The myth of the Jewish menace in world affairs Part 1

The myth of the Jewish menace in world affairs.

by Lucien Wolf.

PREFATORY NOTE

The substance of the following three essays was originally contributed, in the form of independent articles to the _Manchester Guardian_, the _Spectator_, and the _Daily Telegraph_ respectively.

They have been carefully revised, much amplified, and largely rewritten in order to make a connected argument and avoid repet.i.tion.

Footnotes of authorities have been added. My grateful acknowledgments are due to the Editors of the _Manchester Guardian_, the _Spectator_, and the _Daily Telegraph_ for their kindness in permitting this republication.

I confess to a feeling of shame at having to write this pamphlet at all. That reputable newspapers in this country should be seeking to transplant here the seeds of Prussian anti-Semitism, and that they should employ for this purpose devices so questionable and a literature so melodramatically silly, cannot but cause a sense of humiliation to any self-respecting Englishman. It is for this reason that I have strictly limited myself to an examination of the specific charges formulated by these publications. I cannot bring myself to believe that it is necessary to deal with them on a larger scale.

L.W.

Gray's Inn, London, W.C.

November, 1920.

THE MYTH OF THE JEWISH MENACE

I

THE DEMONOLOGY OF THE "MORNING POST"

The prodigious essay on "The Cause of World Unrest" which the _Morning Post_ has lately published in seventeen articles and some sixty columns of printed matter[1] is a doc.u.ment on which the student of political thought in England will dwell sadly. Over a century ago, in world circ.u.mstances of startling similarity and almost from the same party standpoint, Burke gave us, in his "Causes of the Present Discontents," his "Reflections," and his "Regicide Peace" a large and stately piece of political philosophy. To-day the leading organ of Conservative opinion in this country can only expound a sort of political demonology, borrowed partly from the obscurantists of Bourbon Clericalism and partly from the fanatics of Hohenzollern Anti-Semitism. It would be merciful to pa.s.s by this strange effort in silence, but unfortunately there is reason to believe that, with all its grotesqueness, it is calculated to work a good deal of mischief.

Credulous and vicious people are still abundant, and they are not confined to the crowd. Mr. Winston Churchill has darkly hinted that he reads the signs of the times much in the same way as the _Morning Post_, and a curious story is current that the translation of the Russian forgery on which the theory of that journal mainly rests was actually made in the Intelligence Department of the War Office. Then there are Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc and quite a conventicle of smaller fry who have been vainly preaching the same apocalypse for years. The _Morning Post_ may bring them recruits, and that a.s.suredly is not desirable.

The theory of the _Morning Post_ may be briefly stated. Its fundamental contention is that all political unrest is artificial. It is a product of the Hidden Hand which is now revealed to us as a "Formidable Sect" encompa.s.sing the world. This sect has been at its present work for at least a hundred and fifty years. The French Revolution was contrived by it, as well as all the subordinate revolutions down to our own time. Trade Unionism, Socialism, Syndicalism, Bolshevism, Sinn Fein, Indian Nationalism, and their a.n.a.logues in every part of the globe are outward and visible signs of its sinister activity. That there are social grievances and even evils at the root of this unrest is not denied, but they are as artificial as the unrest itself. They have all been deliberately brought about by the Hidden Hand in order to stir up revolt against the Throne and Altar. The way in which it has been done is a little complicated.

Behind the restless and seditious movements which we all know there is a secret revolutionary organisation in the shape of Freemasonry. But this is only intermediate, for Freemasonry itself, through some obscure transaction between the Templars and the Old Man of the Mountain, was created by the "Formidable Sect," and is wholly, though perhaps unconsciously, under its control. Freemasonry had a specially "activist" wing in the Illuminati--also an invention of the Formidablists--which was chiefly responsible for the French Revolution.

Now, what is this "Formidable Sect"? It is no other than the Jews.

Those ancient enemies of the human race appear to have been even more daring and dynamic in evil-doing than even Torquemada supposed.

Throughout their world-wide Dispersion they have secretly preserved their old political organisation, and they have used it--and are still using it--with deadly persistency to overturn the established Christian order of things and to found in its place a universal Jewish dominion under the sceptre of a Sovereign of the House of David. The Jews are, in short, the "cause of the world unrest."

