Chapter 1.2: Consolidating the Empire
by William III, bibliotecapleyades.netBank of England, World War I, RIIA and CFR, Opium Trade, First City
The House of Orange and the Bank of England
Like other enterprises with which the Rothschilds have been connected, the Bank of England has been a center of international intrigue and espionage since its founding in 1694. Although the Rothschilds did not become associated with the Bank until 1812, when Nathan Mayer Rothschild increased his fortune 6500 times by taking advantage of false rumors that somehow swept the London Stock Exchange, purporting that England had lost [to Napoleon] at Waterloo. The Bank of England originated in a revolution, when William III, Prince of Orange, drove King James II from the throne. Since the Bank of England Charter was granted by William in 1694, there has never been another revolt against the Crown. The royal family has been secure because the source of money, crucial to a revolution, has remained under control.
King Charles II had managed to retain a shaky position because of support from the Duke of Buckingham (George Villiers), and others whose first names formed the word "CABAL", introducing a new term for intrigue. His successor, James II, tried to placate the powerful lords of England, but even his longtime supporters, scenting a change of power, began secret negotiations with the Prince of Orange. Wilhelm I, Prince of Orange, had been married several times, to Anne of Saxony, Charlotte de Bourbon, and Princess de Coligny. Today, every ruling house of Europe, as well as those out of power, is a direct descendant of King William, including Queen Juliana of the Netherlands; Margaretha, Queen of Denmark; Olaf V of Norway; Gustaf of Sweden; Constantine of Greece; Prince Rainier of Monaco; and Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, whose son married the daughter of C. Douglas Dillon.
Lord Shrewsbury (Charles Talbot) had been given places by both Charles II and James II; nevertheless, he played a leading role in the revolution. He took 12,000 pounds to Holland to support William in 1688, returned with him, and was made secretary of state. Sidney Godolphin, one of James II's last adherents, joined with the Duke of Sunderland and the Duchess of Portsmouth in correspondence with William prior to his invasion of England, and was appointed head of the treasury by William. Henry Compton, Earl of Northampton, and Bishop of London, had been removed by James II; he signed the invitation to William to come to England; he was reinstated in his see in 1688; his son Francis became Lord Privy Seal.
John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, had entered into negotiations with the Prince of Orange in Oct. 1687, and expressed his readiness to support him in Aug. 1688. To allay James II's suspicions, Marlborough then signed a renewed oath of fidelity to him Nov. 10, 1688. On Nov. 24, 1688, he joined the forces of William of Orange.
Although William had married Mary, the daughter of James II, and had a legitimate claim to the throne of England, he could not take power as long as James II was on the throne. Therefore, he entered England with a force of 10,000 foot soldiers and 4000 horse, a small force with which to conquer a great kingdom. With him were Churchill, Bentinck, (the first Earl of Portland), Earl of Shrewsbury, and Lord Polwarth, whose descendant is a prominent member of the Anglo-American banking establishment. James II fled to the court of Louis XIV [in France] and was declared abdicated.
Marlborough, ancestor of Winston Churchill (whose former daughter-in-law, Pam Harriman, is the leading power in the Democratic Party) is described in "The Captain General", by Ivor Brown:
"The Commissioner of Public Accounts found that the Duke of Marlborough had accepted gifts amounting to some 60,000 pounds from Antonio Machado and Sir Solomon de Medina, contractors for bread and wagons for the army abroad, and 2 1/2% of all money allotted for payment of troops, some 175,000 pounds (later revised to 350,000 pounds)."
Marlborough claimed it had all been spent for intelligence, but witnesses testified he could not have spent more than 5000 pounds for this purpose in all of his campaigns. Donald Chandler's biography of Marlborough points out that "The bread contractors such as Solomon and Moses Medina, Mynheer Hecop, Solomon Abraham, Vanderkaa and Machado, were for the most part Spanish or Dutch Jews of varying reliability and venality." Chandler says that they consistently gave short weight or added sand to their corn sacks. For a number of years, Medina, as chief army contractor, contributed an annual commission of 6000 pounds a year to Marlborough as his rakeoff on army contracts.
In addition to his English supporters, who were previously loyal to King James II, William brought with him from Amsterdam the group of avaricious financiers who were also the suppliers of his armies. One of his first official acts was the conferring of knighthood on Solomon de Medina. Machado and Pereira provisioned his armies in Spain and Holland; Medina supplied Marborough in Flanders; Joseph Cortissot supplied Lord Galway in Spain, and Abraham Prado supplied the British army during the Seven Year War.
The most important act of William's reign was his granting of the charter of the Bank of England in 1694, although most of his biographers omit this salient fact. The concept of a central bank which would have the power of note issue, or issuing money, had already taken hold in Europe. The Bank of Amsterdam was started in 1609; its members aided William in his conquest of England. The Bank of Hamburg was chartered in 1619; the Bank of Sweden began the practice of issuing notes in 1661. These banks were chartered by financiers whose ancestors had been bankers in Venice and Genoa. As the tide of world power shifted northward in Europe, so did the financiers. The Warburgs of Hamburg had begun as the Abraham del Banco family, the largest bankers in Venice.
An interesting technique is revealed by the Charter of the Bank of England: it was slipped through as part of a tonnage bill, which was later to become a recognized parliamentary technique. The Charter provides that "rates and duties upon tonnage of ships are made security to such persons as shall voluntarily advance the sum of 1,500,000 pounds towards carrying on the war against France."
