TAFT 
 
 Anti :§ Sennitis** 
 
 in th e 
 
 United States 
 
 3>SI4r 
 
 J\Z 
 
Anti-Semitism in the 
 United States 
 
 BY 
 
 ✓ 
 
 WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 
 
 Ex-President of the U. S. 
 
 Ill 
 
 ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE 
 
 812 TRIBUNE BLDG. CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
Address delivered in Chicago 
 December 23, IQ20, at invitation of 
 Anti-Defamation League 
 
Anti-Semitism in the United States 
 
 O NE of the chief causes of suffering and evil in the 
 world today is race hatred, and any man who stimulates 
 that hatred has much to answer for. When he does this by 
 the circulation of unfounded and unjust charges and the 
 arousing of mean and groundless fears, his fault is more to 
 be condemned. 
 
 Since the Christian era, the Jews have greatly suffered 
 from racial antipathies. Their history has been one long 
 story of persecution, oppression and cruelty directed against 
 them on account of their race. Sometimes the bitterness 
 has been distinctly and purely religious, but more often it 
 has been racial. Liberal Americans who appreciate the lib¬ 
 erty and equality of opportunity that prevails in our civiliza¬ 
 tion, and under the Constitution of the United States, have 
 prided themselves that here at least there is no ban against 
 the Jews, there is no Ghetto, there is no pale within which 
 they are required to live, there is not the slightest attempt 
 in the law to differentiate between Jews and other residents 
 of the United States, and all the privileges and all the 
 equality of opportunity of any citizen are theirs. That at 
 times social prejudice is encountered by them is to be ex¬ 
 pected in a country with as many different currents in 
 .society as our great amalgamation has; but in no country 
 in the world does the Jew enjoy more perfect equality of 
 opportunity, more certain reward for the many virtues that 
 he has, or greater and more unquestioned liberty than here. 
 Nor is this equality of treatment confined to the law alone. 
 Neither in business nor in professional circles is there any 
 factional effort to hamper or obstruct his progress and suc¬ 
 cess. This has been in great contrast to his actual status in 
 some European countries, where while he is theoretically 
 equal to others before the law, there are constant organized 
 efforts to limit his activities, and to prevent his progress. In 
 
 3 
 
such countries there is a distinctly anti-Semitic party, which 
 breaks forth in an attack upon the Jews and uses the press 
 and other publications to foster a hatred and obstruction to 
 their pursuit of their legitimate aims. 
 
 Only recently has there appeared in this country an elabo¬ 
 rate attack upon the Jews and a studied effort to create an 
 anti-Semitic feeling and movement in the United States. 
 This is greatly to be deplored. When I first heard of it, I 
 was inclined to think the wise course was to ignore it, and 
 that in a short time it would die, for lack of interest and 
 support. I thought that answer and refutation would dig¬ 
 nify it, advertise it and serve the purpose of its projector, 
 and I am not sure that this is not still the correct view. But 
 you who know better have come to the conclusion that the 
 matter is of sufficiently serious import to call for discussion 
 and answer. I feel strongly the evil character of the attack, 
 and I do not hesitate to condemn it and give my reasons for 
 so doing. 
 
 T HE attack is made in a series of articles in the Dear¬ 
 born Independent. This is the paper which Mr. Henry 
 Ford, the successful manufacturer of the Ford automobile, 
 has founded for the avowed purpose of expressing his views 
 without fear or favor. With the statement that the press 
 is held in subjection by the power of the Jews, the author 
 of the articles seeks to put Mr. Ford on a pedestal of cour¬ 
 age and independence in initiating the attack. How much 
 of the article is due to Mr. Ford’s initiative, and how much 
 he has yielded to the representations of others in consenting 
 to its publication, one cannot say. But, of course, he is 
 responsible for the effect of them. I have read the articles 
 and the documents called the Protocols, upon which they 
 purport to be based, and after an analysis of them, I find 
 it difficult to discuss them with patience. 
 
 The articles are written in an easy flowing style and are 
 deftly composed of a mixture of historical fact and un¬ 
 founded and unjust generalizations. At times in them is a 
 pretense of fairness and generous concessions to the Jews, 
 
 4 
 
with a constant repetition running through them of the 
 meanest incitements to prejudice against the whole race. 
 The writer professes not to be engaged in stirring up an 
 anti-Semitic feeling when what he writes reeks with it. All 
 that he says is directed to sustaining a definite indictment 
 of conspiracy in which he ultimately involves the whole Jew¬ 
 ish race. He acquits most of them of guilty knowledge of 
 the ultimate design at present, but he represents their ambi¬ 
 tions, their abilities and skill, their unity and power and 
 their other characteristics, to be such that when those now 
 privy to the chief and ultimate purpose shall disclose it, all 
 will conform to it and become willing participants in the 
 grand and wicked design. 
 
