III.
Now, which of these exhibitions of anti-Semitism will show itself in America? If certain tendencies continue, as they are certain to do, what form will the feeling toward the Jew take? Not that of mass violence, we may be sure. The only mass action visible now is that of the Jewish agencies themselves against any person or institution that dares bring the Jewish Question to public attention.
1. Anti-Semitism will come to America because of the habit which emotions and ideas apparently have of making their way westward around the world. North of Palestine, where the Jews have been longest settled and where they are now in great numbers, anti-Semitism is acute and well-defined. Westward, in Germany, it is clearly defined but, until the seizure of German revolutionary agencies, was devoid of violence. Still farther westward, in Great Britain, it is defined, but because of the comparatively small number of Jews in the British Isles and their coalition with the ruling class, it is more a feeling than a movement. In the United States it is not so definite, but shows itself in a restlessness, a questioning, a sensible friction between the traditional tendency of the American to fair-mindedness and his respect for the cold facts.
Because the Question will assume more and more pressure in America it behooves everyone of foresight to disregard the shortsighted protests of the Jews themselves and see to it that the Question shall not present itself among us as it has done among other people, in its most distressing and confusing forms. It is a public duty to seize this problem at its beginning and train it up, so to speak; that is, so prepare for it that it may be handled here in a manner which will form a model for all other countries, which will indeed supply all other countries with the essential materials for a permanent solution. And this can be done only by exposing and recognizing and treating with the serum of publicity the conditions before which, heretofore, the nations have helplessly floundered because they lacked either the desire or the means to get at the great root of the difficulty.
2. Another cause of the Question appearing here will be the great influx of Jews which is planned for America. There will probably be a million Jews enter the country this year, increasing our Jewish population to nearly 4,500,000. This does not mean merely an immigration of persons, but an immigration of ideas. No Jewish writer has ever told us, in systematic fashion, just what is the Jews' idea of non-Jews, how they regard the Gentiles in their private minds. But there are indications of it, although one would not attempt to reconstruct the Jewish attitude toward Gentiles. A Jew ought to do this for us, but he would probably be cast out by his own people if he discharged his task with rigorous jealousy for the exact fact.
These people are coming here regarding the Gentile as an hereditary enemy, as perhaps they have good ground for doing, and so believing they are going to model their behavior in a manner that will show it. Nor will these Jews be so helpless as they appear. In stricken Poland, where the Jews are represented as having been stripped of everything during the war, there are hundreds daily appearing before the consulate to arrange their passage here. The fact is significant. In spite of their reputed suffering and poverty, they are able to travel a great distance and to insist on coming. No other people are financially able to travel in such numbers. But the Jews are. It will readily be seen that they are not objects of charity. They have been able to keep afloat in a storm that has wrecked the other people. They know it and they joy in it, as is natural. And they will bring here the same thoughts toward the majority which they have harbored in their present lands of domicile. They may hail America; they will have their own thoughts about the majority of the American people. They may be in the lists as Russians or Poles or what not, but they will be Jews with the full Jewish consciousness, and they will make themselves felt.
All this is bound to have its effect. And it is not race prejudice to prepare for it, and to invite American Jews themselves to consider the fact and contribute to the solution of the problem which it presents.
3. Every idea which has ruled Europe has met with transformation when it was transplanted in America. It was so with the idea of Liberty, the idea of Government, the idea of War. It will be so with the idea of anti-Semitism. The whole problem will center here and if we are wise and do not shirk it, it will find its solution here. A recent Jewish writer has said: "Jewry today largely means American Jewry . . . . . . . . . . all former Jewish centers were demolished during the war and were shifted to America." The problem will be ours, whether we choose it or not.
And what course will it take? Much depends on what can be accomplished before it becomes very strong. It may be said, however, that the first element to appear will be a show of resentment against certain Jewish commercial successes, more particularly against the united action by which they are attained. Our people see the spectacle of a people in the midst of a people, in a sense which the Mormons never were, and they will not like it. The Mormons made an Exodus; Israel is going back into Egypt to subjugate it.
The second element which will undoubtedly appear is prejudice and its incitement. The majority may always be right, but they are not always initially reasonable. That prejudice which exists now, and which is freely admitted by both Jew and Gentile, may become more marked, to the distress of both parties, for neither the subject nor the object of prejudice can attain that freedom of mind which is happiness.