Other European banks, such as the Banks of Genoa, Venice and Amsterdam, were primarily banks of deposit, but the Bank of England began the practice of coining its own credit into money, the beginning of the monetarist movement. The Bank of England soon created a "new class" of moneyed interests in the City, as opposed to the power of the old barons, whose fortunes derived from their landholdings. Of the five hundred original stockholders, four hundred and fifty lived in London. This was the dawn of the preeminence of the "City", now the world's leading financial center. For this reason, the Rothschilds identified their key American banks with the code word "City".
Early descriptions of the shareholders of the Bank of England identify them as "a Society of about 1300 persons". They included the King and Queen of England, who received shares to the value of 10,000 pounds each; Marlborough, who invested 10,000 pounds -- he also invested large sums from his "commissions" in the East India Co. in 1697, and later became Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, which paid a 75% dividend; Lord Shrewsbury, who invested 10,000 pounds; Godolphin, who invested 7000 pounds -- he predicted that the Bank of England would not only finance trade, but would carry the burden of her wars, which was proven true in the next three hundred years. Virginia Cowles writes, in "The Great Marlborough": "England emerged from the war as the dominant force, because the Bank of England's credit system enabled her to bear the burden of war without undue strain."
Other charter subscribers were William Bentinck, later the first Earl of Portland, he had been a page in William of Orange's household, accompanied William to England in 1670 on his initial visit, handled the delicate negotiations of his marriage with Mary in 1677, and prepared the details of William's invasion of England. He was given the title of Earl of Portland, and became the most trusted agent of William's foreign policy. (In 1984, we find the 9th Duke, Cavendish-Bentinck, is chairman of Bayers UK Ltd, and Nuclear Chemie Mittchorpe GMBH, Germany; he also had a distinguished career in foreign service, joining the Foreign Office in 1922; he represented England at the successive Paris, Hague and Locarno conferences, was chairman of joint Intelligence for the Chiefs of Staff 1939-45, and Ambassador to Poland during the critical years of 1945-47, when that country was turned over to the Soviet Union, with England's surreptitious support.)
Other charter subscribers to the Bank of England were:
the Duke of Devonshire (William Cavendish) who built Chatsworth; he also had signed the invitation to William to assume the throne of England; he was High Steward at Anne's Coronation in 1702, and was said to lead a profligate private life -- (the present duke sold seven drawings in July 1984 for $9.2 million [and] the 11th Duke married Deborah Freeman-Mitford daughter of Baron Redesdale; his present brother-in-law, Baron Redesdale, is vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank)
the Duke of Leeds, Sir Thomas Osborne, who also signed the invitation to William -- he was lord high treasurer and had arranged the marriage of Mary. He was later impeached for receiving a large bribe to procure the charter of the East India Co. in 1691; because of his favored position at court the proceedings were never concluded, and he left one of the largest fortunes in England
the Earl of Pembroke, (Thomas Herbert), who became the first lord of the admiralty, and later lord privy seal
the Earl of Carnarvon, who is also Earl of Powis and Earl of Bradford
Lord Edward Russell, created Earl of Orford 1697; he had joined the service of William in 1683, was appointed treasurer of the Navy 1689, first lord of admiralty 1696-17, and lord justice 1697-1714 (Sir Robert Walpole, the famed British leader, was created Earl of Orford in the second creation)
William Paterson, usually credited with being the founder of the bank of England -- he was forced out within a year
Sir Theodore Janssen, who invested 10,000 pounds
Dr. Hugh Chamberlen
John Asgill, an eccentric writer and pamphleteer
Dr. Nicholas Barbon, son of Praisegod Barebones, who started the first insurance company in Great Britain
John Holland, a reputed Englishman who also started the Bank of Scotland in 1695
Michael Godfrey, who died at Namur, Belgium on his way to Antwerp to establish a branch of the Bank of England -- he was the first deputy governor of the Bank of England, and nephew of Sir Edward Godfrey, who was murdered by Titus Oakes in 1678
Sir John Houblon and twenty members of his family were also early stockholders; Sir John became lord of the admiralty, and Lord Mayor of London; his brother James was deputy governor of the Bank of England
Sir William Scawen
Sir Gilbert Heathcote, director of Bank of England 1699-1701, and from 1723-25; he was Sheriff and later Lord Mayor of London, founded the New East India Co. in 1693; his parsimony was ridiculed by Alexander Pope in his quatrains
Sir Charles Montague, first Earl of Halifax, and Chancellor of the Exchequer -- the present Earl is a director of Hambros Bank
Marquess Normandy, John Sheffield, also held the title of Duke of Buckingham -- he is buried in Westminster Abbey
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, comptroller of the royal household
Charles Chaplin
and the philosopher, John Locke.
In his "The Bank of England, A History", Sir John Clapham notes that by 1721, a number of Spanish and Portuguese Jews had been buying stock in the Bank of England -- Medina, two Da Costas, Fonseca, Henriquez, Mendez, Nunes, Roderiquez, Salvador Teixera de Mattes, Jacob and Theodore Jacobs, Moses and Jacob Abrabanel, Francis Pereira. Clapham notes that since 1751 there has been very little trading in Bank of England stock; it has been very closely held for more than two centuries.
