Notes on Belloc’s Life
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was born near Paris; a typical brief biography says ‘his mother settled in Sussex’ in 1878—leaving the implications unclear. In 1892—that is, at an age when most university men had graduated—he entered Balliol and won ‘1st Class in Honour History Schools’. He became something like a professional Roman Catholic, and seems to have been a lifelong believer in such things as the ‘Fall of Man’ and ‘Hell’. His Survivals and New Arrivals (1929) shows that he believed the Catholic Church was unlike any other institution, and had remained unchanged over the period of its existence, which he dated from ‘Jesus Christ’. As with many intensively-propagandised persons, he could never bring himself to investigate his own elements and axioms. My personal belief, unsupported by documentary evidence, is that he hoped to become something like a reverse Martin Luther, reconquering England for the Faith after a period of persecution. He is Eurocentric, as I suppose is necessary for any convinced Roman Catholic.
. . . .His political ideal was a vaguely-defined ‘agrarian distributist’ society, perhaps based on France—he liked the idea of a robust, but not too bright, self-sufficient peasantry, who however wouldn’t mind paying a percentage to support their very own bishop, and with the Church holding a ‘special position’ in education. He had a perhaps characteristically Catholic attitude to war, having little objection to wiping out defenceless people (‘Whatever happens we have got/ The Maxim gun, and they have not.’) He disliked ‘industrial capitalism’, and considered places like Huddersfield an ultimate horror, so it’s not clear where this weaponry was supposed to come from: possibly he thought village blacksmiths could make it. He thought candlelight was natural. He had interesting things to say about sailing.
. . . .Belloc became a British subject in 1902, perhaps to enter Parliament. He stood as a Liberal in 1906, but I’m not sure if he was elected. His writings betray considerable distaste for that institution (Mr Clutterbuck’s Election, 1908; A Change in the Cabinet, 1909; The Party System (with C Chesterton) 1911) but I could never quite work out what his objections were.
. . . .Belloc had little grasp of science—on p. 297 of The Jews Belloc painstakingly points out that diamond and coal are not the same; somewhere else he says that alcohol in the chemical sense doesn’t exist. But he did at least have a theory of science, namely, that it was all a matter of measurement. His theory of politics seems rather primitive, too; he was incapable or impatient of analysing detail, seeing events in terms of dictators, great leaders, and so on. The questions of how and why people were made to follow dictators didn’t interest him. He had little interest in the details of finance beyond noting that money exists and that France had large stocks of gold at that time.
. . . .Belloc suffered a serious stroke, in 1941; because of that, I don't think he could ever have commented on nuclear issues.
Belloc’s writings
. . . .His books included The Old Road (which influenced Alfred Watkins, the inventor or discoverer of leys), children’s poems, a public dispute with H G Wells over history, two books on the First World War, novels and verse, and at least thirty history books, written in an unfashionable style like a Roman Catholic Macaulay interspersed with French proverbs in over-literal English. They often present a continental view which is censored out of the English-speaking world. His narrative prose-cum-poetry style was parodied very effectively by Max Beerbohm.
. . . .In 1911 he published The Party System, jointly-written with Cecil Chesterton. They regarded the system of 'loyal opposition' as largely fraudulent; Liberal and Conservative, then - through secretly donated money, control parliament. This control is exercised [1] By the parties - who will never select indepedent candidates (unless they show promise of toeing the line); [2] By the 'front bench' system - unelected clique who arrange how parliamentary business will be transacted, and which topics will be discussed; [3] Belloc gives many examples of issues in which the voters' interests simply are not raised - [4] and many examples of the techniques by which this is done - ten minutes rule, private members' bills being choked off by deliberately irrelevant debate, the Speaker choosing debating topics in collusion with the 'Front bench'; [5] the fact these people know, meet, socialise, intermarry; [6] The House of Lords as something to be bought into, and secret agreements as to which Bills it will oppose.
. . . .Belloc's Catholicism gave him an unusual standpoint, with a view of Roman Catholicism which is probably not very accurate, but at least is fairly coherent. He was not happy about interest on loans (its introduction in Tudor times is an almost completely censored topic), nor was he happy about the 'Glorious Revolution', the prelude to Acts of Enclosure which he thought erased and impoverished Britain's peasantry.
. . . .And, of interest here, he wrote The Jews, first published in 1922, reprinted five years later, then reprinted in 1937 with a new introductory chapter (in a different, smaller, face, numbered with Roman numerals) looking at the Spanish Civil War, the Third Reich, and Zionism and the Arab Revolt. This book has ensured Belloc has been censored, like his contemporary McCabe. To take some random examples: Louis Golding in The Jewish Problem (1938, Penguin) makes no mention of Belloc, though he must have known of him. An American Catholic book by Charles McFadden, The Philosophy of Communism (1939; reprinted 1963) omits him. Warrant for Genocide (Norman Cohn) omits him, as he omits Iustinus Pranaitis, though these deserve a place in ‘myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy’. Biographies of other literary figures down to the present day, when they discuss Belloc, omit this book. Poor Belloc is even censored by Catholics: on online version of The Great Heresies (1938) has chapter 2 omitted, though this is slightly concealed by omission of the chapter numbers in the contents. I would guess it contained praise of the ‘strong new movements’ in Italy and Germany.
The Jews is the only serious book looking at Jewish power ever published in Britain by an important publisher. This fact gives it great importance. Let's examine the detail of this book:
. . . .Belloc’s religious views make him take rival religions seriously. Note that he didn’t regard Russia as Catholic: it was a ‘vast sea of Orthodox culture.’ He is objective enough not to believe only in religious blocs: he firmly believes in patriotic nationalisms (though this seems at odds with Catholic theory). (And he generally takes the side of France against Germany or Prussia). In fact he became a supporter of the ‘strong and healthy movements’, i.e. Fascism, in Italy and Spain, though not of the odd racist people in Berlin.
. . . .Belloc suppresses, or doesn’t know of, the Khazar idea, maybe because of the official belief that modern Jews have Biblical connections. Surprisingly, Belloc says nothing whatsoever of actual Jewish beliefs! Perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to read up on the subject.
. . . .Belloc lists dislikeable characteristics which he attributes to Jews. These include secrecy (but what about the Vatican?) and money-making as a soul-destroying activity, and the Jewish tendency to monopoly (and yet one can’t help recalling that, for example, the Pope gave exclusive rights of exploitation to Spain and Portugal). There is little evidence or documentation in this book. In fact, Belloc specifically states that he avoids giving names, in order to avoid offence. This is tiresome for a modern reader, as Belloc continually refers to scandals, frauds, and then-current events many of which are difficult to identify.
. . . .Belloc also lists dislikeable characteristics of ‘gentiles’, most of them forms of dishonesty or hypocrisy.
. . . .The Russian Revolution. Belloc, unlike most authors down to the present day, takes the explicit view that Russia was ruled by a clique of Jews, and is willing to say so.
. . . .Other historical events, for example the expulsions of Jews, the population of Jews in Poland, and the effects of Jews on British legislation. Unfortunately, Belloc hardly ever gives evidence or sources, beyond a rare mention of Josephus. (He may simply not have had time—he wrote 150 books).
. . . .The taboo nature of the subject. Belloc had a touching faith in the ability of people to withstand (non-Catholic) propaganda: he thought his book had helped ‘let the cat out of the bag’ and that discussion on the subject had become much more open. Of course, if this ever happened, it certainly did not continue. Belloc thought twelve to twenty years was about the maximum length of time for which enquiry could be fended off by stereotyped accusations of "anti-Semitism".