Then we may most confidently look for a reaction of Justice. It is here that the whole matter will begin to bend to the genius of Americanism. The innate justice of the American mind has come to the aid of every object that ever roused American resentment. The natural reaction with us is of very brief duration; the intellectual and ethical reaction swiftly follows. The American mind will never rest with merely resenting certain individuals. It will probe deeper. Already this deeper probe has been begun in Great Britain and America. We characteristically do not stop with persons when principles are in sight.
And upon this there will be an investigation of materials, part of which may yet be presented in this series and which may possibly be disregarded for a time, but which at a future date will be found to be the clue to the maze. Upon this, the root of all the trouble will be bared to the light, to die as all roots do when deprived of their concealment of darkness, and then the Jewish people themselves may be expected to begin an adjustment to the new order of things, not to lose their identity or to curtail their energy or to dim their brilliance, but to turn all into more worthy channels for the benefit of all races, which alone can justify their claim to superiority. A race that can achieve in the material realm what the Jews have achieved while asserting themselves to be spiritually superior, can achieve in a less sordid, a less society-defying realm also.
The Jews will not be destroyed; neither will they be permitted to maintain the yoke which they have been so skillful in fastening upon society. They are the beneficiaries of a system which itself will change and force them to other and higher devices to justify their proper place in the world.
[Issue of June 19, 1920.]
"We must force the Gentile governments to adopt measures which will promote our broadly conceived plan already approaching its triumphal goal by bringing to bear the pressure of stimulated public opinion which has in reality been organized by us with the help of the so-called 'great power' of the Press. With few exceptions, not worth considering, it has already fallen into our hands."
—The Seventh Protocol.
VI.
Jewish Question Breaks Into the Magazines
Once upon a time an American faculty member of an American university went to Russia on business. He was expert in a very important department of applied science and a keen observer. He entered Russia with the average American's feeling about the treatment which the government of that people accorded the Jew. He lived there three years, came home for a year, and went back again for a similar period, and upon his second return to America he thought it was time to give the American public accurate information about the Jewish Question in Russia. He prepared a most careful article and sent it to the editor of a magazine of the first class in the Eastern United States. The editor sent for him, spent most of two days with him, and was deeply impressed with all he learned—but he said he could not print the article. The same interest and examination occurred with several other magazine editors of the first rank.
It was not because the professor could not write—these editors gladly bought anything he would write on other subjects. But it was impossible for him to get his article on the Jews accepted or printed in New York.
The Jewish Question, however, has at last broken into a New York magazine. Rather it is a fragment of a shell hurled from the Jewish camp at the Jewish Question to demolish, if possible, the Question and thus make good the assertion that there is no such thing.
Incidentally it is the only kind of article on the Jewish Question that the big magazines, whose mazes of financial controllers make most interesting rummaging, would care to print.
Yet, the general public may learn much about the Question even from the type of article whose purpose is to prove that the Question doesn't exist.
Mr. William Hard, in the Metropolitan for June, has done as well as could be expected, considering the use he was supposed to make of such material as he had at hand. And doubtless the telegraph and letter brigades, which keep watch over all printed references to the Jews, have duly congratulated the good editors of the Metropolitan for their assistance in soothing the public to further sleep.
It is to be hoped, for the sake of the Question, that Mr. Hard's effort will have a wide reading, for there is very much to be learned from it—much more than it was anybody's intention should be learned from it.
It may be learned, first, that the Jewish Question exists. Mr. Hard says it is discussed in the drawing-rooms of London and Paris. Whether the mention of drawing-rooms was a writer's device to intimate that the matter was unimportant and frivolous, or merely represented the extent of Mr. Hard's contact with the Question is not clear. He adds, however, that a document relating to the Question has "travelled a good bit in certain official circles in Washington." He also mentions a cable dispatch to the New York World, concerning the same Question, which that paper published. His article was probably published too early to note the review which the London Times made of the first document referred to. But he has told the reader who is looking for the objective facts in the article that there is a Jewish Question, and that it does not exist among the riff-raff either but principally in those circles where the evidence of Jewish power and control is most abundant. Moreover, the Question is being discussed. Mr. Hard tells us that much. If he does not go further and tell us that it is being discussed with great seriousness in high places and among men of national and international importance, it is probably because of one of two things, either he does not know, or he does not consider it consonant with the purpose of the article to tell.