The Bank of England has played a prominent role in American history -- without it, the United States would not exist. The American colonists considered themselves loyal Englishmen to a man, but when they began to enjoy unequalled prosperity by printing and circulating their own Colonial scrip, the stockholders of the Bank of England went to George III and informed him that their monopoly of interest-bearing notes in the colonies was at stake. He banned the scrip, with the result that there was an immediate depression in the commercial life of the Americas. This was the cause of the Rebellion; as Benjamin Franklin pointed out, the little tax on tea, amounting to about a dollar a year per American family, could have been borne, but the colonists could not survive the banning of their own money.
The Bank of England and the Rothschilds continued to play a dominant role in the commercial life of the United States, causing panics and depressions for the Rothschilds whenever their officials were instructed to do so. When the Second Bank of the United States expired in 1836, and President Jackson refused to renew it, [thus] creating great prosperity in the United States when government funds were deposited in other banks, the Rothschilds punished the upstarts by causing the Panic of 1837. As Henry Clews writes in "Twenty-Eight Years on Wall Street", p. 157: "The Panic of 1837 was aggravated by the Bank of England when it in one day threw out all the paper connected with the United States."
By refusing to credit American notes and stocks, the Bank of England created financial panic among the holders of that paper. The panic enabled Rothschild's agents, Peabody and Belmont, to reap a fortune in buying up depreciated stocks during the panic.
The Bank of England has played a prominent role in wars, revolutions, and espionage, as well as business panics. When Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815, the London gold market jumped overnight from 4lb.6d to 5lb.7d. The leading buyer was Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who was under orders from the British Treasury to dispatch gold to the Duke of Wellington, grouping to stop Napoleon. After Waterloo, the price of gold dropped.
During the twentieth century, the most important name at the Bank of England was Lord Montagu Norman. His grandfather, George Warde Norman, had been governor of the Bank of England from 1821-1872, longer than any other man; his other grandfather, Lord Collet, was Governor of the Bank of England from 1887-89, and managing partner of Brown Shipley Co. in London for twenty-five years.
In 1894, Montague Norman was sent to New York to work in the offices of Brown Brothers; he was befriended by the W.A. Delano family, and lived with the Markoe family, partners of Brown Bros. In 1907, Norman was elected to the Court of the Bank of England. In 1912, he had a severe nervous breakdown, and was treated by [Carl] Jung in Switzerland. He became deputy governor of the Bank of England in 1916, and later served until 1944 as Governor. The Wall Street Journal wrote of him in 1927:
"Mr. M. Collet Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, is now head and shoulders above all other British bankers. No other British banker has ever been as independent and supreme in the world of British finance as Mr. Norman is today. He has just been elected Governor for the eighth year in succession. Before the war, no Governor was allowed to hold office for more than two years; but Mr. Norman has broken all precedents. He runs his Bank and his Treasury as well. He appears to have no associations except his employees. He gives no interviews. He leaves the British financial world wholly in the thick as to his plans and ideas."
The idea that one individual ran the Bank of England to suit himself, with no influences, is too ridiculous to be considered. What about the Rothschilds? What about the other shareholders? Carroll Quigley, in "Tragedy and Hope" notes that: "M. Norman said, 'I hold the hegemony of the currency.' -- He is called the currency dictator of Europe."
Lionel Fraser of J. Henry Schroder Wagg notes in his autobiography, "All to the Good", that he was in charge of Lord Norman's personal investments. He also notes of the firm of Helbert Wagg, former jewelers from Halberstadt and now a London banking house (later J. Henry Schroder Wagg), "The firm was official brokers on Stock Exchange to the great and all powerful House of Rothschild." Both Wagg and Schroder had been in business in London for 159 years when they merged in 1960. Another writer notes that Lord Norman frequently consulted with J.P. Morgan before making his Bank of England decisions.
Gordon Richardson, chairman of J. Henry Schroder from 1962-72, then became Governor of the Bank of England from 1972-83, when he was succeeded by Robert Leigh-Pemberton, chairman of the National Westminister Bank, also director of Equitable -- he married into the Cecil-Burghley family.
The present directors of the Bank of England are:
G.W. McMahon, deputy governor since 1964, economic analyst Treasury 1953-57, adviser British Embassy Washington 1957-60
Sir Adrian Cadbury, chairman Cadbury Schweppes, dir. IBM UK
Leopold de Rothschild, N.M. Rothschild and Sons, etc.
George V. Blunden, exec. dir. Bank of England since 1947, served with IMF 1955-58
A.D. Lochnis, dir. J. Henry Schroder Wagg
G.A. Drain, member Trilateral Commission, treasurer European Movement, Franco-British Council, British North American Committee, lawyer for many unions and health associations
Sir Jasper Hollom, has been on the board since 1936
D.G. Scholey, chairman S.G. Warburg Co., Orion Insurance, Union Discount of London, Mercury Securities, which now owns S.G. Warburg Co. Irwin Holdings
J.M. Clay, dep. chairman Hambros Bank, chairman Johnson and Firth Brown Ltd
Hambros Life Assurance
Sir David Steel, chairman British Petroleum, dir. Kuwait Oil Co., The Wellcome Trust, trustee The Economist (whose chairman is Evelyn de Rothschild)
Lord Nelson of Stafford, chairman GE Ltd. chairman Royal Worcester Co., Natl. Bank of Australasia, International Nickel, British Aircraft, English Electric, Marconi Ltd. chairman World Power Conference, Worshipful Co. of Goldsmiths, Middle Eastern Assn
Lord Weir, chairman The Weir Group, chairman Great Northern Investment Trust
E.A.J. George, exec. dir Bank of England, dir. Gilt-Edged Division Bank of England, IMF 1972-72, Bank for International Settlements 1966-69
Sir Hector Laing, chairman United Biscuit, Allied Lyons, Royal Insurance
Sir Alastair Pilkington, chairman Pilkington Bros. Glass, dir. British Petroleum, British Railways Board.
