It was thus in Switzerland that at the same time high initiates of Pan-German secret societies foregathered and that an active centre of pro-German, anti-Entente, and even Bolshevist propaganda was established. These Germans, although Monarchists themselves, co-operated with the secret revolutionary forces in stirring up trouble in the countries of the Allies. At the same time the conferences of the Second Internationale, attended by members of the British I.L.P. took place in Switzerland, and at one of these--the Berne Conference of 1919--the delegates were entertained by a mysterious "American" millionaire, John de Kay, living himself in great style, paying for press service at the rate of 2,000 francs a day, lavishing money on the conference, and at the same time subsidizing a Pacifist and Defeatest paper named La Feuille.
It is impossible, then, to ignore the role of Germany in the present outbreak of world revolution. In the British White Paper on Bolshevism in Russia we find it stated by an Englishman who had been through the whole of the Revolution in that country that:
The Germans initiated disturbances in order to reduce Russia to chaos. They printed masses of paper money to finance their schemes; the notes, of which I possess specimens, can be easily recognized by a special mark.[798]
What has Germany to say to all this? Simply that the promotion of Bolshevism was a military "necessity" in order to bring about the downfall of her opponents, but that the propaganda utilized by her was in reality of Jewish origin, and that Jewry, not Germany, was the real author of world revolution.
It is easy to see how such a theory can be made to serve the cause of Pan-Germanism. For if Germany can persuade us that the Jews alone were responsible for the war and were also the sole authors of Bolshevism, we shall naturally be led to the conclusion that Germany is, after all, innocent of the crimes attributed to her, and that our only safety lies in forgoing reparations, restoring her to her former power, and coalescing with her against a common enemy. We shall therefore do well to accept with extreme caution advice on the Jewish question emanating from German sources, and to test the sincerity of the spirit in which it is offered by considering the relations which have hitherto existed between the Germans and the Jews.
Now, Germany has long been the home of modern "anti-Semitism." Although in every country and at every period, but more particularly in the East of Europe during the last century, the Jews have suffered from unpopularity, it was Germany that organized this aversion into a definite plan of campaign. If in Russia, Galicia, and Poland the Jews have met with sporadic violence at the hands of the peasants, in Germany they have been systematically held up by the authorities to hatred and contempt. Luther, Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Treitschke, successively inveighed against the Jewish race. Jews were denied admission to masonic lodges and to the rank of officers in the army, whilst society excluded them up to the outbreak of war.
Yet the extraordinary fact remains that of all nations the Germans have always been the favourites of the Jews. Throughout the whole movement for the unification of Germany under the ægis of Prussia, Jews played a leading part, and in the recent war Germany found in them some of her most valuable allies. As Maximilian Harden recently pointed out: "The services of the Jews to Germany during the war were enormous. The patriotism of the Jews was beyond reproach, in many cases even ludicrous and offensive in its intensity." And in spite of "anti-Semitism," Harden declares: "There is a strong affinity between the German and the Jew."[799] To the Ashkenazim Germany even more than Palestine has appeared the Land of Promise. Thus some years before the war Professor Ludwig Geiger, leader of the Liberal Jews of Berlin, denounced "Zionist sophisms" in the words: "The German Jew who has a voice in German literature must, as he has been accustomed to for the last century and a half, look upon Germany alone as his fatherland, upon the German language as his mother-tongue, and the future of that nation must remain the only one upon which he bases his hopes."[800]
How are we to explain this unrequited devotion? Simply by the German policy of enlisting every dynamic force in her service. She has known how to use the Jews just as she has known how to use the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the Socialists for the purpose of Pan-Germanism. From Frederick the Great, who employed the Jew Ephraim to coin false money, to William II, who kept in touch with Rathenau by means of a private telephone wire, the rulers of Germany have always allowed them to co-operate in their schemes of world-domination. As the allies of Bismarck, who used them freely to fill his war-chests, the Jews directed the power of the secret societies in the interests of Germany; in 1871 the Jew Bloechreider acted as adviser to the new German Empire as to the best method of wresting indemnities from France. And Germany, whilst heaping insults on the Jews, nevertheless fulfils certain conditions essential to Jewish enterprise. Unlike England and France, she has never allowed herself to be seriously weakened by democratic ideas, and therefore to the Jews--as to British believers in autocracy--she represents the principle of stability.
Moreover, Germany as the home of militarism offers a wide field for Jewish speculation. We have only to couple together an aphorism of Mirabeau's with one of Werner Sombart's to perceive the bond of union between the two races, thus: "War is the national industry of Prussia" and "Wars are the Jews' harvests." As long ago as 1793 Anacharsis Clootz, the apostle of universal brotherhood and defender of the Jewish race, declared that if Germany were to be prevented from going to war the Jews must be persuaded to withdraw their support from her military adventures:
War could not begin or last in Germany without the activity, the intelligence, and the money of the Jews. Magazines and munitions of all kinds are provided by Hebrew capitalists and all the subaltern agents of military provisionment are of the same nation. We have only to come to an understanding with our brothers, the Rabbis, to produce astonishing, miraculous results.[801]