 When we analyze the attack, when we consider the 
 charges free from the interweaving of mere appeals to 
 prejudice, when we look into the accusing generalizations 
 without supporting evidence, when we dissect the historical 
 facts out of the mass of gratuitous assumptions, and limit 
 those facts to their true and fair significance, when we look 
 into the only documentary proof relied on, when we consider 
 the naked skeleton of the indictment and contemplate the 
 conditions it foreshadows as a possible and probable his¬ 
 torical development, it becomes a presentment utterly un¬ 
 worthy of credence. 
 
 W HAT is the charge? It is that there is an inner coun¬ 
 cil of a few' leading Jews in the world, who control 
 the money of the world, engaged in a plot, the execution of 
 which may take decades or a century for its consummation 
 to destroy the governments of the world by the disintegrat¬ 
 ing power of Bolshevism which they are fostering, and then 
 by the all-controlling power of the purse and the playing of 
 one class against another, ultimately to subject to the will 
 of this inner Judaic council the w r hole world, enabling it to 
 appoint a King of Israel who shall then, as an absolute dic¬ 
 tator, carry on the -world under his super-government. The 
 purpose of the articles is to give proof of the truth of 
 these charges and to arouse the American people to this 
 
 5 
 
imminent danger. This, the articles announce to be the 
 Jewish Question which they are to force to discussion in 
 the United States. No remedy for this conspiracy is pro¬ 
 posed of a legal character, no organization is suggested, no 
 definite plan of resistance to the march of this plot, but it is 
 intimated that if the American people have proper warn¬ 
 ings through these and other articles of the same tenor, this 
 Jewish political conquest of the world and the governmental 
 absolutism of Israel may be averted. 
 
 As already said, the author of the articles is not so fool¬ 
 ish as to charge that all Jews, or even those of intelligence, 
 wealth and standing, are privy to this great plot and its 
 purpose. What he first sets out to do is to establish the 
 present enormous power of the Jews over the finance of 
 the world, and their ability through the bond of interna¬ 
 tional unity between them to control the policies of nations, 
 to compel war or peace, to direct the working of economic 
 forces in them, and, if need be, to form and stimulate 
 anarchy and a destruction of government. His argument 
 then is that the small council or sanhedrin of the Inner Cir¬ 
 cle of International Jews can and will disclose their ultimate 
 political purpose at the appropriate time, and through the 
 essential unity of the Jewish Race and its will to power, it 
 can command allegiance of all Jews, and especially those 
 who have these great powers and thus carry on the con¬ 
 spiracy to the declared end. 
 
 The author rejects as having any real effect the economic 
 laws which the history of nations has developed into a sci¬ 
 ence. Adam Smith, John Stewart Mill, Ricardo, Sumner 
 and other great names in the field of political economy and 
 finance, have no terrors for him. He says, “People have 
 lost all confidence that economic conditions are responsible 
 for all the changes that occur. Under the camouflage of 
 ‘economic law’ a great many phenomena have been ac¬ 
 counted for which were not due to any law whatever except 
 the law of selfish human will as operated by a few men, who 
 have the purpose and the power to work on a wide scale 
 with nations as their vassals.” 
 
 6 
 
Again he says, “Apparently in the world today is a central 
 financial force playing a vast and closely organized game 
 with the world for its table and universal control for its 
 stakes.” He says that “The great masters, the few who see 
 clearly the entire play of the plan, control numerous banking 
 houses and trust companies,” that one is used for this and 
 another for that, that there is no disharmony and no com¬ 
 petition, but that there is as much unity between the princi¬ 
 pal banking houses of every country as there is between the 
 various branches of the United States Post Office, and for 
 the same reason, namely, they are all operated from the 
 same source and for the same purpose. He charges this 
 central financial force in its heartlessness of capital with 
 breaking up proper relationship between employers and 
 employees by refusing to allow the former to make just 
 concession to the latter. He repeats and adopts the charge 
 made in Germany that this central financial force controls 
 governments, can make war, .can make peace, can command 
 anarchy, can restore order, that it holds the sinews of world 
 power in its hand and apportions them among the nations 
 in such a way as will best support its plans. 
 
 No instances of the exercise of this world controlling 
 power is cited as proof. The conclusion of the author rests 
 on his own assertion and the further comprehensive and 
 entirely satisfying assurance that everybody knows it. One 
 might have made such an unsustained generalization with 
 some hope of securing the credence of gullible people before 
 this great war but he is bold indeed who ventures it now. 
 Was it the International Bankers and capitalists that brought 
 on Germany’s declaration of war? Was it the International 
 Bankers and capitalists that drove Great Britain to the de¬ 
 fense of Belgium? Was it these world controllers that led 
 Italy into the struggle? What had they to do with Aus¬ 
 tria’s ultimatum to Servia? What influence had they in the 
 action of the Tsar in defense of Servia ? Does the author 
 of the articles intend us to believe that these International 
 Bankers agreed upon the war, and with a common purpose 
 of control directed one Nation against another, and all 
 
 7 
 
through their power over National credits? Could absurd¬ 
 ity reach a greater height ? What could these bankers prom¬ 
 ise to any one of these powers in the matter of their loans? 
 Their bonds must be taken primarily by their own people 
 and without this source they could not finance their wars. 
 The amount of foreign loans negotiated through interna¬ 
 tional bankers in this war was insignificant in the beginning 
 and was nothing in the end. When one thinks of the mighty 
 forces of national, race and dynastic origin and ambition 
 that brought on this great calaclysm, he may well laugh 
 at the suggestion that behind them all was this scheming 
 circle of International Bankers. Yet all this is one of the 
 necessary premises of the conclusion which the author seeks 
 to establish. 
 