. . . .His predictions and antidotes are of some interest. He did not forecast US support for Israel, though he did predict turbulence and difficulties. He is unaware of oil as an issue (there is no mention of it anywhere). He disavows any pretence at suggesting legal or other solutions, and his suggestions are not very clear, though he pins most of his faith on open discussion (and perhaps seems to be implying some sort of apartheid). However, one of his main claims is that the ‘gentiles’ themselves are at greatly at fault for not being honest.
Extracts from ‘The Jews’, with Notes:—
The Jews has an analytical table of contents, which I haven’t included. The quotations below are all intended to be as in the original, including spelling, punctuation, italicisation and capitalisation, though I may have made some errors. (Belloc’s writing appears in several web compilations, where the quotations are usually roughly right, but not exactly). I’ve include page numbers, since as far as I can tell each edition must have had the same numbering. The book was not indexed. It was published in London by Constable & Company; I don’t know whether there were overseas editions. The copyright presumably is either with Belloc’s heirs or assigns, or with whichever companies bought out Constable. I’m assuming my extracts come within the as ‘fair dealing’ provisions. My notes are in square brackets followed by RW; other square brackets contain space-saving rearrangements of Belloc’s own words.
Preface
[Belloc wrote a short preface, on the modest object of his book. In effect there are three principles:
- Concealment by Jews about Jews is to end
- There’s a need to ward off disorder
- There are no personal or recriminating allusions in the book
—RW]
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER (1937)
[Belloc has a long introduction intended to update his book. I won’t spend much time on it. He looks at:-
1. Spanish Civil War (Belloc doesn’t give it a name. He’s pro-Franco, and says Franco uses no propaganda. It’s a religious war). Belloc says nothing of metal ores and other resources in Spain (Rio Tinto?) although he does appreciate facts about landowning, peasantry, and hard peasant work.
2. Third Reich and its race beliefs, which Belloc thinks absurd. He thinks it’s unfair to break implicit contract with Jews who have (e.g.) embarked on career of medicine, by saying, now you can’t practice. He contrasts this with Poland, with many more Jews—Belloc claims the Poles were more tolerant but rather absurdly doesn’t take into account the political activities of Jews in Poland. he said of Nazi Germany: and the idea of Jews preying on the fallen body of the State, “rats in the Reich”, that for one man that blamed the old military command for misfortunes during the war [sic; it was the outcome that mattered!—RW], twenty blamed the Jews, ‘though these were the architects of former German prosperity and among them were found a larger proportion of opponents of the war than in any other section of the Emperor’s subjects...’
3. Zionism. (And the Arab Revolt—which seems to have been not much). Much emphasis on Jerusalem and its supposed significance. And a lot on Damascus being identical with Syria. And the horrid Moslems.—RW]
I THE THESIS OF THIS BOOK 3
P. 4: ‘The elimination of an alien body may take three forms. It may take a frankly hostile form... destruction. [or, less hostile] expulsion. [Or] ... an amicable one, elimination by absorption.’ [Belloc wanted open recognition of the idea of Jews as a wholly separate nationality, treated as an alien thing, respected ‘it as a province of society outside our own’.]
P. 5: ‘From the pitiless massacres of Cyrenaica in the second century to the latest murders in the Ukraine that solution [destruction] has been attempted and has failed.’
II THE DENIAL OF THE PROBLEM 17
[Belloc looks at the 19th century liberal attitude, and such things as citizenship. Also the small numbers of Jews in western Europe-RW]
Pp. 37-38: ‘.. I am minded to give the reader another anecdote (again taking care, I hope, to suppress all names and dates to prevent identification, which might irritate my Jewish readers or too greatly interest their opponents). [But doesn’t this conflict with Belloc’s wanting greater openness?—RW] As a younger man it was my constant pastime to linger at the bar of the House of Lords and listen to what went on there. I shall always remember one occasion when an aged Jew, who had begun life in very humble circumstances, had accumulated a great fortune and had purchased his peerage like any other, rose to speak in connection with a resolution or with a bill dealing with “aliens"—the hypocrisy of the politician, and the popular ferment against the rush of Jewish immigrants into the East End between them gave rise to that non-committal name. This old gentleman very rightly pushed all such humbug aside. He knew very well that the policy was aimed against “his people”—and he called them “my people”. He knew perfectly well that the proposed change would introduce interference with their movement and would subject them to humiliation. He spoke with flaming patriotism, and I was enthralled by the intensity, vigour and sincerity of his appeal. It was a very fine performance and, incidentally (considering what the man was!), it illustrated the vast difference between his people and my own. For a life devoted to accumulating wealth, which would have killed nobler instincts in any one of us, had evidently seemed to him quite normal and left him with every appetite of justice and of love of nation unimpaired. He clinched that fine speech with the cry, “What our people want is to be let alone.” He said it over and over again. I am sure that in the audience which listened to him, all the older men felt a responsive echo to that appeal. It was the very doctrine in which they had been brought up and the very note of the great Victorian Liberal era, with its national triumphs in commerce and in arms.
Well, within a very few years the younger members of that very man’s family came out in Parliamentary scandal after scandal, appearing all in sequence one after the other—a sort of procession. They had been let alone right enough! But they had not let us alone. ..’
[This might, or might not, be Sir Edward Speyer, whose baronetcy was revoked. Times Dec 4th 1921, ‘on account of his unlawful communicating and trading with the enemy during the war’. (This info from Thorkelson writing in 1937)—RW]
London's East End (near the docks) about 1900
East End of London about 1900. Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road East are two of the principal roads. Note that there is some evidence that ‘Jack the Ripper’, who murdered in this area, may have lived there too. A Jew in fact has been identified as ‘Jack the Ripper’, with some evidence that the police were reluctant to prosecute. It’s not difficult to imagine a village immigrant carrying out such murders; it’s also not difficult to imagine the police taking no action about the deaths of a few women.
III THE PRESENT PHASE OF THE PROBLEM 43
[Well, not quite; it’s Belloc’s history up to about 1920. He charts his view of the rise of awareness of Jews. The climax being Bolshevism which Belloc thought encouraged people to speak freely on the subject for the first time—RW]
Pp. 47-55: ‘Throughout all this time, from the years after Waterloo to the years immediately succeeding the defeat of the French in 1870-71, the weight and position of the Jew in western civilization increased.. almost without attracting attention. They entered the Parliaments everywhere, the English Peerage as well, and the Universities in very large numbers. A Jew became Prime Minister of Great Britain, another a principal leader of the Italian insurrection; another led the opposition to Napoleon III. ... They began to take positions as fellows of every important Oxford and Cambridge college; they counted heavily in the national literatures; Browning and Arnold families, for instance, in England; Mazzini in Italy. They came for the first time into European diplomacy. The armies and navies alone were.. untouched. Strains of them were even present in the reigning families. Freemasonry (with which they are so closely allied and all the ritual of which is Jewish in character) increased.. The growth of an anonymous Press [Belloc often refers with distaste to the anonymous press (along with sceptical universities, and corrupt parliaments). Presumably he thought that identification of authors made their biases clear. All leading articles in The Times, for example, were and still are anonymous. As a contrast, The Fortnightly Review (founded 1865, and in fact later coming out monthly) accepted only signed contributions.—RW] and.. increasingly anonymous commercial system further extended their power.
...
Perhaps the first event which cut across this unbroken ascent was the defeat of the French in 1870-1. ... also the date on which was overthrown the temporal power of the Papacy. ... Within a few years Rome had a Jewish mayor...
One small but significant factor ... was the rise to monopoly of the Jewish international news agents.. Reuters.., and the presence of Jews as correspondents, [e.g.] ... Opper, a Bohemian Jew... under the false name of “de Blowitz” ... Paris correspondent for The Times...