The Bank of England also dominates the Bank of Scotland, whose chairman is Robert Bruce, Lord Balfour; his title Balfour of Burleigh was created in 1607; he is manager of English Electric and Viking Oil; he married the daughter of magnate E.S. Manasseh. Directors of Bank of Scotland include Lord Clydesmuir, also dir. Barclays Bank, and Rt. Hon. Lord Polwarth, director of Halliburton, which interlocks with the Rothschild First City Bank of Houston and Citibank, Imperial Chemical Industries, Canadian Pacific, and Brown and Root Wimpey Highland Fabricators, which interlocks with George Wimpey PLC, largest construction firm in the British Empire, whose 44 companies have revenues of 1.2 billion pounds per year. Lord Polwarth's daughter married Baron Moran, High Commissioner of Canada, who previously served as Ambassador to Hungary and to Chad; Baron Moran's daughter married Baron Mountevans, manager of Consolidated Goldfields.
Directors of George Wimpey PLC included S.S. Jardine; Viscount Hood, who is chairman Petrofina UK, and director J. Henry Schroder Wagg, and Union Miniere; and Sir Joseph Latham, chairman Ariel International, director Deutsches Kreditbank.
Wimpey Co. interlocks with Schroder Ltd, parent of J. Henry Schroder Wagg. The Earl of Airlie (David Ogilvy) is chairman of Schroder; he married Virginia Ryan, grand-daughter of Otto Kahn and Thomas Fortune Ryan; The Earl is also director of Royal Bank of Scotland; directors of Schroder include Lord Franks, director of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rhodes Trust, and Kennedy Center; he is a former Ambassador to the United States; G.W. Mallinkrodt; Sir E.G. Woodruffe of Unlever; and Daniel Janssen of the Bank of England.
The Merchants of Death and World War I
One of the great Rothschild hoaxes was the "disarmament movement" of the early 1930s. The idea was not to disarm, but to persuade the nations to junk what arms they had so they could later be sold new ones. "The merchants of death", as they were popularly known in those days, were never more than errand boys for their true masters, "the bankers of death", or, as they were also known, "the Brotherhood of Death".
In 1897, Vickers, in which Rothschilds had the largest holding, bought Naval Construction and Armament Co., and Maxim Nordenfeldt Guns & Ammunition Co. The new Vickers-Maxim Co. was able to test its products in the Spanish-American War, which was set off by J. & W. Seligman Co. to obtain the white gold (sugar) of Cuba; the Boer War of 1899-1901, to seize the gold and diamond fields of the Witwatersrand, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, designed to weaken the Czar and make the Communist Revolution inevitable. These three wars provided the excuse for tooling up for the mass production of World Wars I & II. In 1897, an international power trust was formed, consisting of DuPont, Nobel, Koln, and Kottweiler, which divided the world into four distinct sales territories.
The chairman of Vickers, Sir Herbert Lawrence, was director of Sun Assurance Office Ltd; Sun Life Assurance, and chairman the London committee of the Ottoman Bank; directors included Sir Otto Niemeyer, director of the Bank of England, and the Anglo International Bank; S. Loewe, the German arms magnate, Loewe & Co.; Sir Vincent Caillard, President of the Ottoman Debt Council, financial expert on the Near East; and Sir Basil Zaharoff, the "mystery man of Europe".
The highwater mark of "the merchants of death" hoax was reached in the Nye Committee Hearings of 1934, copies of which are invariably missing in government libraries. Alger Hiss was investigator and counsel for the Committee. Typical was Chairman Nye's questioning of Mr. Carse of the Electric Boat Co. (a subsidiary of Vickers):
Chairman NYE: In 1917, Mr. Carse, you drafted a letter to help Zaharoff avoid paying income tax on your commissions to him of $766,852. There is Exhibit 24, a letter dated Sept. 21, 1917, addressed to Mr. H.C. Sheridan, Washington, D.C. Who is Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Carse ?
CARSE: He owns the Hotel Washington. At that time he was the agent of Vickers Ltd. in this country, and he was also a representative of Zaharoff. Mr Sheridan handled Mr. Zaharoff's income tax with White and Case.
CHMN: Did you know that this was false, that this omission of a million dollars referred to was actually Sir Basil Zaharoff's income ?
CARSE: No, I did not know anything about Zaharoff's income.
CHMN: But you have told us that a letter by Zaharoff six weeks earlier that 82,000 francs he received was his own personal income.
CARSE: I do not know what Zaharoff did in his business. He did not tell me.
CHMN: Did Zaharoff succeed in escaping the payment of income tax to the United States ?