 T HE minor premise of the writer of these articles is 
 that the small group of International Bankers and 
 capitalists who control the economic destinies and political 
 fate of the world are Jews. He ventures back in the his¬ 
 tory of that remarkable race to show how this power de¬ 
 veloped in their hands and here he uses a modicum of 
 fact. It is true that the cruel limitations put upon the 
 activities of the Jews in the eighteen centuries of perse¬ 
 cution forced them out of production on the land into 
 trade and commerce and exchange. The very dispersion 
 to which they were subjected, and the inhospitable recep¬ 
 tion they were accorded everywhere kept them in deep sym¬ 
 pathy with one another and made world trade between 
 them natural and easy, and the world hardly knows the 
 debt it owes to them for this incalculable benefit. Ordi¬ 
 nary precaution against the robbery and blackmail to which 
 they were constantly subjected led them to deal not in lands 
 which they could not hold, but in articles of value and 
 small in bulk. This made them custodians of gold and 
 so bankers. With the keen intellects there were among 
 them, and the genius of patience and application, the sci¬ 
 ence of trade and banking grew under their hands and it 
 is true, as the author says, there were in Medieval times 
 
 r 
 
 8 
 
Monarchs who depended much on Jewish bankers to aid 
 them in their loans. To say that even then they controlled 
 Kings is a figure of speech and not a fact. And now the 
 Jews do not control all international banking houses. The 
 Gentiles are equally active. There is competition between 
 Jewish houses. The transfer of gold or its equivalent 
 from one Nation to another is not the result of the will 
 of one banker or another. It is the calculation of profit 
 on the particular transaction that prompts it and the profit 
 depends on the extent of the demand for it in one country 
 as compared with that in another. The difference in the 
 demand for gold in one country and that in another is due 
 to the internal business conditions in each country as com¬ 
 pared with those in another. The money or gold in the 
 currents of exchange does not represent a tithe of the cap¬ 
 ital and wealth in use in each country. The wealth of the 
 country is not in its money, or its gold; it is in its farms, 
 its factories, its mines, and the products it is capable of 
 bringing to market and sale. All the gold in the world is 
 but a small fraction of the wealth of the world, and a very 
 large part of that is not in the hands of International Bank¬ 
 ers, but is in the treasuries of Governments or under their 
 control. Never so little as now would arbitrary control of 
 International exchanges, even if it could exist, as it does 
 not, carry with it the control of the business and political 
 affairs of the world. Was it international bankers who have 
 sent the British pound sterling to a discount of 33 1/3 as 
 compared with our dollar? Was it international bankers 
 who have sent the German mark from a par of 25 cents 
 to an exchange value of a cent and a half? Was it not 
 economic law which brought this about? Resistance by 
 any banker or set of bankers, however powerful, to such 
 an inevitable result of economic, conditions would break 
 them. 
 
 T HE writer of these articles further seeks to bolster 
 his premise that Jews are the world controllers of 
 finance and so of politics, by describing their business suc- 
 
 9 
 
cesses in the United States. That the Jews are successful 
 merchants and bankers is of course true. That they are 
 keen in business with excellent judgment, and with never 
 ending patience and application, everyone knows. In pro¬ 
 portion to their number, their business success is note¬ 
 worthy. The same is true of them in the professions and 
 in every field into which their tastes and adaptability may 
 take them. That they are friendly to one another in busi¬ 
 ness as in other relations is also true, and why should 
 they not be? The bond of a common suffering in their 
 history, and an ever threatening hostile prejudice is likely 
 to produce such a feeling. But it is not true that they do 
 not compete with each other. They are too much business 
 men for this. It is said they are ambitious and have the 
 will to power and that this has led them to be prime movers 
 in the great trusts of the country. This is not true. There 
 are Jews in the trusts, as are other keen business men, but 
 it will be found that those who led the way were Gen¬ 
 tiles. There are branches of business in which they are 
 numerous and influential, and the history of these would 
 disclose what has often been the purely arbitrary circum¬ 
 stances which attracted them. They are prominent in the 
 business of the theater, the opera, and music generally. So 
 they should be. They are artistic, they are histrionic, they 
 are naturally lovers of music. But for the patronage and 
 support of the Jews we should not be able to have the the¬ 
 ater, the opera, or the symphony concerts. But what of 
 all this in the matter of world control? 
 