The first expression of the reaction ... was ... sundry definitely anti-Semitic writings.. most noticeable in [France]...
.... special insistence was laid upon exposing.. “crypto-Judaism”..
There next appeared a series of direct international actions undertaken by Jewish finance, the most important of which.. was the drawing of Egypt into the European system...[Belloc writes of Jewish finance in Egypt, Indian commerce, Indian currency and Indian Viceroyalty, and Western powers regarded ‘from Rabat on the Atlantic to the Bay of Bengal’, as agents of a Jewish intrusion intolerable to Islam—RW]
Of more effect upon public opinion was the excitement of the Dreyfus case in France and, immediately afterwards, of the South African War, in England. [Belloc doesn’t discuss Dreyfus!-RW]
.. the great ordeal of the South African War, openly and undeniably provoked and promoted by Jewish interests [this must refer to Alfred Beit—RW] in South Africa, when that war was so unexpectedly prolonged and proved so unexpectedly costly in blood and treasure, ...
The Panama scandals in the French Parliament.. [and] in England, Marconi and the rest, afforded so astonishing a parallel that the similarity was of universal comment. ...
Meanwhile there had already begun one of those great migratory movements of the Jews...
.. Russia, since the partition, governed that part of Poland where they were most numerous... The movement was a westerly one, mainly to the United States.. [Belloc doesn’t comment on the rise of railways and steam ships, despite their importance here- RW] .. New York was slowly transformed..
...
Modern capitalism.. had for its counterpart and reaction the socialist movement. This, again, the Jews did not originate, nor at first direct; but it rapidly fell more and more under their control. The family of Mordecai (who had assumed the name of Marx) produced in Karl a most powerful exponent of that theory. Though he did no more than copy and follow his non-Jewish instructors (especially Louis Blanc, a Franco-Scot of genius), he presented in complete form the full theory of Socialism, economic, social, and, by implication, religious; for he postulated Materialism.
...
Before the Great War one could say that the whole of the Socialist movement, so far as its staff and direction were concerned, was Jewish;...
Such was the situation of the eve of the Great War. ...
The immeasurable catastrophe of the war—with which the Jews had nothing to do and which their more important financial representatives did all they could to prevent—fell upon Europe. ...
... Reconciliation was in the air. . . When, in the very heat of the struggle, came... Bolshevism. [Which was a Jewish movement.] ...’
Pp. 57-59 [Belloc discusses social revolution as theory, then 1916 strains within Russia; followed by revolution ‘for the third time in our generation; this time successfully.’]
.. In the towns the freely-elected was Parliament repudiated and a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” was declared. ...
In practice, of course, "The Republic of the Workmen and Peasants" ... was ... the pure despotism of a clique, the leaders.. specially launched upon Russia under German direction... All without exception were Jews or held by the Jews through their domestic relations. ... A terror was set up, under which were massacred innumerable Russians of the governing classes. .. great numbers of the clergy... Food and all necessities were controlled (in the towns) and rationed, the manual labourer receiving the largest share;...
... the Jewish Committees of the towns were unable to enforce their rule over [agricultural land, though strong enough to raid great areas. ...]
.. the peasants believed that their newly-acquired farms were at take and eagerly volunteered to defend them...’
P. 60: ‘It is impossible that Committees consisting of Jews and suddenly finding themselves thus in control of such new powers, should not have desired to benefit their fellows. It is equally impossible that they should have foregone a sentiment of revenge against that which had persecuted their people in the past. They cannot but, in the destroying of Russia, have mixed with a desire to advantage the individual Russian poor the desire to take vengeance upon the national tradition... [.. murder of the Russian Royal family] ... Further, it is impossible.. that they could not have had some sympathy with their compatriots who were so largely in control of Western finance. ... And it is this which explains the half alliance which you find throughout the world between the Jewish financiers.. and the Jewish control of the Russian revolution. It is this which explains the half-heartedness of the defence against Bolshevism, the perpetual commercial protest, the continued negotiations, the recognition of the Soviet by our politicians, the clamour of “Labour” in favour of German Jewish industrialism and against Poland...’
P. 63: ‘.. All over Europe the Jewish character.. became more and more apparent. .. they made a childish effort to pretend that the Russian names .. put forward were genuine.. Yet at the same time they were receiving money and securities of the victims through Jewish agents, jewels stripped from the dead or rifled from the strong boxes of murdered men and women. ... a Trade Deputation was pompously announced under Russian names, which turned out upon inspection to consist, as its first member, ,, a man engaged all his life in the services of a Jewish firm, as to the other.. A Jew who was actually the brother-in-law of Braunstein! [Trotsky.] The diplomatic agent.. was again a Jew, Finkelstein, the nephew by marriage of a prominent Jew in this country. He passed under the name of Litvinoff. ..’
G D H Cole & M I Cole on Europe. Belloc believed Bolshevism had at last ‘brought the discussion of the Jewish problem to a head’. 64: ‘The cat.. is out of the bag.. the debate will now never more be silenced.’ He clearly thought in 1920 (and presumably still in 1937, with his revised book) that the ‘Jewish problem’ would be thoroughly talked about, and regarded his book as part of this process.Robert Maxwell
In fact, he was wrong, by a margin wider than he probably could have guessed. Eighty years after his book was published, I doubt whether a single university department anywhere in the world pays any attention to this subject.
[Left] G D H Cole & M I Cole The Intelligent Man's Review of Europe To-day (1933). Published by Victor Gollancz. A typical book described as left-wing. It has almost nothing on Jews (which in view of the date ought to be remarkable).
[Left] A hefty tome edited by Robert Maxwell, based on The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (1962). What does it say about Jews and the USSR? No prize offered for the correct guess.
[Right] Ronald W Clark's biography Lenin: The Man Behind the Mask (1988). There is exactly one index entry for 'Jewry'—RW
IV THE GENERAL CAUSES OF FRICTION 69
[Belloc tries to show ‘the whole texture of the Jewish nation.. is at issue with the people among whom they live.’ This is not a very satisfactory chapter, as for one thing there’s not much evidence about life in (e.g.) medieval Poland or Spain, from which to generalise. Belloc thinks for example that ‘The Jew concentrates upon one matter.’
And although it doesn’t really fit in, he adds interesting economic material—RW]
Pp. 82-3: [Section on ‘booming’, or what’s now usually called hype, follows:—RW]
‘The Jew has this other characteristic which has become increasingly noticeable in our own time, but which is probably as old as the race: and that is a corporate capacity for hiding or for advertising at will: a power of “pushing” whatever the whole race desires advanced, or of suppressing what the whole race desires to suppress. .. the general capacity and instinct of the Jew for corporate action in the “booming” or “soft pedalling” of what he wants “soft pedalled” is ineradicable. It will always remain a permanent irritant. The best proof of it is that after the most violent “boom,” after the talents of some particular Jew, or the scientific discovery of another, or the misfortunes of another, or the miscarriage of justice against another, has been shouted at us, pointed and iterated until we are all deafened, there comes an inevitable reaction, and the same men who were half hypnotized into the desired mood are nauseated with it and refuse a repetition of the dose.’
[Belloc adds later, p. 107:] ‘It is not always recognized in this connection that the Jewish “booms,” which are so fruitful a cause of exasperation, depend on this same policy of concealment and on that account add to the volume of anger as each new trick is discovered.
