Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War.

by Gerry Docherty

  Poincaré had made an impressive start in international politics, and his commitment to a shared cause made him an invaluable asset to the Secret Elite. They were, however, conscious of the vagaries of French politics. Prime ministers tended to come and go with vulgar repetitiveness, and there had been six incumbents over the previous six years. The post of president, on the other hand, was guaranteed for a seven-year period. The presidency would thus offer Poincaré, and by default the Secret Elite, a greater permanence to pursue their war agenda. They enthusiastically backed his candidacy in the 1912 presidential election against an avowed anti-war, anti-Russian opponent, Emile Combes.

  The choice was stark, and Isvolsky understood the absolute necessity of securing Poincaré’s election. He urgently telegraphed Sazonov for further funds to bribe the press and members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies,27 telling him, ‘Should Poincaré fail, which God forbid, it will be a disaster for us.’28

  The sums involved were enormous. Isvolsky requested three million francs alone to buy off the Radical, a paper owned by one of Poincaré’s most outspoken opponents in the Senate.29 The money was passed directly by Isvolsky to an intermediary and on to the French minister of finance, Louis-Lucien Klotz, who shamelessly disbursed it to the politicians who would effectively vote for Poincaré.30 The general public did not at that time vote for their president. Electors were limited to senators and deputies, which made bribery and corruption relatively straightforward. The Secret Elite went to great lengths to ensure that the money could not be traced back to Russia or, worse still, to Paris and London. Poincaré’s opponents were bribed to vote for him and opposition was silenced.31 Nothing was left to chance.

  Congress duly elected Poincaré on 13 February 1913, and the fate of Europe was sealed. Traditionally the president had been seen as merely a figurehead, but Poincaré’s first act was to award himself much greater powers. In his inaugural address, he declared that he would play a more active part in politics than his predecessors and radically altered the philosophy of the French government. ‘The diminution of executive power is desired neither by the Chamber nor by the nation … it is not possible for a people to be really peaceful, except on the condition of always being ready for war.’32 His dictatorial approach was underlined by the immediate removal of Georges Louis from his ambassadorial post in St Petersburg. The late King Edward’s chosen agent, Théophile Delcassé, the most rabidly anti-German politician in French public life, replaced him. Isvolsky telegraphed St Petersburg: ‘Delcassé is entirely devoted to the idea of the very closest association between Russia and France … He is empowered to offer Russia all the financial assistance required, in the form of railway loans.’33 The new president meant business.

  Raymond Poincaré altered the regulations which determined the composition of France’s Supreme War Council, giving himself the power to convene the council under his own chairmanship.34 He announced a well-funded campaign to introduce a military service law that extended the period of national service from two to three years and dramatically increased the size of France’s standing army.

  The Northcliffe press enthusiastically backed the plan. In London, The Times ran a passionate campaign in support of Poincaré’s three-year law and poured ridicule on its opponents like the socialist Jean Jaurès.35 The Times correspondent in St Petersburg reported that, with simultaneous changes in the Russian army, their peacetime footing would be 1,400,000. He boldly claimed that ‘by general consent the Russian army has never been in better condition’.36 Though that itself had yet to be put to the test, these changes gave the Franco-Russian military forces an enormous numerical advantage over the united German and Austrian armies.

  On 12 June 1913, Baron Guillaume, the Belgian ambassador in Paris, warned his foreign minister in Brussels that Poincaré’s exorbitant expenditure on the French army posed an alarming dilemma. France would ‘either renounce what she cannot bear to forgo [Alsace-Lorraine], or else [go to] war at short notice’. Clearly, Poincaré was not preparing for the former. Guillaume noted that infatuation with the military had created a kind of popular frenzy and that French people were not allowed to express doubt about the three-year law ‘under pain of being marked as a traitor’. The propaganda, which had been carefully planned and executed, ‘began by helping to get Poincaré elected president’ and continued ‘regardless of the dangers that it is creating. There is great anxiety throughout the country.’37 The French people were right to be anxious.