 In the effort of the author to connect the Jews with the 
 management of Trusts and the control of broad fields of 
 business he gives no names; he only makes assertions and 
 as if to anticipate a demonstration that Gentiles control the 
 industry by reference to the names of directors, he makes 
 reply that it is a common thing for Jews to use Gentiles 
 in the management of their business to present a “Gentile 
 front,” as he calls it. He is thus determined to put the 
 Jew in control whether he seems to be there or not. The 
 assertion that the Jew, with his will to power and the love 
 
 10 
 
of displaying it, which he attributes to him, should hide his 
 light under a bushel in this way is only one of constant 
 inconsistencies with which the earnest, careful reader is 
 confronted in this tissue of broad and upsupported gen¬ 
 eralizations. 
 
 # 
 
 The author of these articles refers to the facts that the 
 Jews in this country have increased in number within the 
 last forty years from less than 500,000 to now 2,500,000 or 
 3,000,000. That this presents some question by reason of 
 their concentrating in the City of New York, and their 
 indisposition to go to the farm and to the smaller towns, 
 need not be disputed; but it is also true that they present 
 far less difficulty in the matter of taking care of them¬ 
 selves and in becoming a charge upon the community than 
 other immigrants. The fact is that they were driven here 
 by the outrages committed upon them in Russia, in Poland 
 and in Roumania, and one of the reasons why John Hay 
 urged that the United States had the right to interest itself 
 in the treatment of these poor people by those heartless 
 governments was that they drove them to the United States 
 as a refuge and increased the burden of the United States 
 in caring for them. They are gradually, through the agency 
 of our public schools and through the equal opportunity 
 that this country offers, fitting themselves to better and 
 better citizenship, and in the small percentage they repre¬ 
 sent of our entire population they need give no cause for 
 concern, such as the author of these articles would like 
 to arouse. 
 
 T HE next basis for the premise is that Jews control 
 the world through the Press. What does this mean? 
 Does it mean that the Jews own all the newspapers of 
 wide circulation and influence? The author mentions three 
 newspapers in Germany which are owned by Jews. Does 
 that control Europe or even Germany? He could not men¬ 
 tion many more than that owned by Jews in the United 
 States. What, then, does he mean? He says that through 
 fear of Jewish power to give and withhold advertising, the 
 
 11 
 
press is muzzled as to the Jews. Here we come to a 
 broad distinction by utterly and unjustly ignoring which, 
 the author seeks grossly to exaggerate the power and effort 
 of the Jews to secure affirmative control of affairs, by con¬ 
 fusing it with their power and effort to protect their people 
 against abuse of their rights. They naturally resent insult 
 and contumely heaped upon Jews because they are Jews 
 and they are fully justified in seeking in every lawful way 
 to prevent its recurrence. If by reason of their power to 
 control the distribution of their advertising or by exercise 
 of discretion in their business patronage they can restrain 
 such outrage upon the feelings of their race and the stim¬ 
 ulation of prejudice, they are entirely right in using it. 
 It is probably true that a wholesome fear of the loss of 
 Jewish patronage does prevent some of the Press from 
 giving a vent to the expression of race prejudice and stir¬ 
 ring up anti-Semitism. If so, I am glad of the restraint. 
 The same thing is true in respect to the venting of preju¬ 
 dices against other members of our community, and it 
 should be a source of satisfaction rather than complaint. 
 But it is said our Jews control our politics by their sol¬ 
 idarity. This is not true. They are Republicans and 
 Democrats and they contend as vigorously for their respect¬ 
 ive parties as other citizens. In a case where a wrong 
 against Jews in any part of the world needs righting, the 
 broad sympathy of the American people can be easily 
 aroused and this Jews have done. They it was who 
 secured so wide a public demand for the abrogation of the 
 Treaty with Russia. They it is with their brethren in 
 Europe who have succeeded in securing a provision in the 
 Treaty of Versailles prescribing the equality of right to 
 be secured to Jews in Poland. This is cited by the Editor 
 of the Dearborn Independent as a vicious instance of Jew¬ 
 ish World Control. Why should not these nations at Ver¬ 
 sailles when they were delivering to the Poles a freedom 
 won by the sacrifice of millions of lives and mountains of 
 treasure, exact from them a pledge that the Jews should be 
 free from oppression and be given an equal opportunity to 
 
 12 
 
give their children education and to pursue their own liveli¬ 
 hood and happiness? Nor is the criticism such that the 
 provision was humiliating to Poland in its specific provi¬ 
 sions and in the reservation in the Treaty that the Great 
 Powers may enforce it. The experience of the Congress 
 of Berlin with the solemn guaranty of Roumania on this 
 subject and her breach of faith are still freshly in our 
 minds. The abuses to which the Jews had been subjected 
 in Poland gave good ground for additional safeguards. 
 This is not a seeking of affirmative control of affairs by 
 Jews. It is only another instance of an effort of the Jews 
 to protect those of their own race against further out¬ 
 rageous persecution; and we wish all civilization should 
 aid them. I cau not too often refer to the sympathy which 
 one Jew has for another in distress, especially when it 
 arises from racial hatred or prejudice. It is a trait which, 
 instead of being made a ground for attack upon the Jews, 
 should commend them highly to their fellow man. It is 
 not inconsistent with their duty to their country; it is not 
 inconsistent with their duty to their fellow man. The 
 author of the articles continually refers to the Jewish ques¬ 
 tion. The Jewish question is not one calling for protection 
 against the Jews as the writer of the Dearborn Independent 
 articles would make it. 
 
