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By order of Louis Marshall, the American Jewish Committee and the B’nai B’rith, American Jewry has muffled the calculated furioso of its outcry, and contents itself now with occasional yelps. No longer do the syndicated sermons of the rabbis take their course across the country, saying the same old untrue things in the same old insincere way. No longer do editorial echoes spew vilification across pages supported by advertising blackmail levied upon the community. The outcry has ceased. Suddenly, on order, orderly as a regiment on parade, American Jewry has been turned from a termagant in action to a silent mystery. A most impressive illustration of the inner control exercised by Jewish leaders.
The psychology of it all, of course, is false. Jewry decided that it was the attention which it paid to THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT which gave these articles vogue. The leaders asserted, indeed, that had the Jews of the United States paid no attention, no one would have known that they were under scrutiny. It is a rather flattering criticism to lay upon their inability to meet the situation, but it lacks the merit of being true.
The Jews of the United States issued the order of silence, not out of wisdom but out of fear. And not out of fear of injustice, but out of fear of the truth. As soon as THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT issued it first articles on the New York Kehillah (and only the outer edges of the facts concerning that institution have as yet been set forth) it became evident to Jewish leaders that something had to be done. They did not challenge a public investigation; rather they used discretion, refused to answer even the questions of local reporters, made absurdly untrue denials, and gave every evidence of panic. Thereafter their safest course was silence.
Not that they are inactive. Fearing a sudden investigation by the authorities, the New York Kehillah has grown extremely busy and has doubled the guards all round. Why?
The reason is that there is a resolution in the United States Senate which points directly at the New York Kehillah.
Prominent Jews have invaded Washington on one pretext or another, but only to turn their influence against that resolution. Why?
The reason is that the resolution provides for an investigation by a Senate Committee into certain matters which have already been set forth in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT.
Senate Resolution No. 60, introduced by Senator George H. Moses, of New Hampshire, provides that the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (a Jewish Bolshevik organization that is the feeder of Red activity throughout this country) be thoroughly investigated. In the official language of the Resolution: “The purposes, objects, methods and tactics of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and its relations, if any, with other political organizations and quasi-political groups, and to make a report to the Senate of such findings.”
Why has the New York Kehillah closed the portholes and called in help—“Gentile,” by the way—to face a possible storm?
Why have the most prominent Jews in the United States hurried to Washington to hold conferences with Senators, their object being to bring pressure to bear against the Resolution?
Why should the American Jewish Committee, or members of it, why should Jewish clothing manufacturers who are the principal sufferers from the Amalgamated, why should Jewish members of the Baruch “war government” go to Washington to interfere with a proposed investigation? Why?
Because such an investigation of the Amalgamated, honestly conducted, would led straight through to the New York Kehillah and the American Jewish Committee and would rip the Jewish program in the United States clean open to the public gaze—if honestly conducted.
Next to stopping the investigation, the Jews will try to control it. That is really the greater danger. The country does not need the investigation to get the facts. Most of the facts can be given now. The country does need an investigation that will give the facts a governmental exposure. But a pro-Jewish investigation, an investigation conducted by elective office-holders who quake under “the fear of the Jews,” would simply be an additional crime.
If the Jews lose their fight to kill the resolution, they have already started on their plans to control the initiative of, divert the course of, and defeat the purpose of the investigation.
If, therefore, the Jews are silent, they are not inactive.
But, the gain has been general. For instance, the country has been given quiet and leisure to hear what the non-Jews think. During the Jewish clamor, which was nothing more nor less than an attempt to stampede the public opinion of the United States, it was impossible to hear the voice of the people. Ministers who poured adulation upon the Jews were reported in the Press; but ministers who seriously handled the Jewish Question were not reported. Publications which could be induced to act as Judah’s mouthpieces, were worked to the limit; publications which desired to preserve the value of their opinions, did not join the general hue and cry. In the succeeding lull, the still, small voice of American conviction, both Jewish and non-Jewish, began to be heard.
In public propaganda, after having felt it inadvisable to print any more telegraphic news from Palestine, because even the Jews could no longer juggle the truth, the spotlight was turned on Russia, and now the newspapers are filled with headlines intended to prepare the public for a new exodus when the Russian people awake to take back their land from the Jewish usurpers.