CARSE: I believe there was some settlement made. Sheridan handled it..... Zaharoff was never a stockholder insofar as I ever knew. The men who handle very large stock do not put the stock in their own names.
CHMN: Zaharoff wrote to you 19 May, 1925: 'I desire no thanks for what I have done, because I am bound to attend to the interest of my firm of Vickers and the Electric Boat Co. in both of which I am a stockholder.'
CARSE: I know he told me that, but I was never able to trace anything."
Sen. Clark then pursued questioning on how the armaments firms and oil companies promoted wars:
CLARK: So this whole occasion of arming Peru, and of the revolution in Bolivia on the basis of arming against Chile was based on erroneous rumor ?
MR. SPEZAR: That is my impression.
CLARK: You wanted to interest the large oil companies in financing an armament program for South America
CARSE: I was willing to present any proposition the government might approve with regard to any oil companies which might be interested.
The Nye Committee frequently came back to Zaharoff's activities, referring to him as "a kind of superspy in high social and influential circles". For many years he exercised great influence on Prime Minister Lloyd George of England. Zaharoff, who began his career as a brothel tout and underworld tough, arranged for Lloyd George to have an affair with Zaharoff's wife.
Arthur Maundy Gregory, an associate of Lloyd George, was also a Zaharoff agent. Maundy Gregory for many years regularly peddled peerages in London clubs; knighthoods, not hereditary, were 10,000-12,000 lbs.; baronetcies went for as high as 40,000 lb., of which he paid Lloyd George a standard 5000 lb. each. Maundy Gregory was also closely associated with Sir Basil Thompson in British counter-espionage.
Zaharoff, who was born in 1851 in Constantinople, married one Emily Ann Burrows of Knightsbridge. Maundy Gregory then introduced Emily Ann to the [sexually] insatiable Lloyd George. From that time on, he was at Zaharoff's mercy. Although Zaharoff was closely associated with Lloyd George throughout World War I until 1922, when their association effectively ended Lloyd George's political career, the name Zaharoff appears nowhere in Lloyd George's extensive Memoirs. Lloyd George's political career came to an end after Zaharoff persuaded him to help the Greeks against Turkey in 1920, a disastrous adventure which brought about Lloyd George's downfall from political power. George Donald McCormick, in "The Mask of Merlin", the definitive work on Lloyd George, states:
"Zaharoff kept him (Lloyd George) closely informed on the Balkans. During the war, Zaharoff was sent on various secret missions by Lloyd George. The Big Three, Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau, met in Zaharoff's home in Paris. On one occasion, Zaharoff went to Germany (in 1917) on Lloyd George's personal instructions, disguised in the uniform of a Bulgarian Army doctor. Clemenceau later said, 'The information which Zaharoff secured in Germany for Lloyd George was the most important piece of intelligence of the whole war.'"
Zaharoff was awarded the Order of British Empire in 1918 for this mission. McCormick also notes, "Zaharoff had interests in Briey furnaces of the Comite des Forges. Throughout the war no action was taken against Briey or nearby Thionville, a German area vital to the German army. Orders to bombard Briey were cancelled on orders of Zaharoff." M. Barthe protested this event in a speech to the French Parliament January 24, 1919.
McCormick found that Zaharoff had made some interesting confessions to close associates. He boasted to Rosita Forbes, "I made wars so that I could sell arms to both sides." He offered astute political advice to Sir Robert Lord Boothby, "Begin on the left in politics, and then, if necessary, work over to the right. Remember it is sometimes necessary to kick off the ladder those who have helped you to climb it."
In addition to his Vickers and Electric Boat stock, Zaharoff had large holdings in other armaments manufacturers, Krupp and Skoda. The Skoda Works of Czechoslavakia were controlled by the powerful Schneider family of Schneider-Creusot, headed by Eugene Schneider, whose grand-daughter married the present Duke of Bedford. The Nye Committee found that Vickers interlocked with Brown Boveri of Switzerland, Fokker, Banque Ottomane, Mitsui, Schneider, and ten other armaments firms around the world. Vickers set up a torpedo manufacturing firm, Societe Francasies des Torpilles Whitehead, with the former Whitehead Co., whose owner, James B. Whitehead, then became English Ambassador to France. Frau Margareta von Bismarck was a director of Societe Francasies, as was Count Edgar Hoyos of Fiume.
At its peak in the 1930s, the Vickers network included Harvey Steel, Chas. Cammell & co. shipbuilding, John Brown & Co., Krupp and Dillinger of Germany, Terni Co. of Italy, Bethehem Steel and Electric Boat in the U.S., Schneider, Chatillon Steel, Nobel Dynamite Trust, and Chilworth Gunpowder Co. The trustee for the debentures of the armaments firms was Royal Exchange Assurance Co. of London, of which E. Roland Harriman of Brown Bros Harriman was a director.
As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill obligingly changed the fuel of the entire English fleet from coal to oil, as a favor to the Samuel family which owned Royal Dutch Shell.