 T HE real and great Jewish question is how more than 
 half these Jewish people should be rescued from out¬ 
 rage, massacre and all sorts of injustice, as well as penury 
 and starvation brought about by government discrimina¬ 
 tion and prompted by bitter race prejudice. This question 
 has roused Jews the world over and they have nobly 
 responded. It has led to great organizations which have 
 been unceasing in their efforts to aid their fellow Jews in 
 all of Middle and Eastern Europe, where they have suf¬ 
 fered so much. It is this which has developed Zionism 
 and while men and Jews differ as to the exact goal ulti¬ 
 mately to be reached in this movement, all concur in seek¬ 
 ing the refuge it is hoped it will afford the Jews of Eastern 
 
 13 
 
Europe from their present awful state. Yet it is these 
 organizations upon which the author of these articles would 
 base his charge against the Jews of seeking world power. 
 
 If it be true that the international bankers and capital¬ 
 ists are Jews alone; if it be true that they wield a world 
 power to control governments and nations and wars and 
 peace and economic law, can the author of these articles 
 in the Dearborn Independent explain why it is that now 
 more than half the 13,000,000 Jews in the world are still 
 suffering not only persecution and oppression, but the bit¬ 
 terest penury and starvation? Why is it that if this omnip¬ 
 otence belongs to the Jews, half of them are in the direst 
 misery? One needs to cite no specific facts to refute the 
 preposterous assumptions of this learned writer in the Dear¬ 
 born Independent because the general facts which refute 
 his every statement can be seen by a wayfaring man, though 
 a fool. 
 
 T HE author of the articles refers to Germany as a 
 place where the Jewish question, so-called, has been 
 prominent, and in which the danger from the Jews and 
 their activities has been demonstrated. The arguments of 
 the anti-Semitic party are, of course, rehearsed, and the 
 prominence of individual Jews in the government which 
 succeeded the Empire is pointed out and made the basis 
 for the assumption that these Jews are engaged in pro¬ 
 moting the power of all Jews and lending themselves to 
 this ultimate Jewish despotism. The author, of course, 
 does not stop to note how natural it is for Jews to be 
 prominent in the new popular government of Germany. 
 The bitter anti-Semitism in Germany had driven the great 
 body of Jews into the opposition to the government, into 
 socialism of the various phases of which Germany is full. 
 The Jew is naturally quick and able and political and his 
 leadership is accepted by the less intelligent and less con¬ 
 structive members of his party, and therefore it is not sur¬ 
 prising that among the leaders of these parties are Jews. 
 They appear in support of their party as might be expected 
 
 14 
 
and show no common Jewish purpose but only the individ¬ 
 ual aims and natural leadership that acute intelligence and 
 practical knowledge would give. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, there is nothing in the assertions 
 by the author of these articles in respect to the Jews that 
 contain any facts justifying an inference beyond the nat¬ 
 ural and commendable desire of Jews to get on in the 
 world, to acquire money and comfort and education for 
 their children and standing and influence in the commu¬ 
 nity. Thus the case of the author of these articles fails 
 here. Even if there were a secret council of Jews plan¬ 
 ning to use the accumulated influence and wealth and power 
 of the Jews to conquer the world and to establish an Israel- 
 itish absolutism under a Jewish sovereign, he has shown no 
 such power in the Jews now or in the future which could 
 accomplish such a task, or any likelihood that the Jews 
 of the civilized countries of the world would for one 
 moment join in such a conspiracy. 
 
 But we must go on with the author to his attempt to 
 establish the last link in his chain of charges in the indict¬ 
 ment, and that is the existence of a secret council of Jews 
 who are now deliberately plotting to destroy the govern¬ 
 ments of the world by anarchy and bolshevism and to erect 
 on the world’s ruins an Hebraic autocracy by the power 
 of the purse. He proposes to find this in the so-called 
 protocols of the Wise Men of Zion. 
 
 W HAT are these protocols? They purport to be oral 
 explanations of a Jew to disciples or listeners, of the 
 plot by the inner wise men to establish a Jewish despotism 
 and absolute monarchy under a King of Israel over the 
 world. The bald and shocking and brutal details of the 
 plan as they are justified and explained create on their 
 face a serious doubt that anyone would avow them to a 
 group of disciples, however depraved he or they might be. 
 They are drawn without exculpatory phrases and are made 
 as bald and as revolting as possible and are much better 
 adapted to stirring bitterness and indignation against the 
 
 15 
 
author of the protocols than they are to the enlightenment 
 and inspiration of disciples and followers whose cooperation 
 he seeks to instruct and secure. 
 