Not that the objects of these world-wide campaigns are unworthy of attention. The Jewish actor, or film-star, or writer or scientist selected is usually talented; the victim of injustice whose case is advertised on the big drum has often a genuine grievance. But that the notice demanded is out of all proportion and that its dependence [sc. is] on Jewish organization is always kept hidden.’ [Charlie Chaplin and Einstein?—RW]
Pp. 91-94: [Belloc’s account of monopolies. I think I’ve included all his examples. I’ve put an important passage in bold face (not in the original)—RW]
‘There is one aspect of this Jewish wealth which I hesitate whether to put among the general or among the particular causes of friction between that nation and its hosts.
.. this cause of friction is the presence of Jewish MONOPOLY.
It is an exceedingly dangerous point in the present situation. I do not think that the Jews have a sufficient appreciation of the risk they are running by its development. There is already something like a Jewish monopoly in high finance. There is a growing tendency to Jewish monopoly over the stage for instance, the fruit trade in London, and to a great extent the tobacco trade. There is the same element of Jewish monopoly on the silver trade, and in the control of various other metals, notably lead, nickel, quicksilver. .. this tendency to monopoly is spreading like a disease. ...
It applies, of course, to a tiny fraction of the Jewish race as a whole. One could put the Jews who control lead, nickel, mercury and the rest into one small room: nor would that room contain very pleasant specimens of their race. You could get the great Jewish bankers who control international finance round one large dinner table, and I know diner tables which have seen nearly all of them at one time or another. These monopolists, in strategic positions of universal control are an insignificant handful of men out of the millions of Israel, just as the great fortunes we have been discussing attach to an insignificant proportion of that race. Nevertheless, this claim to an exercise of monopoly brings hatred upon the Jews as a whole.
...
To put it plainly, these monopolies must be put an end to.
Before the Great War there was only one of which Europe as a whole was conscious, and that was the financial monopoly. Yet here the monopoly was far less prefect than in the case of the metals. The Great War brought thousands upon thousands of educated men (who took up public duties as temporary officials) up against the staggering secret they had never suspected—the complete control exercised over things absolutely necessary to the nation’s survival by half a dozen Jews, who were completely indifferent as to whether we or the enemy should emerge alive from the struggle.
Incidentally, the wealth of these few and very wealthy Jews has been scandalously increased through the war on this very account. And at the moment in which I write the French press, which has a longer experience in the free discussion of the Jewish question than any other, is exposing the abominable increase in value of the Rothschild’s lead mines, an increase mainly due to the use of lead for the killing of men. [My emphasis—RW]
...
The reason these general monopolies are formed by Jews is that the Jew is international, tenacious and determined upon reaching the very end of his task. He is not satisfied in any trade until that trade is, as far as possible, under his complete control, and he has for the extension of that control the support of his brethren throughout the world. He has at the same time the international knowledge and international indifference which further aid his efforts.
But even were the quite recent monopolies in metal and other trades taken, as they ought to be taken, from these few alien masters of them, there would remain that partial monopoly... which a few Jews have exercised not only today, but recurrently throughout history, over the highest finance; that is, over the credit of the nations, and therefore today, as never before, over the whole field of the world’s industry.
[There is more in this vein. But Belloc gives no evidence; nor does he attempt to situate these things within the entire economic framework. A quite interesting book by J M Cohen, The Life Of Ludwig Mond 1839-1909 (1956) has descriptions of interlocking Jewish constructive influence in Germany and its French-speaking parts, and England, Holland and other places, as is the moving into English society (e.g. they bought a large house from the Stanleys of Alderley). There’s background on the small ‘German’ states (I think they weren’t recognised as ‘German’ at the time) and their armies, laws, attitude to Jews, influence of Napoleon, etc. Interesting also for placing of factories, typically in northern England. Mond (I presume) suggested the Mustapha Mond in Huxley’s Brave New World. There’s possibly something here to support Belloc’s claim that Jews were found to control one raw material after another. Irritatingly, despite apparently having access to all papers of Mond, Cohen is coy about Mond’s money. Mond seems to have been ahead of Belloc in the sense that he was ‘prescient’ about the Middle-East, Zionism and the use of Haifa to safeguard oil pipelines (if this is in fact true)—RW]
V THE SPECIAL CAUSES OF FRICTION 99
[Belloc has two subtitles: 1. THE JEWISH RELIANCE UPON SECRECY, 2. THE EXPRESSION OF SUPERIORITY BY THE JEW—RW]
Pp. 99-101: ‘It has unfortunately now become a habit for so many generations, that it has almost passed into an instinct throughout the Jewish body, to rely upon the weapon of secrecy. Secret societies, a language kept as far as possible secret, the use of false names in order to hide secret movements, secret relations between various parts of the Jewish body: all these and other forms of secrecy have become the national method. It is a method to be deplored...
...
Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of crawling and sneaking. We suspect its practisers of desiring to hide something...
But the Jew has other and better motives. [Belloc gives an account of false names: Stanley for Solomon, Curzon for Cohen, Sinclair for Slezinger, Montague for Moses, Benson for Benjamin.
And an account of the compulsory imposition, according to Belloc, of Germanic surnames of the Flowerfield or Shutlips type, which seem to have been manufactured like off-the-shelf business names or computer company passwords. Belloc expresses no opinion on the authenticity of such surnames as Cohen and Levy.
Belloc says in effect that, with persecution, and with imposed names, Jews can’t be blamed for attaching ‘no particular sanctity to the custom’—RW].
All this is true, but.. There are in the experience of all of us, an experience repeated indefinitely, men who have no excuse whatsoever for a false name save the advantage of deciet. Men whose race is universally known, will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original and true name be used in its place. ...’
P. 105: ‘Perhaps in its most absurd form (not its most dangerous form) is the secrecy maintained by distinguished men with regard to their Jewish ancestors. They and their Jewish relations often suppress it altogether or, at best, touch on it rarely and obscurely. Why should they act thus? Take the case of two men at random out of hundreds whose names are universally known and by most people respected, the name of Charles Kingsley, the writer, and the name of Moss-Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. .. both owed their genius and nearly all their physical appearance to Jewish mothers. I should have thought it to the advantage of the Jewish race and of the individuals concerned that this fact should be widely known. .. Yet the mention of that lineage is treated as though it were a sort of insult. I have heard it wrung out in some passionate plea for the Jewish race as a proof that they are not devoid of abilities, but never generally published.’ [NB: Belloc though giving no evidence seems to assume (p. 136) Jewish abilities are low; cp. my piece on Cecil Roth, attempting to show the opposite—RW]
Pp. 106-107: ‘.. the habit does further harm: it makes men ascribe a Jewish character to everything they dislike...
A foreign movement against one’s nation, an unpopular public figure, a detested doctrine, are labelled “Jewish” and the field of hate, already perilously wide, is broadened indefinitely. It is useless to say, “The Jews do not admit the connection, the names are not Jewish, there is no overt Jewish element.” He answers, “Jews never do admit such connection; Jews admittedly hide under false names; Jewish action never is overt.” And—as things are, until they change—there is no denying what he says. His judgment may be as wide as you will (I have heard Sinn Feiners called Jews!), but, so long as this wretched habit of secrecy in maintained, there is no correcting that judgment. ..’
[There are twelve pages on the ‘expression of superiority’; here are a few remarks:—RW]
Pp. 108-110: ‘The Jew individually feels himself superior to the non-Jewish contemporary and neighbour of whatever race, and particularly of our race; the Jew feels his nation immeasurably superior to any other human community, and particularly to our modern national communities in Europe.
The frank statement of so simple and fundamental a truth is rarely made. It will sound, I fear, shocking to many ears. To many others it will sound not so much shocking as comic, and to many more stupefying.
The idea that the Jew should think himself our superior is something so incomprehensible to us that we forget the existence of the feeling. ..
...
For the attitudes taken up by European statesmen in the past... have always been one of three sorts:—
(1) .. as though the Jew were merely a private citizen like any other...