We are told that 6,000,000 Jews in Russia are in danger of violence. It is true. Much truer than the miles of telegraphic lies which have been printed about alleged “pogroms” in Russia and adjacent countries. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT knows that in Eastern Europe the Jew has not been persecuted, but has consistently acted as persecutor. The proof of it is in the Jews’ ability to flee; they have taken all the wealth of the people of those countries. Poles cannot flee, Rumanians cannot flee, Russians cannot flee; but after having squeezed the life out of those nations the Jews see the dark clouds of justice rolling toward them, and they are able to flee, filling the ships of the sea with their hosts. In fact, their desertion of the Jew-spoiled countries of Europe is as precipitate as was their desertion of Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic party last autumn—Barney Baruch ostentationsly staying behind to cover, if possible, the shamefulness of it. When the Jew has fried the fat and skimmed the cream, he’s off. Gratitude and loyalty mean nothing to his people. They are persecutors in Poland. They are persecutors in Russia. They are persecutors in Palestine. They were the arch religious persecutors of history, as the best historians testify. They will be persecutors here as soon as they think they can start it. It is possible, however, that in the United States their anti-social career will be rolled back upon itself.
American magazines have begun to pay attention to the Jewish Question. If is a good sign. Even magazines cannot long ignore what all the people know. It is a good sign of the degree of freedom the Press still enjoys.
It is true, of course, that this freedom is not very great; indeed, not so great as it was a few years ago. But insofar as the Press is American it is impossible for Americans to think it will consent to be permanently gagged even by the Jews. There have been, it is true, some rather sad instances of editorial weakness. We know that of two oldest publishing firms, both of New York, one of them published a most scurrilous Jewish defense by a non-Jewish socialist who, if he has not deliberately lied, has shown too dark an ignorance of facts to command the confidence of a great publishing firm; and we know that that publication was made with a view to the value of the publisher’s imprint and that Jews would undertake to buy tens of thousands of copies for gratuitous circulation.
Of the other old New York firm it is known that an American diplomat was advised if not compelled by it to eliminate from his forthcoming book nearly one third of its material because it dealt in an honest, straightforward American way with what this diplomat had seen with his own eyes of the development of the Jewish subjugation of Russia. Had this diplomat been dealing with his own opinions about the Jews or Russia, it might have been different; but he dealt with his official observations on the spot—observations literally invaluable to history. But this New York firm dared not, even in the interest of history, print the truth.
The experience of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, of New York, is familiar to students of the question in recent months. The name of this firm is used because it has already appeared in public print with regard to a controversy it had with the American Jewish Committee.
The Putnams, acting on the ancient and honorable principle of the freedom of the Press, nay more, the duty of the Press to inform the people, reprinted last year “The Cause of World Unrest,” which had first appeared as a series of articles in the London Morning Post and was later put into book form by the publishing house of Grant Richards, London. Both the newspaper and the publishing house are of the highest respectability and standing, as was also the house of Eyre and Spottiswoode which brought out the Protocols. Major George Haven Putnam, head of the firm of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, is an American, a fair man, a careful publisher, and one who would not stoop to propagate a lie for any wealth.
This is not a defense of “The Cause of World Unrest.” In the main the book is true. But it is not the result of original research. It does not make those small but important discriminations on which the Jews always rely to lead the people astray. It too often links in the downfall of Jewry those things which shall stand independently and gloriously when freed of their present insidious Jewish connections. On the whole, however, it maintains a correct view of world affairs. But it was not a book on which the Putnams could feel obliged to make a final stand, except as regards their right to print it.
However, a proper understanding of the book called for the Protocols, to which the book made frequent reference. So, like serviceable publishers, the Putnams announced that the Protocols would follow.
Whereupon the American Jewish Committee—which means Louis Marshall—got busy, and an interesting correspondence ensued. It is included in the report of the American Jewish Committee for 1921. Throughout the correspondence Louis Marshall was the dictator, but Major Putnam’s position and statement of principles were correctly maintained. However, there were personal conferences which are not reported in the American Jewish Committee’s report and there were Jews crowded into those personal conferences whose names do not appear in the correspondence, and there were fists banged on the table and loud threats—“boycott,” of course—and altogether a rather typical scene enacted. The upshot of that passage was that, upon Major Putnam discovering that the Boston house of Small, Maynard & Company had published the Protocols, he decided that there was no call for his firm to do so. And now, in a letter to these same people, G. P. Putnam’s Sons has decided to discontinue supplying copies of “The Cause of World Unrest” to the book trade.
It is a rather interesting story.
In Britain, of course, publications of the highest standing like “Blackwood’s” and the “Nineteenth Century Review” can publish articles on the Jewish Question without regard to dictatorial Jewish attempts at control of the Press. In this country, however, the spies of Jewry are on the alert for every printed letter and syllable, and attempt to make editors feel uncomfortable, as if they were the instigators of pogroms, whenever they present an intelligent view of the question. Yet editors have not been able entirely to ignore it.