There is nothing new in this theory except the claim of its authors to have produced doc.u.mentary proof of its final development--that is, of its Jewish aspect. _Qua_ international conspiracy, it was invented over a century ago, as it has been resurrected to-day, to explain the unfamiliar international character of the prevailing unrest. The clergy and the n.o.bility of the _ancien regime_ were as little capable as the _Morning Post_ to-day of understanding the natural causes of this phenomenon. And yet they were by no means obscure. The French Revolution, as Burke pointed out, was not a mere uprising against local oppression, but a "revolution of doctrine and theoretic dogma"[2] which was bound to find echoes beyond the French frontiers.

In this respect it resembled the Reformation, and also that other "armed doctrine" which we know as Bolshevism. Nevertheless it puzzled the Bourbon apologists, and, confusing cause and effect, they became convinced that they were in the presence of an international conspiracy.

The theory was first propounded by a Superior of the Seminary of Eudists at Caen in 1790,[3] but it was afterwards vastly developed by the Abbe Barruel in his "Memoires sur le Jacobinisme," by Robison of Edinburgh in his "Proofs of a Conspiracy," and by the Chevalier de Malet in his tedious "Recherches Historiques." Their conclusion was that there was a triple conspiracy of Philosophers, Freemasons, and Illuminati, who formed an actual sect aiming deliberately and methodically at the overthrow of the established religions and governments throughout Europe. It is noteworthy that their researches failed to discern any Jewish element in this conspiracy, though in minuteness of investigation and in the gluttony of their credulity they were by no means inferior to the _Morning Post_, while they had the advantage over that journal of being in close touch with the facts. The theory had a short shrift, though the industry of its authors certainly did much to throw light on the organisation and activities of the secret societies. So far as the Freemasons and Illuminati were concerned, it was easily demolished by the Earl of Moira, who at a meeting of the Grand Lodge of England in 1800 showed convincingly that it was a mare's nest.[4] As for the Philosophers, no one ever took the charge against them seriously. For half a century scarcely anything more was heard of this aspect of the "Formidable Sect," though meanwhile the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 took place.

The non-suit of Barruel was _chose jugee_.

It was revived in the sixties under the influence of the religious pa.s.sions kindled by the war for Italian unity. The struggle for Jewish emanc.i.p.ation had triumphed all over Western Europe, largely as a consequence of the Revolutions of 1848, and the new citizens thus enfranchised had everywhere cast in their lot with the Liberal parties. This was swiftly and angrily noted by the Ultramontane polemists, and the old bogey of a "Formidable Sect" began to haunt them in a revised and enlarged form. In the new conspiracy there was no longer any talk of Philosophers and Illuminati. Their place was taken by Jews and Protestants. The "Formidable Sect" thus became a triple alliance of Freemasons, Jews, and Protestants, which was said to be directed by the "Grand Master Palmerston," and supported by the whole British people, not only as Protestants, but as descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The chief protagonist of this stupendous hallucination was M. Gougenot des Mousseaux, who in 1869 embodied it in a volume ent.i.tled "Le Juif, le Judasme, et la Judasation des Peuples Chretiens." From his own admissions, however, it appears that he was largely indebted to German Catholic inspiration. Once again the theory failed to find support, and Gougenot's book, like the books of Barruel and Robison, became relegated to the literature of forgotten crazes.

Later on attempts to revive it were made by M. de Saint-Andre, the Abbe Chabauty, M. Drumont, M. Martin, and M. Copin-Albancelli, in the full flood of the Anti-Semitic agitation which had been imported into France from Germany. The only notable addition made to the theory by these writers was the hypothesis of a secret Jewish Government, transported from Jerusalem into the Diaspora, which, throughout the ages, has never ceased to command the allegiance of an imaginary international Jewry, to keep it disloyal to all other Governments, and to direct it in an insidious campaign against the established order of Christian Society. Since 1909 the agitation has become retransferred to the headquarters of Clerical Anti-Semitism in Vienna and Munich, and the most recent works on the subject--with which the _Morning Post_ appears to have mainly worked, although for obvious reasons it does not acknowledge them--are Wichtl's "Weltfreimaurerei, Weltrevolution, Weltrepublik," Meister's "Judas Schuldbuch," and Rosenberg's "Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten," all published in 1919. All this literature, while expounding exactly the same theory of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy as the _Morning Post_, is as violently anti-English as it is anti-Masonic and anti-Jewish. A great deal of it is published under the auspices of the _Deutschland's Erneuerung_ Committee, of which Mr. Houston Chamberlain is a leading spirit.