  Raymond Poincaré proved to be a worthy investment for the Secret Elite. He put reconciliation with Germany to the sword, prepared his nation for war and declared unswerving loyalty to Britain and Russia. Guided by Isvolsky, he stood ready to manipulate unrest in the Balkans and take advantage of the crisis to provoke a European war. The war he wanted so much. The war that would win back his beloved ‘lost provinces’.

  Poincaré’s election had been secured through bribery, corruption and a huge investment in influencing public opinion through the press. This classic control of the levers of power, which Carroll Quigley so rightly described as the Secret Elite trademark, was not limited to Europe but was simultaneously being manipulated in the United States of America.

  SUMMARY: CHAPTER 16 – POINCARÉ – THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BOUGHT

  The Secret Elite used their principal agent in Paris, Alexander Isvolsky, to undermine Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux and have him replaced by a rabid Revanchist, Raymond Poincaré.

  Poincaré knew that he was indebted to Isvolsky and foreign bankers, newspapers and politicians who funded his corrupt campaign.

  Under Poincaré, the nature of the Franco-Russian alliance was fundamentally comitted to war, not defence. Thus he visited Sazonov in St Petersburg to reassure him of French and British commitment to war with Germany.

  By 1914, over 80 per cent of Russian debt was owed to French banks. Poincaré and his backers insisted that these loans were conditional on increases in the Russian military and a modernised railway infrastructure that would speed up mobilisation against Germany.

  The French banks and the Bank of France were controlled by a very few major financiers, amongst whom the Rothschilds were a dominant power. The Houses of Rothschild in London and Paris worked in tandem to service the loans required for Russia through other banking fronts.

  Poincaré’s position as prime minister was relatively insecure, so the Secret Elite promoted his election to president in 1913 through a massive programme of bribery and corruption.

  Once elected, Poincaré immediately increased the powers of the president, sacked his more pacifist ambassador in Russia, George Louis, and replaced him with the Revanchist champion Delcassé.

  Much to the approval of the Secret Elite, Poincaré introduced a three-year law to increase the strength of the French army.

  CHAPTER 17

  America – A Very Special Relationship

  RHODES’ SECRET SOCIETY GREW STEADILY and became ever more sophisticated in the first decade of the twentieth century. Its aim of bringing the entire world under British influence remained paramount, and Milner’s Round Table associates travelled the globe to spread the gospel of the Empire.1 The great financiers and merchant bankers centred in the City, the financial and banking district of London, shared the vision of a single world power based on English ruling-class values. In his ‘Confession of Faith’, Rhodes had written of bringing the whole uncivilised world under British rule, and the ‘recovery’ of the United States to make the ‘Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire’,2 by which he meant a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America working in tandem with like minds in England. Clearly the United States could not be ‘recovered’ by force of arms, so wealthy elites in America with a similar mindset would have to share in the control.

  Rhodes Scholarships favoured American students, with one hundred allocated there, two for each of the fifty states and territories, whereas a total of sixty were made available for the entire British Empire. The ‘best talents’ from the ‘best fami
lies’ were to be nurtured at Oxford University and imbued with an appreciation of ‘Englishness’ and the importance of the ‘retention of the unity of the Empire’.3 Rhodes recognised the opportunities on offer to those who possessed great wealth to control politics and governments, and his ambition was driven by an understanding that the markets could be used to ‘achieve political ends’.4 The world was entering an era of financial capitalism where wealthy international investment bankers, the ‘money power’, were able to dominate both business and government if they had the concerted will to do so.5 This new money power seeped into the British Establishment and joined the aristocratic landowning families who had ruled Britain for centuries. Together, they formed the heart of the Secret Elite.