The reader is rather impressed with one quality common to all the articles that have been written, namely, the facts used are always those that have been given in THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT. Not that they necessarily have been copied from this magazine, but the facts are so well established that anyone who attempts even to “defend” the Jews must necessarily appeal to the same facts. Thus in “New York and the Real Jew,” by Rollin Lynde Hartt, in the New York Independent for June 25, 1921, this is illustrated. It is pure Jewish publicity, but it must use the facts that have been used in this series. It must use them in order to extol the Jews. Mr. Hartt is not to be considered as a contributor to the Question; the article is mentioned merely as indicating what the American magazine editor is up against—and perhaps it is not quite fair to be hard on the editor of the New York Independent just at this time. The one flash of value in the entire article is this paragraph:
“Ambassador Page, then editor of the Atlantic, once remarked to me, ‘The most interesting fellow in America is the Jew, but don’t write about Jews; without intending it, you may precipitate the calamity America should be most anxious to prevent—I mean jew-baiting’”
That is a strange assertion. The Jews must not be written about. To write about them, even with good intent, may bring evil upon them. Not only a strange assertion, but a strange situation. To mention the Jew has always been dangerous to the non-Jew; but why also dangerous to the Jew? The Jewish explanation of anti-Semitism, that it is in the blood of the other races, that the moment they see a Jew they hate him, cannot be defended. Most non-Jews can testify that it is untrue of them. But it is a most amazing condition if even a mention of Jews arouses this feeling. Why should it?
However, the statement is of doubtful fact value. The Jew himself should be the first to protest against having to go concealed all his days. He should welcome the use of his definite racial name, and he should not demand that it always be used in laudatory connections. A Jew should not be a Jew when he is elected to the United States Senate, and a “Russian” or a “Pole” when he is caught bootlegging. He should take the luck of life with the other races, and this would come to him without discrimination if he did not first arouse the spirit of discrimination by insisting on discrimination in his own favor.
It is probably much nearer the truth to say that publicity is a preventive of “Jew-Baiting.” People should not be confined in a condition which makes the use of the word “Jew” unusual. It should attract no more attention than does the use of any other racial name.
Mr. Page was, before his ambassadorial days, an editor of the Atlantic Monthly, a magazine which is an integral part of American life. To read the Atlantic is a certificate of character. It is one of the few publications that preserve the American spirit in literature. It is still worthy of the glory of the group that first made its name known wherever sound thought expressed in good writing is appreciated. The Atlantic is not in need of this appraisal, it is too well established in the regard of the class of minds that give color and sinew to our intellectual life. In Mr. Page’s day the Atlantic may never have touched the Jewish Question with even so much as the tip of a discreet pen.
Nevertheless the Atlantic has in more recent years done its duty toward this as toward other questions. As far back as 1917, and that is very far back in view of the crowded years between, this old Boston magazine contained an article relating to the Jewish Question. The fact that the article was written by a Jew does not militate against it, but rather adds to its value. It contained valuable suggestions which the New York Kehillah and the American Jewish Committee might well devote the remaining years of their activity to disseminating and actualizing among the Jews of this country. Even today its counsel would save them from much of the folly which marks their attempts to combat what they call “persecution,” and which is nothing but rather plain and charitable truth-telling.
This year the Atlantic has contained three articles of value on the Jewish Question. The first was by Professor Clay upon the situation in Palestine. Now, Professor Clay is not an anti-Semite, and certainly the Atlantic is not, and yet the article was received with a good deal of abuse from Jewish quarters. It told nothing but the truth, and it was rather pertinent truth too, which intelligent Jews doubtless welcomed. Professor Clay knew what he was writing about and his conclusions are not challenged by any authority on the subject.
In the May Atlantic, Ralph Philip Boas, who is understood to be of Jewish descent, wrote an article on “Jew-Baiting in America.” He speaks rather disdainfully of publications which have endeavored to air the Jewish Question, but after having thus paid his tax to the Jews’ prejudice, he proceeds in commendable fashion to contribute his thoughts to the matter. On the whole what he says is true, and the facts he uses as his foundation are of course the facts with which THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has made its readers familiar. He sets up his straw man of “Anti-Semitism” and after having valiantly destroyed it, to the applause of all of us, he gets down to serious business, and says some things which all could hope would pierce the Jewish consciousness to its innermost stronghold and set up new vibrations there.
And in the July Atlantic, Paul Scott Mowrer, Paris representative of the Chicago Daily News, has an article on “The Assimilation of Israel.” Mr. Mowrer has won the respect of students of world affairs by the conscientious ability with which he has observed and reported big events in Europe. In his news reports he has not hesitated, when the facts justified it, to cable a story of Jewish participation in this or that movement. It was reported at one time that an attempt on his job had been made by certain Jewish influences, and it is certain that sections of the Jewish press bitterly attacked him. Yet Mr. Mowrer is probably no more interested in the Jewish Question than the many other big problems which have come within his journalistic ken, and it would be extremely unfair to regard him as in any way a propagandist for anything.