The most revealing works on the armaments dealers, the Nye Committee Hearings, and "Merchants of Death" are now fifty years old. On p. 167 of "Merchants" we find that:
"The Societe Miniere de Penarroya controls the most important lead mines of the world, accounting for one-eighth of the world's production. Since 1833 the French bankers, the Rothschilds, have controlled these mines, but in 1909 the Rothschild Bank entered into an alliance with the Metallgeschaft of Frankfurt, the company in which both the Kaiser and Krupp were heavily interested. This company remained under German and French control for about two years of the war. At the outbreak of hostilities, 150,000 tons of lead were shipped from these mines to Germany, via Switzerland. When shipments to France were resumed, the price was raised to such an extent that it more than doubled the price which the English paid for their lead. Free trade between Germany and France in important chemicals, for powder, etc. continued; the Swiss supplied both sides with electric power. All along their frontier great powerhouses sprang into being, facing Germany from Italy, producing iron, bauxite, chemicals and power. Zeiss products were exported to Britain throughout the war."
Dr. Ellis Powell told an audience at Queens Hall, London, March 4, 1917:
"At the beginning of the war many thousands of German reservists were allowed to return to Germany although our Fleet could have stopped them. German individuals, firms and companies went on trading merrily in British names, collecting their debts, and indirectly, no doubt, financing German militarism. At the very moment when Germans were destroying our property by Zeppelin bombs we were actually paying them money instead of taking their holdings as part compensation for damage done. In January 1915 came the vicious decision by Lord Reading (Rufus Isaacs) and the Appeal Court, according to which the Kaiser and Little William Co. was a good British company, capable of suing the King's own subjects in the King's own courts .... The uninterrupted activity in this country of the Frankfurt Metal Octopus is not an accident ... Let me analyze one lurid case, which has stirred public indignation and anger to its depths. I mean the impudent survival of the German banks. We have now been at war nearly three years. Yet their doors are still open. They sent large quantities of bullion to Germany after the war started."
There was a remarkable amount of goodwill and free trade continuing during World War I among the warring nations. Of course the Americans did not wish to be left out of the great outpouring of 'goodwill' in which forty million people were killed. It was not enough that the Americans were financing the war through their Federal Reserve System and the personal income tax, which, as Cordell Hull so aptly put it in his Memoirs, "had been passed in the nick of time" before the outbreak of the war; nor was it enough that the Americans were feeding the "Belgians", actually the Germans, through the Belgian Relief Commission, so that the war could be prolonged until the United States became a belligerent. Concerned Americans dedicated themselves to the proposition that American boys should be killed in the trenches with the British, the French, the Germans and other nationalites.
The warmongers set up three principal organizations to force the United States into World War I -- the Council on National Defense, the Navy League, and the League to Enforce Peace. The Council on National Defense was authorized by act of Congress August, 1916, although there was no nation on earth known to be contemplating any attack on the United States.
Pancho Villa had led a small group of bandits against Columbus, New Mexico, but this raid was hardly an occasion for national mobilization. It was a retaliatory strike because of the actions of New York bankers in Mexico -- the Warburgs held the bonds of the National Railways of Mexico; George F. Peabody and Eugene Meyer and Cleveland H. Dodge owned the copper mines of Mexico; Seligman & Co. owned Electric Power and Light of Mexico. The Mexican Revolution was an uprising against President Porfirio Diaz, who had collaborated profitably with the Warburgs and Rockefellers for years. Percy N. Furber, president of the Oil Fields of Mexico Ltd. told C.W. Barron:
"The Mexican Revolution was really caused by H. Clay Pierce, who owned 35% of Pierce-Waters Oil Co.; Standard Oil owned the other 65%. He wanted to get my property. He demanded of Diaz that he should take off the taxes on oil imports so that Standard Oil could bring in products from the U.S. Diaz refused."
Furber said that he put up the money for Francisco Madero to oust Diaz. Madero was then murdered by Victoriano Huerta, the pawn of Lord Cowdray, head of British oil interests in Mexico. In the resulting chaos, Villa and Zapata came to the fore, resulting in the Columbus raid.
The Council on National Defense was chaired by Daniel Willard, pres. B&O Railroad. Other members were:
Bernard Baruch
Julius Rosenwald
Samuel Gompers
Walter S. Gifford, president of AT & T, also director Commission on Industrial Preparedness
Hollis Godfrey, pres. of Drexel Institute, married to a Lawrence of Boston
Howard Coffin, pres. of Hudson Motor Car Co.
Coffin's secretary, Grosvenor Clarkson, ran the Council. Godfrey claims in "Who's Who" that the Council was actually created by himself, Howard Coffin and Elihu Root.
The principals of the Navy League were J.P. Morgan of U.S. Steel, Charles Schwab of Bethlehem Steel, Col. R.M. Thompson of International Nickel, and B.F. Tracy, attorney for the Carnegie Steel Co.
The principals of the League to Enforce Peace were Elihu Root, J.P. Morgan's lawyer; Lincoln Filene; Oscar Straus; John Hays Hammond, who had been sentenced to death for revolutionary activity in South Africa; Isaac Seligman; Perry Belmont, the official representative of the Rothschilds, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. The watchword of these millionaire bakers was "preparedness", and Asst. Sec of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt was already letting large Navy contracts in 1916, a year before we got into the war.
Col. House wrote to President Wilson from London on May 29, 1914, "Whenever England consents, France and Russia will close in on Germany and Austria."
While preparing for war, Woodrow Wilson campaigned in 1916 on the slogan, "He kept us out of war". H.C. Peterson notes in "Propaganda for War", Univ. Oklahoma Press, 1939: "To a large extent, the 9 million people who voted for Wilson did so because of the phrase, 'He kept us out of war'." Col. House later told Viereck that Wilson had concluded an agreement with the British in 1916, long before his campaign, to involve us in the war. Roosevelt repeated the process in 1939 [prior to WW2].