However, Mr. Hard has already made it clear that there is a Jewish Question, that it is being discussed, that it is being discussed by people who are best situated to observe the matter they are talking about.
The reading of Mr. Hard's article makes it clear also that the Question always comes to the fore on the note of conspiracy. Of course, Mr. Hard says he does not believe in conspiracies which involve a large number of people, and it is with the utmost ease that his avowal of unbelief is accepted, for there is nothing more ridiculous to the Gentile mind than a mass conspiracy, because there is nothing more impossible to the Gentile himself. Mr. Hard, we take it, is of non-Jewish extraction, and he knows how impossible it would be to band Gentiles together in any considerable number for any length of time in even the noblest conspiracy. Gentiles are not built for it. Their conspiracy, whatever it might be, would fall like a rope of sand. Gentiles have not the basis either in blood or interest that the Jews have to stand together. The Gentile does not naturally suspect conspiracy; he will indeed hardly bring himself to the verge of believing it without the fullest proof.
It is therefore quite easy to understand Mr. Hard's difficulty with conspiracy; the point is that to write his article at all, he is forced to recognize at almost every step that whenever the Jewish Question is discussed, the idea of conspiracy occupies a large part in it. As a matter of fact, it is the central idea in Mr. Hard's article, and it completely monopolizes the heading—"Great Jewish Conspiracy."
The search for basic facts in Mr. Hard's article will disclose the additional information that there are certain documents in existence which purport to contain the details of the conspiracy, or—to drop a word that is unpleasant and may be misleading and which has not been used in this series—the tendency of Jewish power to achieve complete control. That is about all that the reader learns from Mr. Hard about the documents, except that he describes one as "strange and horrible." Here is indeed a regrettable gap in the story, for it is to discredit a certain document that Mr. Hard writes, and yet he tells next to nothing about it. Discreditable documents usually discredit themselves. But this document is not permitted to do that. The reader of the article is left to take Mr. Hard's word for it. The serious student or critic will feel, of course, that the documents themselves would have formed a better basis for an intelligent judgement. But laying that matter aside, Mr. Hard has made public the fact that there are documents.
And then Mr. Hard does another thing, as well as he can with the materials at hand, the purpose of the article being what it was, and that is to show how little the Jews have to do with the control of affairs by showing who are the Jews that do control certain selected groups of affairs. The names are all brought forward by Mr. Hard and he alone is responsible for them, our purpose in referring to them being merely to show what can be learned from him.
Mr. Hard leans heavily on Russian affairs. Sometimes it would almost seem as if the Jewish Question were conceived as the Soviet Question, which it is not, as Mr. Hard very well knows, and although the two have their plain connections, it is nothing less than well-defined propaganda to set up Bolshevist fiction and knock it down by Jewish fact for the purpose of the latter. However, what Mr. Hard offers as fact is very instructive, quite apart from the conclusion which he draws from it.
Now, take his Russian line-up first. He says that in the cabinet of Soviet Russia there is only one Jew. But he is Trotsky. There are others in the government, of course, but Mr. Hard is speaking about the cabinet now. He is not speaking about the commissars, who are the real rulers of Russia, nor about the executive troops, who are the real strength of the Trotsky-Lenin régime. No, just the cabinet. Of course, there was only one Jew prominent in Hungary, too, but he was Bela Kun. Mr. Hard does not ask us to believe, however, that it is simply because of Trotsky and Kun that all Europe believes that Bolshevism has a strong Jewish element. Else the stupid credibility of the Gentiles would be more impossible of conception than the idea of a Jewish conspiracy is to Mr. Hard's mind. Why should it be easier to believe that Gentiles are dunces than that Jews are clever?
However, it is not too much to say that Trotsky is way up at the top, sharing the utmost summit of Bolshevism with Lenin, and Trotsky is a Jew—nobody ever denied that, not even Mr. Braunstein himself (the latter being Trotsky's St. Louis, U.S.A., name).
But then, says Mr. Hard, the Mensheviks are led by Jews, too! That is a
fact worth putting down beside the others. Trotsky at the head of the
Bolsheviks; at the head of the Mensheviks during their opposition of the
Bolsheviks were Leiber, Martov and Dan—"all Jews," says Mr. Hard.
There is, however, a middle party between these extremes, the Cadets, which, Mr. Hard says, are or were the strongest bourgeois political party in Russia. "They now have their headquarters in Paris. Their chairman is Vinaver—a Jew."