(2) Or they have attempted to suppress, or to expel, or to destroy the Jew...
(3) Or.. they have tried.. a sort of pact in which Jewish separateness was recognized, but under conditions of disability.
...
Now in all these three methods there is absent all recognition of the Jewish feeling of superiority. ...
there is indeed a fourth attitude ... when States have been in active decline or fallen into the hands of base and weak men, and that is the exaggerated flattery and support of a few powerful wealthy Jews by administrators who were bribed or cowed. We are suffering from that to-day. But these exceptional cases (they have always led to national disaster) do not form a true category of Statesmanship...’
P. 116: ‘... But on his side the Jew must recognize, however unpalatable to him the recognition may be, that those among whom he is living and whose inferiority he takes for granted, on their side regards him as something much less than themselves.
This statement, I know, will be as stupefying to the Jew as its converse is stupefying to us. It will seem as extraordinary, as incredible, and all the rest of it; but it is true... There is no European so mean in fortune or so base in character as not to feel himself altogether the superior of any Jew, however wealthy, however powerful, and (I am afraid I must add) however good. ...’
VI THE CAUSE OF FRICTION ON OUR SIDE 123
[Belloc in fact has (p.140) essentially just one cause ‘upon our side’, ‘a persistent disingenuous in our treatment of this minority.. a refusal to make the effort necessary for meeting and understanding..’ Belloc has an interesting passage on the falsification of history (and news), mostly by omission—RW]
Pp. 130-133: ‘ ... All this is worse, of course, when one is dealing with relations even closer than those of commerce. Those relations are numerous in the modern world, and disingenuousness in them takes the worst possible form. Men, especially of the wealthier classes of the gentry, will make the closest friends of Jews with the avowed purpose of personal advantage. They think the friendship will help them to great positions in the State, or to the advancement of private fortune, or to fame. In that calculation they are wise. For the Jew has to-day exceptional power in all these things. They therefore have the Jew continually at their tables, they stay continually under the Jew’s roof. In all the relations of life they are as intimate as friends can be. Yet they relieve the strain which such an unnatural situation imposes by a standing sneer at their Jewish friends in their absence. One may say of such men (and they are today an increasing majority among our rich) that the falsity of their situation has got on their nerves. It has become a sort of disease with them; and I am very certain that when the opportunity comes, when the public reaction against Jewish power rises, clamorous, insistent and open, they will be among the first to take their revenge. It is abominable, but it is true.
...
This disingenuousness, then—lack of candour on the part of our race in its dealings with the Jew—a vice particularly rife among the wealthy and middle classes (far less common among the poor), extends, as I have said, to history. We dare not, or will not teach in our history books the plain facts of the relations between our own race and the Jews. We throw the story of these relations, which are among the half-dozen leading factors of history, right into the background even when we do mention it. In what they are taught of history the school-boy and the undergraduate come across no more than a line or two upon those relations. The teacher cannot be quite silent upon the expulsion of the Jews under Edward I or upon their return under Cromwell. A man cannot read the history of the Roman Empire without hearing of the Jewish war. A man cannot read the Constitutional History of England without hearing of the special economic position of Jews under the Mediaeval Crown. But the vastness of the subject, its permanent and insistent character throughout two thousand years; its great episodes; its general effect—all that is deliberately suppressed.
How many people, for instance, of those who profess a good knowledge of the Roman Empire, even in its details, are aware, let alone have written upon the tremendous massacres and counter-massacres of Jews and Europeans, the mass of edicts alternately protecting and persecuting Jews; the economic position of the Jew, especially in the later empire; the character of the dispersion?
There took place in Cyprus and in the Libyan cities under Hadrian a Jewish movement against the surrounding non-Jewish society far exceeding in violence the late wreckage of Russia, which to-day fills all our thoughts. The massacres were wholesale and so were the reprisals. The Jews killed a quarter of a million of the people of Cyprus alone, and the Roman authorities answered with a repression which was a pitiless war.
One might pile up instances indefinitely. The point is, that the average educated man has never been allowed to hear of them. What a factor the Jew was in that Roman State from which we all spring, how he survived its violent antagonism to him and his antagonism to it; the special privilege whereby he was excepted from a worship of its gods; his handling of its finance—all the intimate parallel which it affords to later times is left in silence. The average educated man who has been taught, even in some fullness, his Roman History, leaves that study with the impression that the Jews (it he had noticed them at all) are but an insignificant detail in the story.
So it is with history more recent and even contemporaneous. In the history of the nineteenth century it is outrageous. The special character of the Jew, his actions through the Secret Societies and in the various revolutions of foreign States, his rapid acquisition of power through finance, political and social, especially in this country [i.e. Britain-RW]—all that is left out. It is an exact parallel to the disingenuousness which we note in social relations. The same man who shall have written a monograph upon some point of nineteenth century history and left his readers in ignorance of the Jewish elements in the story will regale you in private with a dozen anecdotes: such-and-such a man was a Jew; such-and-such a man was half a Jew; another was controlled in his policy by a Jewish mistress; the go-between in such-and-such a negotiation was a Jew; the Jewish blood in such-and-such a family came in thus and thus—And so forth: but not a word of it on the printed page!
This deliberate falsehood equally applies to contemporary record. The newspaper reader is deceived—so far as it is still possible to deceive him—with the most shameless lies “Abraham Cohen, a Pole”; “M. Mosevitch, a distinguished Roumanian”; “Mr. Schiff, and other representative Americans”; “M. Bergson with his typically French lucidity”; “Maximilian Harden, always courageous in his criticism of his own people” (his own being the German) . . . and the rest of the rubbish. It is weakening, I admit, but it has not yet ceased.
...’
P. 135: ‘And how unintelligent is our dealing with any particular Jewish problem; for instance, the problem of Jewish immigration! We mask it under false names, calling it "the alien question," "Russian immigration." "the influx of undesirables from Eastern and Central Europe," and any number of other timorous equivalents. ...’
VII THE ANTI-SEMITE 145
147: ‘.. The modern name of “Anti-Semite” is as ridiculous in derivation as it is ludicrous in form. It is partly of German academic origin and partly a newspaper name, vulgar as one would expect it to be from such an origin, and also as falsely pedantic as one would expect, but the exasperated mood of which it is a label is very real.
I say the word “Anti-Semite” is vulgar and pedantic: that I think will be universally admitted. It is also nonsensical. The antagonism to the Jews has nothing to do with any supposed “Semitic” race—which probably does not exist any more than do many other modern hypothetical abstractions, and which, anyhow, does not come into the matter. The Anti-Semite is not a man who hates the modern Arabs or the ancient Carthaginians. He is a man who hates the Jews.
However, we must accept the word because it has become currency... [More, describing Anti-Semites as opposite of writers who think Jews do no wrong]
[Page 150. Belloc on ‘strange assertions proceeding from’ Anti-Semites: that modern scepticism, the modern superstition of necromancy—I think Belloc must mean table rapping, mediums, and Ouija boards—and crystal gazing, evils of democracy, Prussian tyrannical government, pagan perversions of bad modern art, puerility of bad church furniture, Great War and Jewish armament firms, anti-patriotic appeals etc attributed to Jews, Belloc thinks not credibly—RW]
P. 153: ‘... by finding out and exposing the true names hidden under false ones, by detecting and registering the relationships between men who pretended ignorance one of the other; it ferreted through the ramifications of anonymous finance and invariably caught the Jew who was behind the great industrial insurance schemes, the Jew who was behind such and such a metal monopoly, the Jew who was behind such and such a news agency, the Jew who financed such and such a politician. The formidable library of exposure spreads daily...’