This, then, is the very dubious raw material of the theory hashed up by the _Morning Post_ as a serious contribution to the grave political preoccupations of British statesmans.h.i.+p at this moment. It will be noted that in the forms so far reviewed it is confessedly a theory, resting at the best on evidence of a highly conjectural and circ.u.mstantial character. The novelty in its latest presentation is that an effort is made to bolster it up with what is claimed to be direct evidence. This takes the form of a doc.u.ment ent.i.tled "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which was opportunely published in an anonymous pamphlet a few months ago by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode. These protocols are alleged to be the minutes of certain meetings of the Secret Directory of the Jewish people held in Paris towards the end of the last century, and they pretend to record avowals by the "Elders" of the very conspiracy set forth hypothetically by MM. Gougenot des Mousseaux and Copin-Albancelli. The joy of the _Morning Post_ at the discovery of this evidence is not difficult to understand. Its theory threatened to collapse under the weight of its inherent grotesqueness, and here, in the nick of time, was doc.u.mentary proof, complete and apparently irrefutable. "In this book," says the _Post_ triumphantly, "for the first time we find an open declaration of the terrible conspiracy of the 'Formidable Sect.'"[5]

Unhappily for the _Morning Post_, this doc.u.ment is a forgery, and one which has already been used for even more disreputable purposes than the bolstering up of the malicious hypothesis in support of which it is cited. The story of this forgery will be told presently.[6] For the moment I content myself with noting that it is a forgery, and proceed to examine briefly the main historical propositions which it is invoked to corroborate and co-ordinate. This is necessary not because they are in themselves worth taking seriously, but because they are held to react on the forged protocols and to supply presumptive evidence of their genuineness.

I take the propositions in the logical order of the argument they are put forward to ill.u.s.trate:--

1. THE SECRET JEWISH GOVERNMENT

This proposition, borrowed, for the most part, from the wild conjectures of Copin-Albancelli, has a queer flavour of the anti-Catholic bogey which was at one time so fiercely exploited by Hot-gospellers, and in which even Mr. Gladstone believed as late as 1874--the Pope standing for the Prince of the Captivity and the Syllabus for the Protocols of Nilus. What, however, is very remarkable is that the protagonists of this fantastic calumny are, for the most part, Roman Catholics who have themselves suffered from it in a form much more difficult to grapple with. The short answer to it in the case of the Jews is that it is an invention, and that not only is there no trace of it in the history of the Dispersion, but that, on the contrary, the Jews, even as a Church, and still more in their secular relations, have suffered more from the want of international organisation and uniformity than any other Church or religious community. The Princes of the Captivity, for example, were confined to the Babylonian Exile, and were little more than the local Presbyters _omnium Judaeorum Angliae_ of Angevin England or the Presidents of the Jewish Consistory of modern France. The allegation that the final aim of this Secret Government is the establishment of a universal Jewish dominion under a Prince of the House of David is a curious muddle of eschatology and politics. With much better reason the early Anabaptists said virtually the same thing of the Roman Catholic Church, and, indeed, on the _Morning Post_ plan of campaign, it might be retorted on all the great Churches. With the Jews it has no more to do with practical politics than the a.n.a.logous hopes of pious Christendom. The _Morning Post_, however, does not stand alone in its error. A curious variant of it is found in recent German Antisemitica.