There are the facts as stated by Mr. Hard. He says that Jews, whose names he gives, head the three great divisions of political opinion in Russia.
And then he cries, look how the Jews are divided! How can there be conspiracy among people who thus fight themselves?
But another, looking at the same situation may say, look how the Jews control every phase of political opinion in Russia! Doesn't there seem to be some ground for the feeling that they are desirous of ruling everywhere?
The facts are there. What significance does it bring to the average mind that the three great parties of Russia are led by Jews?
But that does not exhaust the information which the matter-of-fact reader may find in Mr. Hard's article. He turns to the United States and makes several interesting statements.
"There is Otto Kahn," he says. Well, sometimes Otto Kahn is there, and sometimes he is in Paris on important international matters, and sometimes he is in London advocating certain alliances between British and American capital which have to do in a large way with European political conditions. Mr. Kahn is rated as a conservative, and that may mean anything. A man is conservative or not according to the angle from which he is viewed. The most conservative men in America are really the most radical; their motives and methods go to the very roots of certain matters; they are radicals in their own field. The men who controlled the last Republican Convention—if not the last, the most recent—are styled conservatives by those whose vision is circumscribed by certain limited economic interests; but they are the most radical of radicals, they have passed the red stage and are white with it. If it were known what is in the back of Mr. Kahn's mind, if he should display a chart of what he is doing and aiming to do, the term which would then most aptly describe him might be quite different. Anyway, we have it from Mr. Hard, "There is Mr. Kahn."
"On the other hand," says Mr. Hard, "there is Rose Pastor Stokes." He adds the name of Morris Hillquit. They are, in Mr. Hard's classification, radicals. And to offset these names he adds the names of two Gentiles, Eugene V. Debs and Bill Haywood and intimates that they are much more powerful leaders than the first two. Students of modern influences, of which Mr. Hard has long appeared as one, do not think so. Neither Debs nor Haywood ever generated in all their lives a fraction of the intellectual power which Mrs. Stokes and Mr. Hillquit have generated. Both Debs and Haywood live by the others. To every informed person, as to Mr. Hard in this article, come the Jewish names to mind when the social tendencies of the United States are passed under reflection.
This is most instructive indeed, that in naming the leaders of so-called conservatism and radicalism, Mr. Hard is driven to use Jewish names. On his showing the reader is entitled to say that Jews lead both divisions here in the United States.
But Mr. Hard is not through. "The man who does more than any other man—the man who does more than any regiment of other men—to keep American labor anti-radical is a Jew—Samuel Gompers." That is a fact which the reader will place in his list—American labor is led by a Jew.
Well, then, "the strongest anti-Gompers trade union in the country—The Amalgamated Clothing Workers—and very strong indeed, and very large—is led by a Jew—Sidney Hillman."
It is the Russian situation over again. Both ends of the movements, and the movement which operate within the movement, are under the leadership of Jews. This, whatever the construction put upon it, is a fact which Mr. Hard is compelled by the very nature of his task to acknowledge.
And the middle movement, "the Liberal Middle" as Mr. Hard calls it, which catches all between, produces in this article the names of Mr. Justice Brandeis, Judge Mack and Felix Frankfurter, gentlemen whose activities since Armistice Day would make a very interesting story.
For good measure, Mr. Hard produces two other names, "Baron Gunzberg—a Jew" who is "a faithful official" of the Russian Embassy of Ambassador Bakhmetev, a repesentative of the modified old regime, while the Russian Information Bureau, whose literary output appears in many of our newspapers is conducted by another Jew, so Mr. Hard calls him, whose name is familiar to newspaper readers, Mr. A. J. Sack.
It is not a complete list by any means, but it is quite impressive. It seems to reflect importance on the documents which Mr. Hard endeavors to minimize to a position of ridiculous unimportance. And it leads to the thought that perhaps the documents are scrutinized as carefully as they are because the readers of them have observed not only the facts which Mr. Hard admits but other and more astonishing ones, and have discovered that the documents confirm and explain the observations. Other readers who have not had the privilege of learning all that the documents contain are entitled to have satisfaction given to the interest thus aroused.
The documents did not create the Jewish Question. If there were nothing but the documents, Mr. Hard would not have written nor would the Metropolitan Magazine have printed the article here discussed.