P. 158: ‘... [Continental Anti-Semite was asked]: “If you had unlimited power in the matter, what would you do?” The implied answer was that the Anti-Semite could do nothing. We now know he can persecute, he can attack... he could begin with a widespread examination of Jewish wealth and its origins and an equally widespread confiscation...’
Pp. 159-161: ‘... The Anti-Semitic movement is essentially a reaction against the abnormal growth in Jewish power, and the new strength of Anti-Semitism is largely due to the Jews themselves.
When this angry enthusiasm re-arose in its modern form, first in Germany, then spreading to France, next appearing, and now rapidly growing, in England, it was novel and confined to small cliques. The truths which it enunciated were then as unfamiliar as the false values on which it reposed. That universal policy of the Jews against which it is part of my thesis to argue, a policy natural but none the less erroneous, the policy of secrecy, the policy of hiding, at once took advantage of what was absurd in the novelty of Anti-Semitism. The Jew, in spite of his age-long experience of menace and active hostility, in spite of his knowledge of what this sort of spirit had effected in the past, did not come out into the open. He did not act against the new attack with open indignation, still less with open argument, as he should have done. He took advantage of its absurdity, at its beginnings, in the eyes of the general public. He used all his endeavours to make the word “Anti-Semitic” a label for something hopelessly ridiculous, a subject for mere laughter, a matter which no reasonable man should for a moment consider seriously.
For something between a dozen and twenty years this policy was successful. The method though less and less firmly established as time went on, has not yet quite failed. None the less that policy was very ill-advised. It was used not only to ridicule the Anti-Semite, but what was quite illegitimate, quite irrational (and bound in the long run to be fatal), it was used to prevent all discussion of the Jewish question, though that question was increasing every day in practical importance and clamouring to be decided.
It was the instinctive policy with the mass of the Jewish nation, a deliberate policy with most of its leaders, not only to use ridicule against Anti-Semitism but to label as “anti-Semitic” any discussion of the Jewish problem at all, or, for that matter, any information even on the Jewish problem. It was used to prevent, through ridicule, any statement of any fact with regard to the Jewish race save a few conventional compliments or a few conventional and harmless jests.
If a man alluded to the presence of a Jewish financial power in any region—for instance, in India—he was an anti-Semite. If he interested himself in the peculiar character of Jewish philosophical discussions, especially in matters concerning religion, he was an Anti-Semite. If the emigrations of the Jewish masses from country to country, the vast modern invasion of the United States, for instance (which has been organized and controlled like an army on the march), interested him as an historian, he could not speak of it under pain of being called an Anti-Semite. If he exposed a financial swindler who happened to be a Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. If he exposed a group of Parliamentarians taking money from the Jews, he was called an Anti-Semite. If he did no more than call a Jew a Jew, he was an Anti-Semite. The laughter which the name used to provoke was most foolishly used to support nothing nobler or more definitive than this wretched policy of concealment. Anyone with judgment could have told the Jews, had the Jews cared to consult such a one, that their pusillanimous policy was bound to fail. It was but a postponement of the evil day.
You cannot long confuse interest with hatred, the statement of plain and important truths with mania, the discussion of fundamental questions with silly enthusiasm, for the same reason that you cannot long confuse truth with falsehood. Sooner or later people are bound to remark that the defendant seems curiously anxious to avoid all investigation of his case. The moment that is generally observed, the defence is on the way to failure.
.. I say it was a fatal policy; but it was deliberately undertaken by the Jews and they are now suffering from its results. ...’
VIII BOLSHEVISM 167
[This chapter, one would think, ought to have been included in III The Present Phase of the Problem, the second half of which looks at Bolshevism.
It’s not a very satisfactory chapter, as Belloc is unaware of the origins of ‘Jews’ around southern Russia, and doesn’t examine the prehistory of the Revolution, even minimising the part played by deaths of the First World War. (He does notice there are: in Lithuania and Galicia, one-third to two-thirds Jews in towns. With considerable numbers in Ukraine, Romania, modern Poland, Hungary. In Bohemia, less. Less in the Balkan states south of the Danube and Drave.—Presumably he thought they migrated from the Middle East.)
Bolshevik means ‘Whole-hogger’.
He spends some time on conspiracy theories. And on the ‘appetite for revenge against the old Russian State comparable to that felt by any oppressed people against their oppressors’—though without supporting evidence of this claimed fact. Belloc looks at revolts generally, and concludes Jews were hardly ever involved. So why did they have ‘a chance of action in Russia which they lacked elsewhere?’ He says he isolates three factors, which I’ve tried to illustrate with my choice of quotations, but it’s difficult to make sense of exactly what he’s claiming, particularly the absence of feeling for property.
Belloc has an interesting passage on nationalism, as opposed by Jews, except for themselves.
And he finishes with a warning note on over-reacting—RW]
Pp. 170ff.: ‘You do not find the Jew in history perpetually leading the innumerable revolts which citizens in the mass make against the privileged or the superior conditions of the minority. He has sometimes benefited by these movements in the past; more often suffered. ... The great acts of violence, successful and unsuccessful... from the agrarian troubles of pagan Rome to the French Revolution, the land war in Ireland, the Chartist Movement in London, ... have appealed much more to the fighting instincts and political traditions of our race than the have to the Jews. ...’
Pp. 171ff: ‘What were the special characters in the Russian opportunity which made the Jew the creator of the whole movement?
There are, I take it, three main factors in this case peculiarly suitable to the Jewish effort.
In the first place, this revolution fell upon.. Industrial Capitalism, the chief mark of which is the destruction [or atrophy] in the mass subjected to it.. of that essential part of the European soul—ownership. ...
Now the attack.. against Industrial Capitalism required an international force. It needed men who had international experience and were ready with an international formula. ..
...
Of the two interactional forces present, therefore, the Jews alone could act. [The other being the Catholic Church. Belloc quotes Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII on this, and claims that a ‘society of owners’, and the ‘sanctity of property’, with ‘well-divided property’, are part of the ‘European soul’.]
The Jew has neither that political instinct in his national tradition nor a religious doctrine supporting and expressing such an instinct. [I.e. of ‘well founded property’.] The same thing in him which makes him a speculator and a nomad makes him actually contemptuous of, the European sense of property. ... [this, I think is Belloc’s second factor—RW]
... Again, our national sense, patriotism, which is incomprehensible to the Jew save on the false analogy of his own peculiar nomadic and tribal patriotism, is a check upon Communism, and indeed, against revolution of any kind. ...’ [This is Belloc’s third and last factor—RW]
Pp. 176-178: [Nationalism:] ‘The Jew has the same feeling, of course, for his Israel, but since that nation is not a collection of human beings, inhabiting one place and living by traditions rooted in its soil, his patriotism is necessarily of a different complexion. It has different connotations and our patriotism seems negligible to him.
The implied fallacies current in the modern industrial revolutionary formulae, in such phrases as “What does it matter to the working man whether he is exploited by a German or an English master?” or, again, “Why should the individual Tom Smith be sacrificed for an abstraction called England?” or again, “Nationalism is the great obstacle to the full development of humanity"—all that sort of thing, which we feel by instinct and can, if it is necessary, prove by reason to be nonsense in our case, sound, in Jewish ears, as very good sense indeed. For in his case these things involve no fallacies at all; they apply to him vividly and exactly. Why should the Jew be sacrificed for England? In what away is England, or France, or Ireland, or any other nation necessary to him? Again, is it not obvious in his eyes that these terms, “France, Ireland, England, Russia,” are but abstractions? The real thing in his eyes when he thinks of us is the individual and his certain needs, especially his physical and material needs; because upon these there can be no doubt; upon these all are agreed; these are visible and tangible. “England,” “France,” “Poland” are whimsies.