 He begins with the announcement that more men are 
 vicious and wicked than are noble and that we must make 
 that the basis of our practical policy. He says that hon¬ 
 esty and fairness are, in view of that policy, vices, and that 
 hypocrisy and cunning are the only virtues which should 
 be practiced. He then discloses his plan. He assumes, as 
 does the author of the Dearborn Independent, that the Jews 
 have all the money of the world under their control and 
 that money enables them to control nations and wars and 
 peace. He refutes the idea that economic laws ultimately 
 prevail throughout the world and assumes, as does the 
 editor of the Dearborn Independent, that the Jews with 
 money are able to reverse these laws and create arbitrary 
 results, as if they were not only absolute rulers of the 
 government but absolute controllers of demand and sup¬ 
 ply, of prices and of wages. With this absolute power over 
 everything that goes to affect the comfort and happiness 
 of the world through the Jewish control of money, he adds 
 the control through other Jews of mobs and the forces of 
 disintegration. He asserts that they control the press of 
 the world and that through the press they are to play upon 
 the feelings of the proletariat and to create a wide antag¬ 
 onism between, it and the more intelligent and wealthier 
 classes, so that society is to be broken up and the govern¬ 
 ments of the world under the Gentile rule are to be weak¬ 
 ened until they are really overthrown. This inner circle is 
 to stimulate proletarian distinctiveness by first increasing 
 wages of the workmen and then increasing prices. They 
 are hurrying the world on to a great war, and in the war 
 territorial changes are not to be affected, but the changes 
 are to be financial only. After the disintegration of gov¬ 
 ernments in which the lives of many Jews are to be sacri¬ 
 ficed for the purpose of carrying out the plot, the ultimate 
 object is to be achieved; and one of the seed of King David 
 is to be trained to become the universal sovereign of the 
 
 16 
 
world. The character of the judges of the Civil service 
 and of many details of the government under this descend¬ 
 ant of King David are set out at great length together with 
 a plan of taxation. A police system and a method of main¬ 
 taining absolute government without the show of force and 
 a system of espionage in which one-third of the people are 
 set to watch the other two-thirds are gravely described. 
 
 I have read and reread these protocols and the impres¬ 
 sion they have made on me is that they are the work of 
 one who wishes to hold up to scorn and hatred and con¬ 
 demnation the race in whose behalf they purport to be 
 written. They are drafted by one who had watched, with 
 a cynical eye, the workings of popular government, and 
 who paints in the most lurid colors the defects of demo¬ 
 cracy when it degenerates into mob rule. The writer was 
 evidently a profound believer in absolutism and seeks here 
 to vindicate its useful possibilities in every sentence, but 
 in attempting to give a practical coloring to the conspiracy, 
 for which he is seeking to make the Jewish council respon¬ 
 sible, his assumptions of the power to do the things he 
 describes in pursuance of the ultimate object are grotesque 
 and ridiculous and should make a reasonably intelligent 
 man who reads them impatient. 
 
 But how is our author of the Dearborn Independent 
 articles affected by these Baron Munchausen tales of accom¬ 
 plishment or proposed accomplishments? Of course, they 
 accord with his assumptions that the international Jewish 
 bankers control the purse of the world and therefore con¬ 
 trol the economic phenomena and suspend the operation of 
 economic laws. What is absurd to everyone else cannot, 
 of course, be absurd to him in view of the fact that he 
 makes the same assumptions. But his chief reason for 
 deeming these protocols a real emanation from a Jewish 
 Sanhedrin sitting somewhere in the world to plot the sub¬ 
 jection of the world, is in their anticipation of what has 
 since happened in the great war. Let us examine and see 
 how wonderful these are. These protocols are supposed to 
 have been framed about 1905 during the Russian-Japanese 
 
 17 
 
war, and they anticipate a world war. Such a prophecy 
 was not unknown at that day, nor was it unreasonable to 
 expect it in view of the conflicting interests of the great 
 powers and the enormous armaments they were preparing. 
 Secondly, he points with eagerness to the plan to increase 
 the price of wages and raise the hopes of the laboring 
 people, then to increase the price of living in order to dash 
 those hopes and arouse indignation at the authorities and 
 cause revolt and disorder as a remarkable identification of 
 the plan with what has happened during and since the war. 
 To his mind, it apparently indicates that these things were 
 due to the working of the Sanhedrin and not due to nat¬ 
 ural causes, and thus he would prove the genuineness and 
 solid importance of the document as a basis of proof of 
 the conspiracy. This phenomenon of a rise in wages and 
 an accompanying rise in prices is only the natural course 
 in economic law. If wages go up, prices must go up. One 
 is a natural concomitant of the other. It has happened in 
 every war, and it needed no prophet to come and tell us 
 so. Then he finds in the cry of the Socialists and Bol¬ 
 shevists there shall be no territorial changes by the war— 
 a proof that they were working under the inspiration and 
 will of the Inner Circle of the Jews of the Protocol. This 
 is certainly a far cry to identification. 
 