What Mr. Hard has done is to bring confirmation in a most unexpected place that the Question exists and is pressing for discussion. Someone felt the pressure when "The Great Jewish Conspiracy" was ordered and written.
[Issue of June 26, 1920.]
"What are you prating about? As long as we do not have the Press of the whole world in our hands, everything you may do is vain. We must control or influence the papers of the whole world in order to blind and deceive the people."
—Baron Montefiore.
VII.
Arthur Brisbane Leaps to the Help of Jewry
Once more the current of this series on the Modern Jewish Question is interrupted to give notice of the appearance of the Question in another quarter, the appearance this time consisting of a more than two-column "Today" editorial in the Hearst papers of Sunday, June 20, from the pen of Arthur Brisbane. It would be too much to say that Mr. Brisbane is the most influential writer in the country, but perhaps he is among the dozen most widely read. It is, therefore, a confirmation of the statement that the Question is assuming importance in this country, that a writer of Mr. Brisbane's prominence should openly discuss it.
Of course, Mr. Brisbane has not studied the Question. He would probably admit in private conversation—though such an admission would hardly be in harmony with the tone of certainty he publicly adopts—that he really knows nothing about it. He knows, however, as a good newspaper man, how to handle it when the exigencies of the newspaper day throw it up to him for offhand treatment. Every editorial writer knows how to do that. There is something good in every race, or there have been some notable individuals in it, or it has played a picturesque part in history—that is enough for a very readable editorial upon any class of people who may happen to be represented in the community. The Question, whatever it may be, need not be studied at all; a certain group of people may be salved for a few paragraphs, and the job need never be tackled again. Every newspaper man knows that.
And yet, having lived in New York for a long time, having had financial dealings of a large and obligating nature with certain interests in this country, having seen no doubt more or less of the inner workings of the great trust and banking groups, and being constantly surrounded by assistants and advisors who are members of the Jewish race, Mr. Brisbane must have had his thoughts. It is, however, no part of a newspaper man's business to expose his thoughts about the racial groups of his community, any more than it is a showman's business to express his opinion of the patrons of his show. The kinds of offense a newspaper will give, and the occasions on which it will feel justified in giving it, are very limited.
So, assuming that Mr. Brisbane had to write at all, it could have been told beforehand what he would write. The only wonder is that he felt he had to write. Did he really feel that the Jews are being "persecuted" when an attempt is made to uncover the extent and causes of their control in the United States and elsewhere? Did he feel, with good editorial shrewdness, that here was an opportunity to win the attention and regard of the most influential group in New York and the nation? Or—and this seems within the probabilities—was he inclined simply to pass it over, until secretarial suggestions reached him for a Sunday editorial, or until some of the bondholders made their wishes known? This is not at all to impugn Mr. Brisbane's motives, but merely to indicate on what slender strings such an editorial may depend.
But what is more important—does Mr. Brisbane consider that, having disposed of the Sunday editorial, he is through with the Question, or that the Question itself is solved? That is the worst of daily editorializing; having come safely and inoffensively through with one editorial, the matter is at an end as far as that particular writer is concerned—that is, as a usual thing.
It is to be hoped that Mr. Brisbane is not through. He ought not to leave a big question without contributing something to it, and in his Sunday editorial he did not contribute anything. He even made mistakes which he ought to correct by further study. "What about the Phoenicians?" he asks. He should have looked that up while his mind was opened receptively toward the subject, and he would not have made so miserable a blunder as to connect them so closely with the Jews. He would never find a Jew doing that. It is permissible, however, in Jewish propaganda intended for Gentile consumption. The Phoenicians themselves certainly never thought they were connected in any way with the Jews, and the Jews were equally without light on the subject. If in nothing else, they differed in their attitude toward the sea. The Phoenicians not only built boats but manned them; the Jew would rather risk his investment in a boat than himself. In everything else the differences between the two peoples were deep and distinct. Mr. Brisbane should have turned up the Jewish Encyclopedia at that point in his dictation. It is to be hoped he will resume his study and when he has found something that is not printed in "simply written" Jewish books will give the world the benefit of it. It is hardly like the question of the rotundity of the earth; this Question is not settled and it will be discussed.
Mr. Brisbane is in a position to pursue some investigations of his own on this subject. He has a large staff, and it is presumed that some of its members are Gentiles of unbiased minds; he has a world-wide organization; since his own modification of speech and views following upon his adventure in the money-making world, he has a "look-in" upon certain groups of men and certain tendencies of power—why does he not take the Question as a world problem and go after the facts and the solution?