It is true that if you were to put his special case to the Jew with similar force and say, “No Jew should run any risk for Israel,” “No Jew should suffer any inconvenience by trying to help a fellow Jew in distress,” “The idea of Israel is a vague abstraction—all that counts is the individual Jew and especially his physical requirements”; if you said that sort of thing you would be offending the most profound instincts of Jewish patriotism and you would, in fact, clash with the overt and covert action of the Jews throughout the world. But the Jew would answer that, as his was an international polity, the argument applying to our national polity did not apply to him; that his feelings, though analogous to ours, were of a different kind, and that, at any rate, he cannot sacrifice a fine idea of his like Communism for our provincial and local habit, “the love of our country.”
... When a Frenchman, or Englishman, or Russian says “My first duty is to my people; I must keep them strong as well as in being and I must sacrifice my interests to theirs when it is necessary” there are many Jews who would answer: “You are quite right. The theory is sound. Man can only function as part of a particular society” and so forth. But it is one thing to believe a theory... quite another to feel it in one’s bones, as it were,...
Therefore when, as in the particular case of Russia, a national feeling stood in the way of an abstract ideal, it seemed the most natural thing on the world to the Jew that the national obstacle should go to the wall in order that his ideal of Communism might triumph.
There lay behind this great change in the Russian towns, and capture of what remains of the Russian government by the Jewish committees, a force most positive. It was the sense of social justice, the indignation against indefensible evils. ...’
Pp. 178-182: [Belloc discusses ‘Industrial Capitalism’ and indefensible modern evils, though without saying exactly what he means. This sense of social justice is the positive force, says Belloc:]
... men of the wealthier classes... so ignorant of the past, so stupid... do honestly believe Industrial Capitalism to be a good thing... must be very rare... cannot have wide social experience... live the life of the poor in the great industrial cities for a day to see the enormity of the wrong that has to be righted.
...
... The Jews alone of the forces present were capable of heartily entertaining that ideal, and were free of all obstacles against the achievement of it—the obstacle of patriotism, the obstacle of religion, the obstacle of the sense of property.
These considerations, I take it, are what explains the Jewish character of the upheaval in the East, with its destruction of the Russian nation, its enormous experiments in social economy, its inevitable impoverishment of the State as a whole, its enthusiastic support by the minority which accepts its doctrine. ...
...
It seems that the great mass of the nation has affirmed the instinct of private property with the greatest vigour, and that some nine-tenths of the Russians have settled down upon the land to which they always claimed ownership and in which their sense of ownership is more fierce than ever. In the towns the unnatural system—unnatural because it opposes all our instincts as Europeans—works more and more slackly as the original system of terror weakens. For it is clear that Communism needs a despot, and the active rule of a despot is necessarily short: it is a system incapable of transition and therefore of duration.
The perfectly explicable but deplorable exercise of vengeance by the Jews has been directed against what we euphemistically term the governing directing classes, who have been massacred wholesale and whose remnants are subjected to perpetual persecution. ...’
Pp. 183-5: ‘We ought, I think, not to nourish a new and special hostility against the Jew on account of what he has done in Russia, but on the contrary to excuse him...
That sounds an extreme thing to say... But though it sound fantastic, I am convinced that it is a right attitude. To lose one’s judgment on a permanent problem through panic or heat.. is the negation of reason. As well might a man who is dealing with the problem of fermented liquor... let his judgment be overcome by a case of delirium tremens...
...
Our conclusion.. is a recognition and protection of the Jewish nation as something quite different from ourselves and yet necessarily inhibiting our society. Such a full recognition leaves us fore-armed against the tendency in the Jew (which we cannot avoid) to forget our national feelings and to misconceive our sense of ownership. It would render impossible the conspiracies and the vengeance which have destroyed Russia, and I believe that had the former Russian Government treated the Jews as I say they should be treated, it would be in power to-day.’
IX THE POSITION IN THE WORLD AS A WHOLE 189
[Belloc surveys the Jewish populations in the world. He thinks the four international forces are the Catholic Church, Islam, Industrial Capitalism, and the Socialist [sic] revolt against this last.’—RW]
P. 191: ‘In point of fact the Jew has collectively a power today in the white world altogether excessive... it is inevitably a corporate power, and a semi-organised power...’
P. 193: [Belloc mentions Oscar Levy, (and pp. 251-2) ‘turned out of this country by his compatriots in the Government for having written unfavourably of the Moscow Jews...’—RW]
P. 194: ‘... the Russian allowed a prodigious revolution to be made by the Jews, he accepted the loot of the revolution... he has submitted wholly in the towns, partly in the country, to a tyranny exercised by Jews ever since that complete reversal of his national history, now four years old.’
Pp. 195-6: ‘The Russian peasant regarded that odd, pedantic measure, “The Liberation of the Serfs” as only another name for robbing him of his land... during the war he poured over the great estates and took back what he thought was his own. ...
...
.. The situation is absurd enough. Men in hundreds of thousands willing to fight for Communist masters because.. they believe they can secure themselves in an absolute form of property! But that is what the “red” army was. ...’
201ff: [Jews in USA: New York and ghettoes, financial monopoly growth and in trades, Jews critical of religion. ‘Wilson seems to have been wholly in their hands’. Anonymous press. The New Republic ‘.. though it has but a small proportion of Jewish writers upon it, and though its capital is (I believe) not Jewish, is yet to all intents and purposes the organ of Jewish intellectuals, always joins in the boycott of any news unfavourable to European Jews... and in general adheres to the Jewish side, like the Humanité in Paris, or, let us say, The New Statesman in England.
.. There was no hesitation; there were no uneasy patches of silence. The Jewish question was discussed [in the USA] from the moment it was first felt..’ [says Belloc, who however also seems to say the exact opposite: 203: ‘.. contrast the silence about the Jews in [18]’96, during Bryan’s great attack upon the gold standard, with the work of Mr. Ford and all that he stands for to-day!’]
P. 209: [The West regarded as intruders of Jews by the Islamic world. First the French; now the British. Remember this was written about 1920—RW]
X THE POSITION OF THE JEWS IN ENGLAND 215
[NOTE: Belloc hints at the idea of Jews as collaborators with whatever powers were around, with a constant shift to new sources—William the Conqueror, other kings, Polish landowners, British Empire, and Germany illustrate the sort of things.
(The US empire, which in its modern form postdates Belloc’s book, isn’t in here, of course).
Belloc however doesn’t speculate on causes or reasons. For example, [1] in the case of activities like tax-collecting, it makes sense to employ aliens who won’t necessarily sympathise with the collectees—on the same principle as using alien troops in wars of conquest. [2] It’s possible that something as simple as number notation was part of the clue to Jewish finance; almost anything would have been better than Roman numerals. But even such simple speculations as this are currently taboo—RW]
Pp. 222-3: ‘... London became after Waterloo the money market and the clearing house of the world. The interests of the Jew as a financial dealer and the interests of this great commercial polity approximated more and more. One may say that by the last third of the nineteenth century they had become virtually identical.
Every new economic enterprise of the British state appealed to the Jewish genius for commerce and especially for negotiation in its most abstract form—finance. Conversely, every Jewish enterprise, every new conception of the Jew in his cosmopolitan activities (until these became revolutionary) appealed to the English merchant and banker.