When we went into World War I, Wilson appointed his campaign fundraiser, Bernard Baruch, head of the War Industries Board. Baruch was later investigated by the Graham Committee. He testified, "I probably had more power than perhaps any other man did in the war; doubtless that is true." He said of his prewar actions:
"I asked for an interview with the President. I explained to him as earnestly as I could that I was deeply concerned about the necessity of the mobilisation of the industries of the country. The President listened very attentively and graciously, as he always does, and the next thing I heard, some months afterward, my attention was brought to this Council of National Defense."
"MR. GRAHAM: Did the President express any opinion about the advisability of adopting the scheme you proposed ?
BARUCH: I think I did most of the talking.
GRAHAM: Did you impress him with your belief that we were going to get into the war ?
BARUCH: I probably did.
GRAHAM: That was your opinion at the time ?
BARUCH: Yes. I thought we were going to get into the war. I thought a war was coming long before it did.
MR. JEFFRIES: Then the system you did adopt did not give the Lukens Steel & Iron Co. the amount of profit that the low-producing companies did ?
BARUCH: No, but we took 80% away from the others.
MR. JEFFRIES: The law did that, didn't it ?
BARUCH: The government did that.
GRAHAM: What did you mean by the use of the word 'we'?
BARUCH: The government did that -- excuse me, but I meant we, the Congress.
GRAHAM: You meant that the Congress passed a law covering that.
BARUCH: Yes, sir.
GRAHAM: Did you have anything to do with that ?
BARUCH: Not a thing.
GRAHAM: Then I would not use the word 'we' if I were you."
Although Baruch played a crucial role in funding Wilson's campaign, in 1916, he had not ignored Wilson's almost successful opponent, Charles Evans Hughes. Carter Field points out, in his biography of Baruch:
"My personal view is that Baruch would have been tremendously important in the Hughes election, if Hughes had been elected in the close election of 1916, both in the conduct of the war and in the making of the peace." Field continues, "Under this curious cloak of anonymity, Baruch exercised a very unusual type of political power in those early Wilson days. He was cultivated by most of the Wilson lights, who speedily found out that he could do more for them than they could do by directly appealing to Wilson. Naturally, there was no publicity for all this."
Field also says, "For one thing, Wilson not only loved Baruch, he ADMIRED him. Mrs. Wilson makes this specific statement in her Memoirs."
Wilson's relations with others were not always marked by such deep affection. David Lawrence, in his biography of Wilson, "The True Story of Woodrow Wilson", notes that in June, 1907, former President Grover Cleveland, a trustee of Princeton, publicly denounced Wilson's plans to alter the character of the school, making a "bitter attack". Cleveland had come to live in Princeton after he left the White House, and was deeply attached to the university. He died in the summer of 1908. That fall, when Wilson, as president of the school, made his annual opening speech, he made no mention of Cleveland's death, nor did he ever schedule a memorial exercise, as was the custom when a trustee passed away.
The Baruch War Industries Board (WIB) is particularly important to the present work, not only because of the dictatorial power exercised by Baruch during the war years, but because the WIB members have continued to govern the United States. From WIB and the American Commission to Negotiate the Peace came the Brookings Institution, which set national priorities for fifty years, NRA [National Recovery Administration] and the entire Roosevelt administration, and World War II.
Working with Baruch at the WIB was:
Asst. chairman, Clarence Dillon of Dillon, Read
Robert S. Brookings, chairman Price Fixing Committee of WIB, later founded the Brookings Institution
Felix Frankfurter, chairman of the War Policies Labor Board
Herbert Hoover and T.F. Whitmarsh of the U.S. Food Administration
H.B. Swope, publicity agent for Baruch
Harrison Williams
Albert Ritchie, later Gov. of Maryland
Gen. Goethals
and Rear Adm. F.F. Fletcher
Goethals was replaced by Gen. Pierce, who was then replaced by Gen. Hugh Johnson, who became Baruch's righthand man for many years. Field tells us that "Gen. Hugh Johnson stayed on Baruch's payroll for two months after he became head of NRA (during the New Deal)." Field quotes Woodrow Wilson as having Baruch at the WIB, "Let the manufacturer see the club behind your door." Baruch told the Graham Committee, "We fixed prices with the aid of potential Federal compulsion."
Left out in the Baruch-Wilson mutual esteem society was William Jennings Bryan, longtime head of the Democratic Party. Bryan not only opposed our entry into World War I -- he dared to criticise the family which had organized the war, the Rothschilds. Because he dared to mention the Rothschilds, Bryan was promptly denounced as "anti-Semitic". He responded:
"Our opponents have sometimes tried to make it appear that we were attacking a race when we denounced the financial policy of the Rothschilds. But we are not -- we are as much opposed to the financial policy of J.P. Morgan as we are to the financial policy of the Rothschilds."
