“And we warn Jews also, not for the first time. They are showing themselves not Englishmen of the Jewish faith, as we used to consider them, but a nation with a foreign policy of their own—and that policy hostile to the friends of England. And that is what in the end Englishmen will not stand.”
The three following documents are also of importance:
(a) An editorial article which appeared in the London Morning Post on April 8, 1919, entitled “Bolstering the Bolshevik.”
(b) A letter signed by Lionel Rothschild and nine other well-known British Jews to the editor of the London Morning Post, which practically justifies the stand that was taken by that paper.
(c) Comment on the two above-mentioned documents published in the American Jewish News on May 2, 1919.
We set forth in full these three documents.
(a) “Bolstering the Bolshevik
“The news from Russia fluctuates from day to day. It is now reported that the situation on the Murmansk Coast has somewhat improved; but the situation in Archangel is obviously critical. Our soldiers have driven off formidable attacks; but the fighting is close and desperate. From South Russia the Bolsheviks reported that Odessa had been captured, and although we may hope that if this is true the Allied forces were safely evacuated, there remains a terrible anxiety as to the fate which may have overtaken our devoted friends in South Russia. For these critical situations we do not blame the War Office; but we do blame Allied policy which has trifled with the whole situation and has alternated between large promises to our Allies and obsequious approaches to our enemies. We are informed that although the anti-Bolshevist Armies in Russia have been promised arms and supplies in abundance, what they have actually received has been contemptible. The result is that they are fighting almost naked and in many cases without arms. We may be certain both our soldiers and our allies in Russia are putting up a brave and desperate fight for their lives and their cause, but in these circumstances they must feel that they have been forgotten, if not betrayed, by those upon whom they looked for support. And so it is in Poland. We hear from trustworthy sources that the spirit of the Poles is magnificent. They are ready to become a strong and trusty support of the Allies upon the eastern borders of Germany; but they ask in vain for munitions, supplies and raw materials, and they see their vital communications with the Baltic left in the hands of their enemy and ours.
“Poland and Russia are one problem in this sense. We must support our friends if we are to defeat the Bolsheviks, and their secret abettors the Germans. For it is certain in that while Germany consistently suppresses Bolshevism in Germany she encourages it in Poland and Russia. But we are not supporting our friends. We promised them supplies which did not arrive, and political support which breaks down before German opposition. What is the reason of it? We notice that the Daily Herald and the Daily News are persistently telling the people of this country that we are fighting Bolshevism in obedience to the pressure of the capitalists. Now that is a lie. We are fighting Bolshevism in opposition to a very strong group of German-Jewish and Russian-Jewish capitalists, who are secretly working for the Bolshevist cause. Mr. Lansing may or may not be aware of the fact, but he is helping as corrupt a group of international financiers as ever lived. And the object of that group is to support Bolshevism in Russia in order to make a deal with the Bolsheviks. We have mentioned several times the disagreeable fact that the Russian Bolsheviks were Russian Jews. These Jews are at the present moment in control of the Russian Government and they have powerful friends in all the Allied countries who are helping them. We have appealed to the British Jews, but appealed so far in vain, to dissociate themselves formally from a cause which is doing the Jewish people terrible harm in all parts of the world. In reply the Jewish press shower upon us not only abuse but threats. Thus, for example, the Jewish World threatens us with the fate of Mordecai: ‘ ... we wish it no harm, but we would beg it to recollect,’ so it says, ‘while yet it has its feet upon the earth, the fate of its anti-Jewish forbear in that narrative, in the hope that it may mend its ways betimes.’
“We are aware of the significance of that threat. We fully understand what it means, and the secret Allies upon whom the Jewish World reckons when it makes it. We saw them at work in Glasgow and Belfast. We see them at work now in Budapest, where, it is reported, out of thirty members of the Bolshevik Soviet, twenty-six are Jews. We understand the threat, but we do not propose to be deterred in our duty to the British public by the terrorist methods of the Bolsheviks. And we suggest to the British Jewish community—most of whom, we believe, are by no means in sympathy with this crusade—that they are being served very badly in their newspapers, which openly threaten Bolshevik methods and scoff at advice which is tendered in a friendly spirit. In secret, we feel certain, the majority of the British, Jews distrust and dislike the fanatics who are now leading Jewry astray in the cause of a spurious Jewish Imperialism. But they are afraid to dissociate themselves publicly from the dervishes of Judaism. In the meantime these powerful influences are at work in every country, and chiefly in Paris, where they are working powerfully against the cause of Poland. An unseen hand is at this present time stifling the infant Poland in its cradle, and this is being done in the interests of German-Jewish Capitalism. It is a conspiracy which is assisted by so-called Liberal newspapers like the Daily News, and so-called Labor newspapers like the Daily World; but it is a conspiracy, nevertheless, which is directed against the cause of liberty in Poland and in the interests of alien Capitalism. For it remains true that our labor agitators, while they are the enemies of British Capital, contrive to be the friends of the Capitalism of the enemies of England. Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson—those champions of liberty—also appear to be more susceptible to the influence of an alien capitalism than to the cry for freedom of long enchained Poland. We ask our readers, who remember the traditional friendship of England with the Polish cause, to mark the note of anguish in Mr. Paderewski’s statement which we publish this morning. He speaks—and he speaks truly—of ‘the bitterness of the disappointment of the Polish population,’ but it is not only the Polish population that is disappointed by the great Danzig betrayal. Every student of Allied interests must see that, whereas a strong Poland might be a bulwark against both German militarism and Russian Bolshevism, a weak Poland must be the vassal of one and the victim of the other. As to the economic side of the question, British commerce may bid farewell to all hope of a connection in Poland if it leaves Poland in such a situation as to be the enforced dependent of Germany.”