Mr. Mowrer talks about Israel when, of course, he means Judah. There is a deep distinction there. And he talks also about assimilation, which the Jew will not admit as a solution. He protects himself fore and aft by attacking the “anti-Semites,” whoever they are, and by expressing his confidence in the Jews, but on all the decks of his article he gives the facts—and they are the same facts. It ought to be pretty well settled by this time that there are facts, not two sets of facts, but only one set of facts, concerning Jewish influence and activity.
The World’s Work has taken the liberty of setting before the people the only real anti-Jewish article that has appeared in the United States since the present discussion of the Question began, and that article was written by Henry Morgenthau, a Jew whom the government is accustomed to honor whenever it would pay a compliment to the Jews. It turns out that he attacks Jewry in its most tender spot—Zionism. Most people have read it, for it was immediately turned into propaganda and published in hosts of newspapers, in many of them as first-column, first-page news. Mr. Morganthau said that Zionism was not a solution but a surrender. He attacks the whole Palestinian plan from every angle, and not only attacks but belittles it.
Of course, this is very interesting. But one doesn’t understand the heat displayed. If the Jews wish to go back to Palestine, why all this objection? Mr. Morgenthau does not wish to go back, it is true; it is extremely difficult to find a Jew who does want to go back; but to desire a national land for the Jews is quite another thing, and most Jews desire that. The pity is that they carry into Palestine the same method which puts them upon question here, and they are in danger of tipping over the apple cart in their imperious disregard of the rights of men in Palestine.
Mr. Morgenthau’s motive in writing the article must remain a mystery, because it would seem to leave him practically outside of American Jewry, and of course he is not outside. Not at all. Watch and see. His article was printed in a magazine read and supported by non-Jews and was intended for non-Jews; it was not a plea to his people, it was a kind of confidential explanation, whispered from behind the hand, to non-Jews.
Mr. Morgenthau knows that Zionism is the core of Jewry in this country. The Zionists rule. The Zionists, and not the Americans, dictate the policy of American Jewry. The Zionist program was the only program that went unaltered through the Peace Conference at Versailles. Zionism is the heart of Jewish aspiration. “Not of American Jews,” Mr. Morgenthau may retort. But who are the American Jews? Inquire of the recent convention of Zionists at Cleveland for information.
That convention is worth a story by itself, but it explains why the World’s Work stopped its press for the July issue and made an insertion of eight extra pages for the accommodation of Mr. Morgenthau’s article. The Jews who call themselves Americans had been thrown down and out by the Cleveland convention, and Russian Jews proved themselves the stronger.
It was an event that called for quick explanation. The humiliation of the Americans was something to be covered as speedily as possible. Why the World’s Work should have been chosen as the vehicle is not known. But the presses were stopped and the Morgenthau backfire started.
Mr. Morgenthau’s article as a Jewish pronouncement is negligible, but the Editor’s Note that preceded it has the value of unbiased testimony. Referring to the world organization of Zionists, whose chief officer stepped over here from Europe and simply slammed the American Jewish leaders out of office, the editor of the World’s Work has this to say:
“This world organization has a highly centralized form of government. This consists of an international committee, including representatives from all countries that have a local organization. But the real control is vested in what is known as the ‘Inner Actions Council.’ This is a compact body of only seven men and it is dominated by the Jews of Europe.”
The “Jews of Europe” might be still more definitely described as the “Jews of Russia.”
And “Dr. Chaim Weizmann, from London” might more accurately be described as from Pinsk, Russia.
The Russian Jews won, as they have always won, for they are the originators and corruptors of the false political Zionism which is leading so many Jews to disappointment and distress.
The point in all this is that in the silence of the Jewish regimented protest, the voice of the country has had a chance to be heard. The religious press has not been mentioned here, for it deserves a separate account, nor have the many newspapers which have reacted from the previously imposed burden of Jewish propaganda. Editorial speech is becoming freer. Jews themselves are coming to see that the call is not for abuse, but for a clean-up. The expression of the press of the country indicates that there is a Jewish Question and that the Jews used the worst possible tactics in trying to suppress the knowledge of it. They behaved in a way to show what bad masters they would be if given the chance, and what essential cowardice controls their actions. One by one the holds they gained by force of fear, are being loosened. And if the Jews would lay up capital on which to draw—the capital of public confidence in their desire to do the right thing—they would go around and loosen the holds they still have. This, however, is not expected of them. It requires too much foresight.
[THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, issue of 30 July 1921]