Because of the secret planning needed to launch a major war, control of the communications media was essential. Kent Cooper, president of the Associated Press, notes in Life, Nov. 13, 1944, "Freedom of Information":
"Before and during the First World War, the great German news agency Wolff was owned by the European banking house of Rothschild, which had its central headquarters in Berlin. A leading member of the firm was also kaiser Wilhelm's personal banker (Max Warburg). What actually happened in Imperial Germany was that the Kaiser used Wolff to bind and excite his people to such a degree that they were eager for World War I. Twenty years later under Hitler the pattern was repeated and enormously magnified by DNB, Wolff's successors."
Cooper later noted in his autobiography, "Barriers Down": "...international bankers under the House of Rothschild acquired an interest in the three leading European agencies. (Havas, France; Reuters, England; Wolff, Germany)."
On April 28, 1915, Baron Herbert de Reuter, Chief of the Reuters Agency, shot himself. The cause was the crash of the Reuters Bank, which had been organized by Baron Julius de Reuter, founder of Reuter's, to handle foreign remittances without their being subjected to any accounting. He was succeeded by Sir Roderick Jones, who says in his autobiography, "Shortly after I succeeded Baron Herbert de Reuter in 1915, it so happened that I received an invitation from Mr. Alfred Rothschild, then head of the British House of Rothschild, to lunch with him in historic New Court, in the City." Jones prudently refrains from telling us what was discussed at this meeting.
Only one member of Congress voted against the U.S. declaration of war against Germany in World War I, Jeanette Rankin. She was also the only member of Congress to vote against our entry into World War II. Opponents of Wilson's action were often beaten and imprisoned. Eugene Debs was sentenced to a long prison term. Congressman Charles Lindbergh [Sr.] ran for Governor of Minnesota on a platform opposing our participation in the war. The New York Times regularly ran scathing denunciations of his campaign. On June 9, 1918, it noted, "Rep. Clarence H. Miller denounced Lindbergh and the Non Partisan League as seditious. 'According to Mr. Lindbergh the Liberty Loan is an instrument devised by the money sharks. It seems inexcusable that any person allowed to be at large in the United States could entertain or epxress such a view of this.'" Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times states:
"I have searched out the records and they show that mobs trailed Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. during his 1918 campaign for the Republican nomination for the Minnesota governorship. He was arrested on charges of conspiracy along with the Non Partisan Leaguers; a rally at Madison, Minn. was broken up with firehoses; he was hanged in effigy in Red Wing, dragged from the speaker's platform, threatened with lynching, and he escaped from town amid a volley of shots."
Salisbury neglects to mention that a squad of Federal agents from the Bureau of Investigation, led by J. Edgar Hoover on his first important action, attacked Lindbergh and his family, dragged out all the copies of Lindbergh's "Your Country at War", and burned them on the lawn; when young Charles rushed forward to stomp out the fire, Hoover knocked him down.
In the summer of 1917, Woodrow Wilson named Col. House to head the American War Mission to the Inter-Allied War Conference, the first such American mission to a European council. With House were his son-in-law, Gordon Auchincloss, and Paul Cravath, Kuhn Loeb's lawyer. Auchincloss was director of Chase Natl. Bank, Solvay, Sofina, and Gross & Blackwell.
Meanwhile, Walter Lippmann and another group were busily working on the plans for the League of Nations. Lippmann had founded the American branch of the Fabian Society in 1905 as the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which later became the Students for a Democratic Society after a period when it was known as the League for Industrial Democracy. James T. Shotwell and other internationalists worked with Lippmann on this organization.
Although the war was going well for those who had promoted it, hostilities were ended somewhat abruptly by the unforeseen intervention of an aide to the Czar of Russia, Maj. Gen. Count Cherep-Spiridovich, who says:
"I had a long discussion with Gen. McDonough, Chief of the War Intelligence Dept. in London; I submitted on Sept. 1, 1918 a report advising him peace with Bulgaria would provoke an uprising in Slavic Austria, panic in Germany and surrender of her armies; my advice was accepted; two weeks later peace was signed with Bulgaria, two weeks later Austria was out of the war, two weeks later Germany surrendered."
L.L. Strauss of Kuhn, Loeb Co. states he was one of four American delegates who conferred with the Germans at Brussels in March 1919 on the final armistice. On Nov. 11, 1918, the New York Times headlined, "REDS GRIP ON GERMANY: K�nigsberg, Frankfurt-on-Main, Strassburg now controlled by Spartacist Soviets". On Nov. 12, 1918, the New York Times stated, "The revolution in Germany is today, to all intents and purposes, an accomplished fact."
On the same day, the New York Times headlined, "Splendor Reigns Again; Jewels Ablaze". The occasion was a gala evening at the Metropolitan Opera, with Caruso and Homer signing Samson and Delilah. Attending were the Otto Kahns with the French Consul-General; the George F. Bakers and his sister Mrs. Goadby Loew; Cornelius Vanderbilt and his daughters; the Whitneys, the J.P. Morgans, and the E.T. Stotesburys; the Fricks; Mrs. Bernard Baruch -- her husband was in Europe on important business; Mrs. Adolf Ladenburg. These celebrants were also the principal investors in American International Corporation, which was financing the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
[Also see: "Wall St. and the Bolshevik Revolution" --ed]
The American Commission to Negotiate Peace predictably included Walter Lippmann, the Dulles brothers, the Warburg brothers (Paul from the U.S., Max from Germany), L.L. Strauss, Thomas W. Lamont, as well as Col. House, Wilson and Wilson's Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, the Dulles' uncle.
Their geni
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