  From 1870 onwards, London was the centre of Britain’s greatest export: money. Vast quantities of savings and earnings were gathered and invested at considerable profit through the international merchant banks of Rothschild, Baring, Lazard, and Morgan in the City. There, influence and investments crossed national boundaries6 and raised funds for governments and companies across the entire world.7 The great investment houses made billions, their political allies and agents grew wealthy, and the nascent British middle class was desperate to buy into a share of their success. Edward VII, both as king and earlier as Prince of Wales, swapped friendship and honours for the generous patronage of the Rothschilds, Cassel, and other Jewish banking families like the Montagus, Hirschs and Sassoons, and in so doing blew away much of the stigma of anti-Jewish bigotry inside British ‘society’. The Bank of England was completely in the hands of these powerful financiers, and the relationship went unchallenged.

  The Secret Elite appreciated America’s vast potential and adjusted the concept of British race supremacy to Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Rhodes’ dream had only to be slightly modified. The world was to be united through the English-speaking nations in a federal structure based around Britain.8 Like Rhodes, Alfred Milner believed that this goal should be pursued by a secret political and economic elite influencing ‘journalistic, educational and propaganda agencies’ behind the scenes.9

  The flow of money into the United States during the nineteenth century advanced industrial development to the immense benefit of the millionaires it created: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt and their associates. The Rothschilds represented British interests, either directly through front companies or indirectly through agencies that they controlled. Railroads, steel, shipbuilding, construction, oil and finance blossomed in an often cut-throat environment, though that was more apparent than real. These small groups of massively rich individuals on both sides of the Atlantic knew one another well, and the Secret Elite in London initiated the very select and secretive dining club, the Pilgrims, that brought them together on a regular basis.

  On 11 July 1902, an inaugural meeting was held at the Carlton Hotel attended by around 40 members of what became known as the London Chapter of the Pilgrims Society, with a select membership limited by individual scrutiny to 500.10 Ostensibly, The Pilgrims was created to ‘promote goodwill, good friendship and everlasting peace’11 between Britain and the United States, but its highly secretive and exclusive membership leaves little doubt as to its real purpose. This was the pool of wealth and talent that the Secret Elite drew together to promote its agenda in the years preceding the First World War. Behind an image of the Pilgrim Fathers, the persecuted pioneers of Christian values, this elite cabal advocated the idea that ‘Englishmen and Americans would promote international friendship through their pilgrimages to and fro across the Atlantic’.12 It presented itself as a spontaneous movement to promote democracy across the world,13 and most of the membership truly believed that. But the Pilgrims included a select collective of the wealthiest figures in both Britain and the United States who were deeply involved with the Secret Elite. They shared Rhodes’ dream and wanted to be party to it.

  The London Pilgrims soon established a tradition that they should be the first to entertain each new American ambassador to Britain and that his first official speech should be at a Pilgrims dinner. They also hosted a farewell dinner for each new British ambassador departing for Washington and welcomed him back after his tour of duty. The New York branch of the Pilgrims was launched at the Waldorf-Astoria on 13 January 190314 and comprised the most important financiers, politicians and lawyers on the eastern seaboard. They established a similar tradition of close interaction with British and American ambassadors.15 These ambassadorial connections with the Pilgrims would prove crucial in linking the foreign secretary in London and the secretary of state in Washington to the Secret Elite and its agenda for war. A number of the American Pilgrims also had close links with the New York branch of the Secret Elite’s Round Table.

  In Britain, at least 18 members of the Secret Elite, including Lords Rothschild, Curzon, Northcliffe and Esher, and Sir Edward Grey and Arthur Balfour attended Pilgrims dinners, though the regularity of their attendance is difficult to establish. Such is the perennial problem with secret groups. We know something about the guests invited to dinner but not what was discussed between courses.16 In New York, members included both the Rockefeller and Morgan dynasties, and many men in senior government posts. Initially, membership was likewise limited to 500, and it was agreed that any American resident in London who was proposed for membership should first be vetted by the New York committee.17 The power elite in America was New York centred, carried great influence in domestic and international politics, and was heavily indulgent of Yale, Harvard and Princeton universities. Within a short period of time they created an American version of what Carroll Quigley termed the triple-front penetration of politics, the press and education.18 The Pilgrims Society brought together American money and British aristocracy, royalty, presidents and diplomatic representatives. It was indeed a special relationship.