The two things dovetailed one into the other and fitted exactly, and all subsidiary activities fitted in as well. The Jewish news agencies of the nineteenth century favored England in all her policy, political as well as commercial; they opposed those of her rivals and especially of her enemies. The Jewish knowledge of the East was at the service of England. His international penetration of the European governments was also at her service—so was his secret information. With the consolidation of the Indian Empire after the Mutiny the Jews were again an ally from their traditional hatred of the Russian people, which hatred has led them in our time to wreak so awful a vengeance upon their former oppressors. The Jew might almost be called a British agent upon the Continent of Europe, and still more in the Near and Far East, where the economic power of England extended even more rapidly than her political power.
And the Jew pointed to the English state as that one in which all that his nation required of be goyim was to be found. He here enjoyed a situation the like of which he could not hope to enjoy in any other country of the world. All antagonism to him had died down. He was admitted to every institution in the State, a prominent member of his nation became chief officer of the English executive, and, an influence more subtle and penetrating, marriages began to take place, wholesale, between what had once been the aristocratic territorial families of this country and the Jewish commercial fortunes.
After two generations of this, with the opening of the twentieth century those of the great territorial English families in which there was no Jewish blood were the exception. In nearly all of them was the strain more or less marked, in some of them so strong that though the name was still an English name and the tradition those of a purely English lineage of the long past, the physique and character had become wholly Jewish and the members of the family were taken for Jews whenever they travelled in countries where the gentry had not yet suffered or enjoyed this admixture.
...
Specially Jewish institutions, such as Freemasonry (which the Jews had inaugurated as a sort of bridge between themselves and their hosts in the seventeenth century), were particularly strong in Britain, and there arose a political tradition, active, and ultimately to prove of great importance, whereby the British State was tacitly accepted by foreign governments as the official protector of the Jews in other countries. [Belloc unfortunately gives no evidence about Freemasonry. Other examples of this irritating deficit include his remarks on law, where he states that (in England) all legal customs which Jews didn’t like were done away with, for example hue and cry; in France, ‘A Jew was responsible for the divorce laws’. And so on—RW]
...
England was secure.’
225: ‘The political situation reflected itself, as it always does, in literature. The Jew began to appear in English fiction as an exalted character, quite specially removed to his advantage from the mass of mankind. He is already a hero in Sir Walter Scott, .. You could still have a Jewish villain as late as Oliver Twist, but with writers as different as Charles Reade and George Eliot we reach a time where the Jew is impeccable. ... The active cause [of this literary convention] was the reflection of the Jew’s political position upon the mind of the educated class...
...
A convention arose that in the clash between the Jews and the English of the Middle Ages the Jews were invariably right and the english invariably wrong. Where the struggle was between the Jew and the non-Jew abroad, the historian exceeded all bounds. The European hostile to the Jews was a senseless monster, and the Jew hostile to the European was a holy victim.
The whole story.. was distorted through suppression, and false emphasis and quite exceptional lying. .. And as historians live by copying one another, the legend was established in every school and college.
.. the Jews.. held a power in this country beyond anything.. Poland at the end of the Middle Ages,.. is the only parallel..
.. Government.. House of Lords.. House of Commons.. Universities.. Government Offices save the Foreign Office (and even there...) .. powerful in the Press.. all-powerful in the City. No custom unsympathetic to their race, from the duel to popular clamour, survived. .. no distinction whatever..’
227: [Balfour Declaration. Belloc was aware ‘that we promised the Arabs their country if they would help us against the Turks. We then broke our promise.’—we being the secret negotiators during the First World War. However, Belloc missed the importance of Balfour vis-à-vis the USA:] ‘.. in the heat of the Great War.. one of the English politicians who was best fitted to speak for the Jews... Mr. Arthur Balfour was chosen to make the famous pronouncement in favour of Zionism. It came within a month of the great crisis of the war. Its object was to divide the general influence of the Jews throughout the world, which had hitherto been upon the whole opposed to the cause of the Allies, because, like every other neutral, then Jews were more and more convinced.. that the Central Empires were certain of victory.
.. the effect was to tie the British state yet closer to the fortunes of Israel, ...
The declaration in favour of Zionism, the solemn pledge.. coming.. after the climax of Jewish power had been reached and passed, was the last stage of that long process of alliance..’
XI ZIONISM 231
[Belloc didn’t like Zionism; the general view was that it would involve a small state of 1.5 million or so, not the entire Jewish population. And this would put Jewishness in a ‘picture frame’; from then on, any cause of friction could be met with the demand that Jews get out. He also considered defence. He didn’t anticipate the importance of oil; he didn’t foresee US involvement.
One of his concerns was the feelings of some non-Jews over their holy places in Palestine—RW]
XII OUR DUTY 249
[Long account by Belloc of the desirability of open discussion, investigation and recognition. He thought the cowardice of the opposite policy was ‘degrading’ and likely to cause ‘exasperation’—RW]
P. 263: ‘.. They recognize (they also exaggerate) the grip of the Jew over finance. They conceive that if they speak they will be dragged down, their enterprises ruined, their credit dissolved. And that is the most powerful instrument which can be brought to bear. When supernatural motives disappear the strongest motive remaining after appetite is avarice; ... There are to-day innumerable men who would express publicly on Jews what they continually express in private, but who conceal their feelings for fear that their salaries may be lost or their modest enterprises wrecked, their investments lowered, and their position ruined. Above them are a lesser number, equally convinced that their large fortunes would be in peril were they so to act. ..’
XIII THEIR DUTY 271
[This is by far the shortest chapter! Belloc thinks Jews should abate their arrogance; he also supports Jewish newspapers, schools etc. on the grounds it makes their views known. He thought (over a long period) that disputes between Jews and non-Jews should be heard by mixed juries—RW]
XIV VARIOUS THEORIES 277
[Belloc puts together a miscellany of odd ideas, including the Anglo-Israel theory that the English are a lost tribe of Israel—RW]
Pp. 279ff: ‘.. They tell us that but for the Jew the civilization of Europe would have grown torpid... The Jew, by this theory, is regarded as a sort of activating principle.. They see him indirectly producing the vast transformation of the Roman Empire from a pagan, not indeed to a Jew but to a Christian, that is (in their eyes) to an Oriental mood. They see the Jew at the root of the great revolution in philosophy which springs from the eleventh century and reaches its culmination in the great scholastics of the thirteenth. They insist upon the name of Averroës (Ibn Roshd), the philosopher of the twelfth century, the Kadi of Kordova: The exponent of Aristotle, the expositor—whom the Jews preserved: upon the great Moses ben Maimon, our Maimonides. These also put Nicolas de Lyra at the root of the Reformation: “Si Lyra non lyrasset Luther non saltasset.” But I may remind them that the Jewish character of this man is at least doubtful...’ [More on Spinoza, Ricardo, Marx—RW]
P. 283: ‘.. in reply to my description of the Jewish financial position in this country [England] after the Conquest: “Your cathedral and your abbeys and even your castles were built with our money.” The phrase was significant of the way in which what the English community of the time regarded as a tolerated abuse, those fortunes which they never thought of as Jewish at all, but as moneys temporarily unjustly wrung from the people at large, were regarded in contemporary Jewry as private property legitimately acquired, held in full possession. [Note: Belloc says he often spoke to Jewish groups, with the object of finding out what they thought—RW]
I could wish .. that some learned Jew would produce a History of Europe from the point of view of his people: ...’
P. 286: [Looks at the it’s none-of-your-business theory]
Pp. 292/295: [Looks at but rejects the melting-pot idea of Zangwill. And Henry Ford on Jews looking as though they want to melt the pot itself]
XV CONCLUSION: HABIT OR LAW? 301
[Belloc says his suggestion, of discussion and recognition, ought to be put into force urgently. Modern quarrels are growing fiercer.]
P.308: But for my part, I say, “Peace be to Israel.” [End]
Hilaire Belloc: The Jews. ©Rae West 2000 First uploaded 2000-08-05