The World Unrest is there pictured as due to a conspiracy of Jewry and the British Empire, based on the Anglo-Israelitish theory that the British people are the Lost Tribes and the Royal House of Windsor the authentic seed of David. Accordingly, Britons and Jews together are accused of having plotted the late war in order to fulfil the Messianic prophecies in the person of King George.[7] _Les grands esprits se rencontrent!_

2. THE OCCULT POWER BEHIND FREEMASONRY

It follows that if there is no "Secret Government of the Jewish Nation," such a Government cannot well be "the occult power which works behind Freemasonry."[8] The _Morning Post_, however, is very careful to hedge on this, as on many other points. Its alternative theory is that Freemasonry is Judaical because it is descended from the Templars, who received their Jewish traditions from the a.s.sa.s.sins.[9] The only foundation for the suggestion that the a.s.sa.s.sins could act as intermediaries between the Jews and the Templars is, on the one hand, that they were Ishmaelites, and consequently "first cousins" to the Jews, and, on the other, a much disputed hypothesis of Von Hammer, that certain Templars were initiated into the mysteries of the a.s.sa.s.sins.[10] The truth is that the a.s.sa.s.sins were not Ishmaelites, except in the figurative sense that all Mohammedans claim to be descended from Ishmael, and even if they were, they had no contact with Jews, and their tenets bear no trace of Jewish influence. Consequently, whatever else the Templars may have learnt from them, they certainly did not learn Judaism. The nearest approach to a tradition of Hebrew influence on Templarism is found in a very dubious legend of Swedish Masonry which alleges that certain Templars of Jerusalem received the secrets of the Essenes from seven Syrian Christians whom they rescued from the Saracens.[11] But if this story were true, the secrets thus taught would a.s.suredly have been more Christian than Jewish. To anyone, however, who knows anything of mediaeval history, and the relations of Moslems and Jews at this period, the whole of this conjecture is the crudest buffoonery.

No section of the Crusaders dealt with the Jews except by way of ma.s.sacre. Moreover, had there been the slightest ground for believing that the Templars had Judaised it would have been seized upon as the most d.a.m.ning of all crimes alleged against them when the Order was suppressed. But throughout the comprehensive indictment, which ranges from the Gnostic heresy to gross licentiousness, there is no hint of the deadly sin of Judaism.

3. THE JUDAISATION OF FREEMASONRY

This, however, is not the end of the matter. Yet other historical testimonies are alleged--the Temple cultus in Freemasonry, the "Jewish Ritual" of the Order, and the direct activities of Jews in its anti-monarchical and anti-Christian machinations.

(_a_) The first of these arguments may best be judged by the _Morning Post's_ own witnesses. Whether Freemasonry was or was not derived from the Templars and whether or not the Templars became infected with Jewish ideas transmitted through the a.s.sa.s.sins, nothing is more certain than that the founders of Templarism established their Order on the Temple cultus long before they could have known anything of the a.s.sa.s.sins, and while they were still impeccable Knights of the Cross. Hence, if the Freemasons took the Temple from them, it was innocent of Jewishness. But Robison--one of the main authorities of the _Morning Post_--will not even have it that the Freemasons were indebted to the Templars, much less to the Jews. He states that the theory, and even the Temple cultus, were unknown to Freemasonry before 1743, when they were introduced to them for the first time by the Jacobite, Andrew Ramsay.[12]

(_b_) The so-called "Jewish Ritual" of Masonry is equally a delusion, as the _Morning Post_ could have found out for itself, had it taken the trouble to consult somebody who knows Hebrew and Hebrew literature. The grammatical forms and the transliteration of the limited number of Hebrew words found in the Masonic rituals prove conclusively their non-Jewish origin.

The legendary matter, too, has but few traces of Jewish _provenance_, and is clearly not due to Jewish redaction. If the rituals were Jewish, one might expect to find parallel pa.s.sages in the Hebrew Prayer-Book and similar literature, but nothing of the kind is discoverable. It is really remarkable that Jews had nothing to do--and indeed, I believe, never have had anything to do--with the composition of the Masonic rituals, seeing that the lodges, in this country, at least, have always been open to them, and at an early date learned Jews were interested in them and possibly joined them; but so it is. The true explanation of the Hebrew elements in Freemasonry, as in Templarism, is that both borrowed from the Old Testament, as a Christian doc.u.ment.

(_c_) As for the activities of Jews in the anti-monarchical and anti-Christian machinations of Masonry, the answer is that orthodox Masonry has never been anti-monarchical or anti-Christian, and if there have been spurious lodges open to this reproach, and if orthodox lodges have been improperly used for this purpose, they were, at any rate, free of the added reproach of Jewish control or inspiration. The only evidence on this head cited by the _Morning Post_--or, rather, by Mrs.