 B UT the chief reason for assuming that the develop¬ 
 ments of this war reveal the genuineness of the Pro¬ 
 tocols and the plot the Inner Circle is working out, is the 
 fact that there are some Jews in the leadership of Bol¬ 
 shevism in Russia. Here we have in fine relief the iterated 
 and reiterated assumption that if there be a single Jew in 
 a movement, it is complete evidence of his control of that 
 movement and of his control of that movement for dis¬ 
 tinctly Jewish purposes. According to such records as I 
 have had access to, and the conclusions of Mr. John Spargo, 
 who has devoted himself to a close following of the Bol¬ 
 shevist movement in Russia, the statement that Jews control 
 it is entirely unwarranted. There are Jews in the Bol- 
 
 18 
 
shevist Cabinet, there are Jews in some important offices, 
 but there are Jews who lead the opposing party of Men- 
 shiviki, the moderate socialists, and there are Jews who are 
 prominent in the Cadet movement, a third party of consti¬ 
 tutionalists. In a country where Jews were subjected to 
 such bitter cruelty and oppression as in Russia, it is no 
 wonder that they become anarchists and socialists, and took 
 part in the plans for assassination and were made martyrs 
 to the cause of freedom and resistance to tyranny. When 
 the revolution arrived, some became extremists and Bol¬ 
 shevists, others moderate socialists and others conservative 
 democrats or republicans, and divided just as other oppo¬ 
 nents of absolutism did. More than this, Bolshevism is 
 spread by a propaganda of terrorism, and if one would 
 escape imprisonment and suffering, it is wise for him to 
 embrace Bolshevism for the nonce, and this is what former 
 conservatives and Cadets and Menshiviki have done and 
 doubtless among them are Jews. The Bolshevist Jews 
 were no more responsible for Bolshevism than the others 
 engaged in it. Lenine is not a Jew, but Trotzky is, and 
 the facts seem to show that the Jews among the commis¬ 
 sions in actual power and control are in a decided minority. 
 But whether they are or not is not important in the con¬ 
 sideration of the issue which the Dearborn Independent 
 insists upon making, and that is that Bolshevism is only 
 part of the plot of the Inner Sanhedrin of Jews to disin¬ 
 tegrate governments in order to secure the despotism of 
 the Inner Council. In this view it is essential to establish 
 that Trotzky and his fellow Jews who are Bolshevists are 
 Bolshevists in order to establish the autocracy of Judaism 
 the world over. There is not the slightest evidence that 
 they have any such purpose, or that they are under the 
 control of any inner circle of Jews. Not a single fact is 
 pointed out to indicate that they are acting under some¬ 
 body else’s direction or that they have an ultimate object 
 of Judaism. They are engaged in the attack upon all reli¬ 
 gion. They flout it. 
 
 Does the author of these articles not find enough in the 
 
 19 
 
history of Russia and abuses of the autocracy to explain 
 the Revolution and the subsequent phases of it without 
 tracing it to the will of the Sanhedrin of the Wise Men 
 of Zion? In what way was that will manifested? How 
 was it made effective? Really is it not more reasonable to 
 recognize the movement to anarchy and then to proletariat 
 autocracy as due to the violence of the reaction against 
 Tsarism and its abuses than to attribute it to the machina¬ 
 tions of an invisible Sanhedrin? Why look for causes in 
 the sky when they are just before us? The reasoning which 
 would make the fact that Jews are some of them leaders 
 among the Bolsheviki proof of the genuineness of the Pro¬ 
 tocols and a step in carrying out the conspiracy therein pro¬ 
 jected, is as faulty as that which convicted innocent women 
 of being witches in the seventeenth century. 
 
 W HAT is the asserted origin of these protocols? They 
 are produced by one Sergus Nilus, a man who was 
 a religious fanatic of the Russian Church, and whose whole 
 nature was absorbed in the identification of the church with 
 the autocracy in Russia and whose religion was the mainte¬ 
 nance of the divine authority of the Tsar. He was a 
 mystic, and he was contending against those forces which 
 would destroy the autocracy of the Tsar as the anti-Christ. 
 Some had regarded Free Masonry as the anti-Christ because 
 there were politics in the Masonic lodges directed against 
 the dynasty. Others like Nilus attributed to Jews the char¬ 
 acter of anti-Christ. He said he obtained the protocols 
 from a man who had received them from a woman in 
 Asiatic Russia, who had obtained them in secrecy, and that 
 is all that is known about them. They are not signed; 
 they are not even given the title “The Wise Men of Zion.” 
 This was given them after their publication. Nilus was 
 a dreamer and fanatic. He could himself have conceived 
 in his dreams of such a wild scheme and impossible plot 
 and could publish it for the purpose of arousing indigna¬ 
 tion against the Jews and justifying the policy of cruelty 
 toward them pursued by the Russian Tsar. The article is 
 