It is a task worthy of any newspaper organization. It will assist America to make the contribution which she must make if this Question is ever to be turned from the bugbear it has been through all the centuries. All the talk on earth about "loving our fellow men" will not serve in lieu of an investigation, because it is asking men to love those who are rapidly and insidiously gaining the mastery of them. "What's wrong with the Jew?" is the first question, and then, "What's wrong with the Gentile to make it possible?"
As in the case of every Gentile writer who appears as the Jew's good-natured defender, Mr. Brisbane is compelled to state a number of facts which comprise a part of the very Question whose existence is denied.
"Every other successful name you see in a great city is a Jewish name," says Mr. Brisbane. In his own city the ratio is even higher than that.
"Jews numbering less than one per cent of the earth's population possess by conquest, enterprise, industry and intelligence 50 per cent of the world's commercial success," says Mr. Brisbane.
Does it mean anything to Mr. Brisbane? Has he ever thought how it will all turn out? Is he willing to absolve that "success" from every quality which humanity has a right to challenge? Is he entirely satisfied with the way that "success" is used where it is supreme? Would he be willing to undertake to prove that it is due to those commendable qualities he has named and nothing less commendable? Speaking of the Jew-financed Harriman railroad campaign, is Mr. Brisbane ready to write his endorsement upon that? Did he ever hear of Jewish money backing railroads that were built for railroad purposes and nothing else?
It would be very easy to suggest to Mr. Brisbane, as editor, a series of articles which would be most enlightening, both to himself and his readers, if he would only put unbiased men at work gathering the facts for them.
One of the articles might be entitled "The Jews at the Peace Conference." His men should be instructed to learn who were the most prominent figures at the Peace Conference; who came and went most constantly and most busily; who were given freest access to the most important persons and chambers; which race provided the bulk of the private secretaries to the important personages there; which race provided most of the sentinels through whom engagements had to be made with men of note; which race went furthest in the endeavor to turn the whole proceeding into a festival rout by dances and lavish entertainment; which civilians of prominence oftenest dined the leading conferees in private session.
If Mr. Brisbane, with the genius for reporting which his organization deservedly has, will turn his men loose on that assignment, and then print what they bring him, he will have a story that will make a mark even in his remarkable career as an editor.
He might even run a second story on the Peace Conference, entitled, "Which Program Won at the Peace Conference?" He might instruct his men to inquire as to the business which brought the Jews in such quality and quantity to Paris, and how it was put through. Particularly should they inquire whether any jot or tittle of the Jews' world program was refused or modified by the Peace Conference. It should also be carefully inquired whether, after getting what they went after, they did not ask for still more and get that, too, even though it constituted a discrimination against the rest of the world. Mr. Brisbane would doubtless be surprised to learn that of all the programs submitted to that Conference, not excepting the great program on which humanity hung so many pathetic hopes, the only program to go through was the Jews' program. And yet he could learn just that if he inquired. The question is, having obtained that information, what would Mr. Brisbane do with it?
There are any number of lines of investigation Mr. Brisbane might enter, and in any one of them his knowledge of his country and of its relation to this particular Question would be greatly enlarged.
Does Mr. Brisbane know who owns Alaska? He may have been under the impression, in common with the rest of us until we learned better, that it was owned by the United States. No, it is owned by the same people who are coming rapidly to own the United States.
Is Mr. Brisbane, from the vantage point afforded by his position in national journalism, even dimly aware that there are elements in our industrial unrest which neither "capital" nor "labor" accurately define? Has he ever caught a glimpse of another power which is neither "labor" nor "capital" in the productive sense, whose purpose and interest it is to keep labor and capital as far apart as possible, now by provoking labor, now by provoking capital? In his study of the industrial situation and its perfectly baffling mystery, Mr. Brisbane must have caught a flash of something behind the backmost scene. It would be good journalistic enterprise to find out what it is.
Has Mr. Brisbane ever printed the name of the men who control the sugar supply of the United States—does he know them—would he like to know them?
Has he ever looked into the woolen situation in this country, from the change of ownership in cotton lands, and the deliberate sabotage of cotton production by banking threats, right on through to the change in the price of cloth and clothing? And has he ever noted the names of the men he found on that piece of investigation? Would he like to know how it is done, and who does it? Mr. Brisbane could find all these things and give them to the public by using his efficient staff of investigators and writers on this Question.