Webster on its behalf--is that a Jew known by the nickname of Piccolo Tigre issued a scandalously anti-social manifesto to the Piedmontese Alta Vendita in 1822, and that he was abetted by "others of his race."[13] We are not told who these "others"

were, nor even what Piccolo Tigre's real name was. If Mrs.

Webster does not know his name, how can she know that he was a Jew? The answer is that she got the story from Gougenot des Mousseaux, but even he navely admits that he never knew who Piccolo Tigre was.[14] And yet he is positive he was a Jew. This is typical of all the _Morning Post's_ evidence.

4. FREEMASONRY AND REVOLUTION

If the Freemasons think it worth while, they will, no doubt, reply to the _Morning Post_ through a better-qualified member of the Craft than myself,[15] but, unlike the Jews, they can afford to treat the superst.i.tions with which they are a.s.sailed with contempt. It will suffice here to quote what Lord Moira said on the subject in 1800:--

"Certain modern publications have been holding forth to the world the society of Masons as a league against const.i.tutional authorities--an imputation the more secure because the known const.i.tutions of our fellows.h.i.+p make it certain that no answer can be published. It is not to be disputed that in countries where impolitic prohibitions restrict the communication of sentiment, the activity of the human mind may, among other means of baffling the control, have resorted to the artifice of borrowing the denomination of Freemasons, to cover meetings for seditious purposes, just as any other description might be a.s.sumed for the same object. But, in the first place, it is the invaluable distinction of this free country that such a just intercourse of opinions exists without restraint as cannot leave to any number of men the desire of forming or frequenting those disguised societies where dangerous dispositions may be imbibed.

And, secondly, the profligate doctrines which may have been nurtured in any such self-established a.s.semblies could never have been tolerated for a moment in any lodge meeting under regular authority. We aver, therefore, that not only such laxity of opinion has no sort of connection with the tenets of Masonry, but is diametrically opposite to the injunction which we regard as the foundation-stone of the lodge, namely, Fear G.o.d and honour the King."[16]

To this it should be added that Masonic lodges--more or less spurious--have not only been used by Atheists and Revolutionists for their own sinister purposes, but also by their enemies. We learn from Robison that even the Roman Catholic Church at one time tried to capture them--possibly for ends not over-friendly to the Established Church in this country--and that the Jacobites, who can scarcely be called enemies of the Throne and Altar, were extremely active in the Masonic Order during the eighteenth century.[17]

5. THE JEWISH AUTHORs.h.i.+P OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

This is a pet theory of Mrs. Webster, and is very largely based on the untenable propositions noticed above. It is, however, also sought to show that the Illuminati and the Martinezists were active artisans of the Revolution, and that they were abetted by Jews. On this the only concrete evidence adduced is that Martinez Pasqualis, who figured prominently in both movements, was "generally reputed to be a Portuguese Jew." As a matter of fact, there were scarcely any Portuguese Jews at the time, and even the distinction between Old and New Christians in Portugal had been recognised as obsolete and abolished by decree in 1768.[18] Pasqualis was probably as little--or as much--a Jew as Pombal or Dom Joseph in the popular anecdote.[19] As for his alleged Jewish abettors, it is noteworthy that neither Barruel nor Robison--both contemporaries of the Revolution--knew anything of them. Barruel, indeed, ignored the theory when it was actually suggested to him, and for good reason. No one knew better than he how ludicrous it was. The Jews in Paris at the time were few and relatively insignificant; they did their duty by the new Government, but were st.u.r.dily on the side of moderation, and so far from having had any hand in making the Revolution they were actually the last to benefit by it. They were, in fact, the only cla.s.s of the population whose disabilities were continued by the new regime, and it was not until September, 1791, that, after many appeals from them and in face of a strong opposition, the National a.s.sembly consented to their emanc.i.p.ation.[20] As for their political opinions, they are sufficiently ill.u.s.trated by the fact that one of the first acts of the Terror was to arrest forty-six of them as suspect of "delits contre-revolutionnaires"--the charge is itself a vindication--and nine of them were executed.[21] None of these good people were of any political prominence. Indeed, whether for good or evil, not a single Jewish name figures conspicuously in the history of the Revolution.