 20 
 
calculated to arouse indignation not alone against the Jews 
 but against every movement to unseat the Tsar and his 
 power. It is written in a contemptuous scorn of popular 
 government. The protocols were written by a man who 
 had studied the defects of democracy and who struggled 
 to emphasize them by attributing to this pseudo wise man 
 of Zion the purpose to use demoralization of mob rule to 
 achieve autocracy of the Jews. That these protocols might 
 have fooled the Russians was possible, but that they should 
 be honestly taken up by an American citizen, with ordinary 
 intelligence, and offered as a basis for insisting that there 
 is a Jewish question among us that needs solution, is hard 
 to credit. The course of reasoning by which Ignatius Don¬ 
 nelly and others have established that Bacon wrote Shakes¬ 
 peare by the internal evidence of Shakespeare’s plays is a 
 monument of logic as compared with these. The Tales of 
 Baron Munchausen are the only things in literature that 
 should be classed with these protocols, for they are not 
 more preposterous. It is appropriate that the author of 
 these Dearborn Independent articles should refer with a 
 show of learning to the fact that there were Princes of the 
 House of Israel who continued to exercise titular author¬ 
 ity into the Middle Ages among the Jews, and should sug¬ 
 gest that the descendant of such exilarche may now be in 
 the keeping of this Sanhedrin and ready to be brought 
 out and proclaimed the King of Israel when the situation 
 shall be ripe. 
 
 I HAVE thus considered the substance of the indict¬ 
 ment of the Jews by the Editor of the Dearborn Inde¬ 
 pendent, and the evidence, or lack of it, upon which he 
 bases it. I have not gone into ,a discussion of the Jew 
 as a man, or the Jew as a citizen. In an address delivered 
 before the National Geographical Society I attempted to 
 trace the history of the Jew, and to show the effect upon 
 him and his people of the cruel treatment to which he had 
 been subjected for eighteen centuries. I pointed out the 
 remarkable qualities of the race and the wonderful abil- 
 
 21 
 
ities in many lines that they had shown. Wherever they 
 have been given an equal chance, the best of them, quite 
 out of proportion to their number, have forged to the front 
 and became leaders in the fields of their activities, and 
 prominent in the countries of which they have become citi¬ 
 zens. It is charged that they cannot become genuine and 
 sincere citizens of any country because they are themselves 
 a nation in dispersion, and that to that nation they owe 
 their first allegiance. I differ entirely with this view, and 
 it has been refuted by the conduct of the Jews in many 
 countries. It is true they retain an allegiance to their race 
 and to their faith and why shouldn’t they? We would not 
 value them if they did not do so. They have a great his¬ 
 tory to look back to, a great ancestry, and well may they 
 be proud of it. But while they are proud of being" Jews, 
 while most of them adhere to the ancient faith, what incon¬ 
 sistency is there in that with their being good citizens of 
 the country in which they are born and live? How does it 
 detract from their patriotism? In what way does it inter¬ 
 fere with their allegiance to this government when that 
 allegiance calls for service and sacrifice? They did their 
 part in this great war as Frenchmen, as Englishmen, as 
 Americans. Those of them who made the ultimate sacrifice 
 were in full proportion to their number either as citizens 
 or as soldiers. The exclusiveness with which they have 
 been charged is in proportion to the prejudice exhibited 
 against them and their fellows in any community. It is 
 a measure of protection. As discrimination against them 
 ceases, as equal opportunity makes itself felt among them, 
 as the rewards for their genius and patience and application 
 come, the differences between them and other people disap¬ 
 pear. They become ingrained Americans with us. Their 
 genius, their industry, their skill, their tenacity of purpose, 
 their enterprise make for the prosperity of the community 
 and the country, and there is no good object in which they 
 are not willing to do their part. In politics, they do not act 
 as a body. They have their acute differences of opinion 
 as other people have. There are good men and bad men 
 
 22 
 
among them, and their good men condemn their bad men 
 with the same emphasis that good men of other religions 
 and races among us do theirs. 
 
 There is not the slightest ground for anti-Semitism among 
 us. It is a vicious plant. It is a noxious weed that should 
 be cut out. It has no place in free America, and the men 
 who seek to introduce it should be condemned by public 
 opinion. 
 
 % 
 
 23 
 
The Anti-Defamation League 
 was organized by the Indepen¬ 
 dent Order of B’nai B’rith in 
 1913 to prevent and abate the 
 defamation of the Jew and 
 ultimately to put an end to 
 unfair discrimination against 
 all citizens of our land. 
 
 The following Jewish organiza¬ 
 tions are officially represented 
 on the Governing Board of the 
 League: The Central Confer¬ 
 ence of American Rabbis, The 
 Council of Jewish Women, The 
 Union of American Hebrew 
 Congregations and the Zionist 
 Organization. 
 
DS145 .T12 
 
 Anti-Semitism in the United States. 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00055 4735 
 
 
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