  Of all the American banking establishments, none was more Anglocentric than the J.P. Morgan bank, itself deeply involved with the Pilgrims. In the complex world of investment banking, the Morgan empire owed everything to a Massachusetts-born American, George Peabody, who set up a banking firm in London in 1835 to deal in American railroad securities. He later recruited a fellow American, Junius Morgan, father of J.P. Morgan, as a partner in the venture, but they faced ruin when a run on the banks in 1857 almost bankrupted the company. Though rivals were keen to drive the firm out of business, a massive £800,000 loan from the Bank of England, which would have a current equivalence of half a billion pounds, saw them emerge with an enhanced reputation.19 Nathaniel Rothschild had developed a close relationship with George Peabody, and he in turn proved to be a loyal and grateful friend.20 The crisis claimed four banks, yet Peabody, Morgan and Company was saved. Why? Who initiated the rescue? The Rothschilds held immense sway in the Bank of England and the most likely answer is that they intervened to save the firm. Peabody retired in 1864, and Junius Morgan inherited a strong bank with powerful links to Rothschild.

  The question to be asked is what the Rothschilds had to gain by such acts of generosity? Their rescue packages for failing banks or companies always came at a price. Once saved, the concern would be allowed to continue trading under its old name, and usually with its previous owners and directors, but henceforth it would act as a front company for the Rothschild dynasty. It would move securities, trade on stock markets, front deals and buy up other companies under the old retained name, and few would know that the Rothschilds were the real purchasing power behind them. When Barings Bank faced similar collapse in 1890, Nathaniel Rothschild headed the emergency committee of the Bank of England. He not only donated £500,000 directly but through his cousin, Baron de Rothschild, persuaded the Bank of France to contribute £3 million in gold to stave off the crisis.21 There can be no doubt that by the early twentieth century numerous major banks, including J.P. Morgan and Barings, and armaments firms, were beholden to or fronts for the Rothschilds.

  The Morgan family wore their affinity to England like a badge of honour. Despite sti
nging criticism from Thomas Jefferson that Junius’s father-in-law, the Rev. John Pierpont, was ‘under the influence of the whore of England’,22 his son, John Pierpont Morgan, was sent to the English High School in Boston and spent much of his younger years absorbing British traditions. He was an ardent Anglophile and admirer of the British Empire. In 1899, J.P. Morgan travelled to England to attend an international bankers’ convention and returned to America as the representative of Rothschild interests in the United States.23

  It was the perfect front. J.P. Morgan, who posed as an upright Protestant guardian of capitalism, who could trace his family roots to pre-Revolutionary times, acted in the interests of the London Rothschilds and shielded their American profits from the poison of anti-Semitism. In 1895, the Rothschilds secretly replenished the US gold reserves through J.P. Morgan and raised him to the premier league of international banking.24 In turn, his gratitude was extended to another Rothschild favourite and one of the most powerful men in England, Alfred Milner. In 1901, Morgan offered Milner a then massive income of $100,000 per annum to become a partner in the London banch of J P Morgan,25 but Milner was not to be distracted from the vital business of the Boer War. J.P. Morgan became the Empire loyalist at the heart of the American Establishment.

  A second powerful bank on Wall Street, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., also served as a Rothschild front. The history of this bank dated from the Civil War, when two successful German immigrants, Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb, amassed a fortune selling uniforms to the North. They ploughed the profits into a small banking house in New York and went back to their Frankfurt roots to find a partner who had banking experience in the European arena. Kuhn and Loeb offered the post to Jacob Schiff, who came from a family close to the Rothschilds.26 He had been born in the house his parents shared with the Rothschilds in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt.27