Whether Mr. Brisbane would feel free to do this, he himself best knows. There may be reasons why he would not, private reasons, prudential reasons.
However that may be, there are no reasons why he should not make a complete study of the Question—a real study, not a superficial glance at it with an eye to its "news value"—and arrive at his own considered conclusion. There would be no intolerance about that. As it is now, Mr. Brisbane is not qualified to take a stand on either side of the Question; he simply brushes it aside as troublesome, as the old planters used brush aside the anti-slavery moralists; and for that reason the recent defense of the Jew is not a defense at all. It is more like a bid for favor.
Mr. Brisbane's chief aversion, apparently, is toward what he calls race prejudice and race hatred. Of course, if any man should fear that the study of an economic situation would plunge him into these serious aberrations of mind, he should be advised to avoid that line of study. There is something wrong either with the investigation or with the investigator when prejudice and hatred are the result. It is a mighty poor excuse, however, for an intelligent man to put forward either on his own behalf or on behalf of those whose minds he has had the privilege of molding over a course of years.
Prejudice and hatred are the very conditions which a scientific study of the Jewish Question will forestall and prevent. We prejudge what we do not know, and we hate what we do not understand; the study of the Jewish Question will bring knowledge and insight, and not to the Gentile only, but also to the Jew. The Jew needs this as much, even more than the Gentile. For if the Jew can be made to see, understand, and deal with certain matters, then a large part of the Question vanishes in the solution of ideal common sense. Awaking the Gentile to the facts about the Jew is only part of the work; awaking the Jew to the facts about the Question is an indispensable part. The big initial victory to be achieved is to transform Gentiles from being mere attackers and to transform Jews from being mere defenders, both of them special pleaders for partisan views, and to turn them both into investigators. The investigation will show both Gentile and Jew at fault, and the road will then be clear for wisdom to work out a result, if there should perchance be that much wisdom left in the race.
There is a serious snare in all this plea for tolerance. Tolerance is first a tolerance of the truth. Tolerance is urged today for the sake of suppression. There can be no tolerance until there is first a full understanding of what is tolerated. Ignorance, suppression, silence, collusion—these are not tolerance. The Jew never has been really tolerated in the higher sense because he has never been understood. Mr. Brisbane does not assist the understanding of this people by reading a "simply written" book and flinging a few Jewish names about in a sea of type. He owes it to his own mind to get into the Question, whether he makes newspaper use of his discoveries or not.
As to the newspaper angle, it is impossible to report the world even superficially without coming everywhere against the fact of the Jews, and the Press gets around that fact by referring to them as Russians, Letts, Germans, and Englishmen. This mask of names is one of the most confusing elements in the whole problem. Names that actually name, statements that actually define are needed for the clarification of the world's mind.
Mr. Brisbane should study this question for the light such a study would throw on other matters with which he is concerned. It would be a help to that study if from time to time he would publish some of his findings, because such publication would put him in touch with a phase of Judaism which mere complimentary editorials could not. No doubt Mr. Brisbane has been deluged by communications which praise him for what he has written; the real eye-opener would come if he could get several bushels of the other kind. Nothing that has ever come to him could compare with what would come to him if he should publish even one of the facts he could discover by an independent investigation.
Having written about the Jews, Mr. Brisbane will probably have a readier eye henceforth for other men's pronouncements on the same subject. In his casual reading he will find more references to the Jew than he has ever noticed before. Some of them will probably appear in isolated sentences and paragraphs of his own papers. Sooner or later, every competent investigator and every honest writer strikes a trail that leads toward Jewish power in the world. THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT is only doing with system and detail what other publications have done or are doing piecemeal.
There is a real fear of the Jew upon the publicity sources of the United States—a fear which is felt and which ought to be analyzed. Unless it is a very great mistake, Mr. Brisbane himself has felt this fear, though it is quite possible he has not scrutinized it. It is not the fear of doing injustice to a race of people—all of us ought to have that honorable fear—it is the fear of doing anything at all with reference to them except unstintedly praising them. An independent investigation would convince Mr. Brisbane that a considerable modification of praise in favor of discriminate criticism is a course that is pressing upon American journalism.
[Issue of July 3, 1920.]