made many other frantic efforts to evade the iron circle slowly closing about her national existence. The most outstanding was her effort to overcome a large part of British supremacy on sea by by-passing the Suez Canal with a railroad in Turkey to the Persian Gulf, the so-called Berlin to Bagdad Railroad. Although permission to build this line had been obtained from Turkey in the fall of 1899, shortly after the nullification of the Concert of Europe by the new British Balance of Power, she had been halted again and again by threat of war, and had not finished it by the outbreak of war in 1914.

The Berlin to Bagdad Railroad in general involved only an extension of about nine hundred miles to existing railroads, it was located entirely in Turkey and was being built with the full consent of that country. In the fifteen years from 1899 to 1914, the Balkans were called the sore spot of Europe, simply because of the jockeying with this railroad. The notorious agent provocateur of war, Sir Basil Zaharoff, was an active figure in the secret diplomacy of Europe in this period. One writer has said of this Greek-French super-salesman of the armament plants of International Finance, and British nobleman, that: “His monument is the graves of millions; his epitaph, their dying groans.” (See footnote.)

The principal reason for the frenzied secret diplomacy and bloodshed to halt this railroad was that it would have been a short-cut from Berlin to the East and India, by-passing the tollgate of the British-French financial oligarchy at Suez completely; with a considerable advantage over the route from London to India via the Suez Canal. Lord Cranbourne, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in January, 1902, stated that the maintenance of the status quo in the Persian Gulf was incompatible with the occupation by any Power of a port on those waters. British interests based their opposition on the fact that this railway would destroy the trade that English capital and English merchants had painfully built up along the Suez Route. An important aspect of this trade was the sale of coal to the ships of other nations at prices set by that English capital.

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Among the shadowy and mysterious figures that silently flitted about the stage of European power politics during the period of incubation (1895 to 1914) of the Great War, figures that all were imbued with that intense “passion for anonymity” generally associated with the great British-French banking dynasty, was Viscount Reginald Esher.

Viscount Esher was born in 1852, the son of a noted jurist and interpreter of English law, and died in 1930. Despite the fact that he was for forty years one of the most powerful statesmen in all the world, his actual position was very obscure, and his name was utterly unknown and has remained unknown to the American public. In a hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate on January 28, 1940, it was developed that his whole position was derived from the fact that he was the most secret confidant and counsel of the “monarchy;” and it is quite apparent that by the term “monarchy” there is here meant the “King-in-Council” or Crown; or in other words the City and International Finance.

Harold J. Laski said of this man in the New Republic that he was:

“ . . . for a generation the unnamed member of Cabinet after Cabinet, indispensable to them all and not responsible to any.”

There was made a plausible arrangement to give a public aspect to his position of most secret confidant of the “monarchy” by his editing and arrangement of the letters and papers of Queen Victoria. In his Journals published in limited edition and entitled “The Captains and the Kings Depart” he recorded on August 3, 1917, as follows:

“No American is likely to be killed before November. This is unfortunate, as Wilson may require to be steadied before then and only the death of young Americans can ensure him stability.”

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In order to provide a coaling station for her ships on the route to her own inner Africa colonies, Germany authorized a German syndicate to purchase dock facilities at Agadir, an utterly unimportant town on the southern end of the Moroccan Coast, with no railroad connection, cut off by mountains running out into the desert. This was not a political penetration as the town itself is cut off from all the world. Nevertheless, interference was set up; and when the German gunboat Panther was sent to investigate, it was forced out of the harbor by British and French cruisers standing by their guns ready to fire, in one of the most humiliating episodes of modern history. This incident in July, 1911, received wide attention as the “Morocco Affair,” and was one of the last preludes to The Great War.

The outbreak of the Great War was fully expected by every government in the world; it took not one of them by surprise. The illusion which was artfully fostered in all the world that Britain was the victim of her treaty to defend Belgium neutrality, and of a wholly unexpected and brutal attack on Belgium, is evident from a sentence in a letter written to President Wilson by Colonel E. M. House, dated at London, May 29, 1914, in which he stated:

“Whenever England consents, France and Russia will close in on Germany and Austria.”

The greater part of British sea-power from all over the world had been gathered in Home waters on that day; although Archduke Franz Ferdinand, active ruler of Austria-Hungary and leader of the foes of International Finance, was not assassinated until June 28, 1914; and war was not to start until August 1, 1914.

Sir Arthur Nicolson was for many years one of the foremost diplomats of the world. He retired in June, 1916, from the British Foreign Office. He can well be credited with a great part of the success of British diplomacy in restraining and confining the explosive economic pressure of the rapidly multiplying sixty millions of Germany squeezed in an area about four-fifths the size of the State of Texas; a pressure which erupted into World War I. Sir Arthur served for nearly a half-century in the Foreign Office and in nearly every important legation in Europe, the Near-East, the Middle-East and the Far-East.

While every other Great Power was represented by two delegates at the conference called at Algeciras in January, 1906, to consider the German protest against the Cambon-Lansdowne Agreement of April 8, 1904, which in effect had divided Africa and other parts of the world between Britain and France in utter disregard of existing agreements; Sir Arthur alone represented Great Britain and completely dominated the Conference. There was present only as an observer for British financial interests the Jewish Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace.

 

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Due to the intervention of Theodore Roosevelt, this partition of Africa was approved by the Conference, which ended in a complete diplomatic fiasco for the Germans, with even the delegation of their Italian ally against them due to previous secret concessions to the Italians in Africa by British Finance.

The tortuous currents and counter-currents of international machinations and intrigue over this period of nearly fifty years are described in intimate personal detail in “Portrait of a Diplomatist” by Harold Nicolson, a son of Sir Arthur, published in 1930. Mr. Nicolson states (Ch. XIV — The Outbreak of War — p. 298-299) in effect that the events of the several days immediately preceding the outbreak of World War I were merely of dramatic interest with no practical significance; that the war was the result of cumulative international stupidity since 1878. He further records (page 314) that his father wrote an article during that war expressing his indignation of the conclusion that Germany had started or was responsible for the war, an article which was refused publication. In that article, Sir Arthur Nicolson urgently warned that terms of oppression or humiliation of the defeated would make a durable or lasting peace impossible.

 

The following memorandum of a conference with President Wilson on December 10, 1918, was made by Dr. Isaiah Bowman, one of the American economic experts at the Peace Conference:

“. . . the President remarked that we would be the only disinterested people at the Peace Conference, and that the men whom we were about to deal with did not represent their own people. . . The President pointed out that this was the first conference in which decisions depended upon the opinion of mankind, not upon the previous determination and diplomatic schemes of the assembled representatives. With great earnestness he re-emphasized the point that unless the Conference was prepared to follow the opinions of mankind and to express the will of the people rather than that of their leaders at the Conference, we should soon be involved in another break-up of the world, and when such break-up came it would not be a war but a cataclysm. . .” (Vol. 4, p. 280, Intimate Papers of Col. House.)

Not only did those that “did not represent their own people” flout and nullify the views of President Wilson, but they also callously ignored the warning of their own foremost diplomat, Sir Arthur Nicolson, for many years the feared and formidable opponent of Germany in almost every major diplomatic clash, and the invariable victor due to the invisible support of International Finance; for Philip Snowden, later a member of a Liberal British Cabinet, said of the peace treaty:

“The Treaty should satisfy brigands, imperialists, and militarists. It is a death-blow to the hopes of those who expected the end of the war to bring peace. It is not a peace treaty, but a declaration of another war. It is the betrayal of democracy and of the fallen in the war. The Treaty exposes the true aims of the Allies.”

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