THE INTERNATIONAL JEW: The World's Foremost Problem
Henry Ford
Pro-Jewish Scout In the Daily Newspapers
Norman Hapgood, Erstwhile Writer on the Jewish Question, Is Now in the Press as Special Pleader for Jewish Leaders
“‘NO MORE articles,' I said to myself a few weeks ago, 'about the Jews. Their problems are interesting, but they are in such a state just now that discussion will do more harm than good.'" The writer is Norman Hapgood, writing for a Hearst syndicate service which is carried daily by many American newspapers.
Following the above-quoted paragraph, which was printed in the papers of August 24, was the usual article, pro-Jewish, very thin as regards material, most palpable propaganda. And then more articles followed, and still more, until in the newspapers of October 1, Mr. Hapgood gave notice of a letter protesting against the personal abuse with which he had liberally sprinkled his articles, and that letter was from a Jew!
The letter of protest ended this way: "The last part of your name is good. Think it over. I am a Jew." And Hapgood rejoins: "Well, I am not, but I am pro-Jew."
The Jewish letter of protest is not at all surprising. The Jewish people have become utterly sick and tired of those ebullient "defenders" who elaborately praise the Jews for the sake of Jewish applause. And it is becoming the conviction of the Jewish people that they would better trust those who are candid enough in their friendship to tell them the truth about themselves. Of this there is evidence on every hand. The Jews understand honest criticism and appreciate it; they also understand flattery and discount it. They were sore at first and vindictive, and some are still so: they were incited to enmity and folly by their leaders, and some are still incited; but the truth is making its way, that there is no enmity in truth, that "faithful are the wounds of a friend."
THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT also has received letters concerning Mr. Hapgood, most of them being requests for information concerning his race. Although you will hear occasionally in New York that he is a Jew, it is probably true that he is not. His word may be taken without reserve on that point. There are also points of circumstantial evidence that he is not a Jew; his work is too thin and apologetic. It lacks the virility found in Jewish work of the same type. It is too often suggestive of pose. Besides, it utterly lacks the treasures, if not of wisdom then of texture, which mark the writings of a student. Offhand, one would say that Hapgood is a reader, but not a student. What he reads is pretty likely to come to the surface of his writings, so that in perusing a given article it is not at all difficult to trace what Hapgood's reading had recently been.
Hapgood Once Had a Vision of Candor
MR. HAPGOOD is of special interest with reference to THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT'S series of Jewish studies, because there was a time when Norman Hapgood wrote more on the Jewish Question in the United States than any non-Jew had ever before attempted. Mr. Hapgood was a sort of pioneer in this field, as far as the public press is concerned. In fact, Mr. Hapgood once faced the opportunity to do this country a service, but he flinched, and he failed. He is now working for Hearst, the man on whose name and works he used to pour his most deadly editorial acid.
Norman Hapgood was editor of Colliers Weekly from 1903 to 1912, during which time he did excellent work. The fact that it consisted mostly in attacking non-Jews need not detract from its usefulness. The Jewish idea which debauches business must be blasted out of non-Jews as well as Jews. From 1913 to 1916 he was editor of Harper's Weekly, which publication proving unfortunate was merged with the New York Independent, which has since been merged with the Weekly Review, among the controllers of which is Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish Committee, and Mortimer L. Schiff. After the disappearance of Harper's from the field, Hapgood went into government work, presumably under the direction of, or in some association with, George Creel. From February to December, 1919, he was envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Denmark, representing the Wilson Administration. The Senate never confirmed his appointment. And now he appears before the public again as "Universal Service Staff Correspondent," with constant attacks on the study of the Jewish Question as being conducted by THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, and constant support of Zionism in particular, and in general all things Jewish.
Mr. Hapgood is a witness to the fact that the Jewish Question exists. He was not long settled in the editorship of Harper's before he gave evidence of being deeply impressed by it. If one may essay to read another's motive and purpose, one would say this: Once upon a time, Norman Hapgood had a vision of the good that would result to American society by a straight aboveboard discussion of the Jewish Question and also the question of religious prejudice in the United States. It was a daring thought for any editor to harbor, especially for the editor of Harper's. The very announcement in that weekly that the word Jew was to be used, that the terms Protestant and Catholic were to be used in candid articles, gave promise of a new appearance of frankness in American journalism. It seems to have been Mr. Hapgood's purpose to bring these questions into the air and sunlight, rescue them from the atmosphere of whispering and suspicion, and talk them over man-to-man fashion.
But He Was Afraid to Give Offense
THE work, of course, did not come to much. Mr. Hapgood wanted to tickle with a feather while he worked with his scalpel, and no remedial major operations are performed that way. He was always in the attitude of apologizing for his facts. He kept anxiously glancing over his shoulder to see if anyone was taking offense, and as a result he committed the greatest offense of all, he was unfaithful to his venture.
The fact is, Hapgood was so "thick" with the Jews that he did not dare be the kind of friend that would antagonize them for their good. He knew far too many in a way that it is better for a writing man not to know any. Hapgood had a vision of what might be done, but he did not do it.
In his editorship of Harper's, Mr. Hapgood started off boldly on the path of reform, employing George Creel to write several articles against the entrenched evils of society. Gentiles, interested in the manufacture of patent medicines, were one of these evils. If these Gentiles happened to belong to a Christian church, it made a much juicier article. Billy Sunday was another of the evils attacked, it being charged that he was hauled from industrial center to industrial center to take the people's minds off wages and make them think of God—the bills being paid by the men who would otherwise have to pay increased wages. Tammany Hall was attacked, too, but never a word of the Jewish control of Tammany, never the name of a single Jew belonging to it. There were articles also on the motion picture censorship, but not a word of the Jewish control of the movie industry. An article on "What is the Matter With Baseball?" failed to give the real answer. It was the good old game of fighting the air, shooting into the sky, while the persons at the helm of the evils attacked went right on exploiting, corrupting and raking in the profits.
To Say "Jew" Was His Daring Plan
BEGINNING with the issue of January 23, 1916, Harper's began to speak about Jews. (That issue, incidentally, contains a photograph of a crowd of Jews hurrahing for Bouck White who rebelled against the Christian church by starting "an Anarchist Church.") The first article that appears on this subject is "Religion for the Jew," by Arthur H. Gleason. It is a Kehillah-inspired article. That is, it boosts the then proposed new Jewish system of education undertaken by the Kehillah. It was outspoken enough, however, to refer to the rabbi's schools of New York as the "five hundred holes where 15,000 boys are huddled around over-worked street peddlers with a smattering of rabbinical lore." Even that would have been seditious without Kehillah sanction.
In Harper's for August 7, 1915, Mr. Hapgood himself writes an article on "Big Jews and Little," in the course of which he indicates quite plainly that he knows the charges brought against Jews and that he believes there is some reason for it. We quote him:
"We accused the Jew of bad manners, of over-acquisitiveness, of commercial dishonorableness, of ruining peasants wherever he went, of vulgarizing life and drama, of white slavery and prostitution. . . . And we conceive of a mighty political and commercial (especially banking) conspiracy, with a vast information bureau, having its malign influence on every move upon the international board. . . .
“Is there no reason for the persistence of this Jew-baiting? Most national pastimes are shorter-lived and less diffused. Frankly, there is a reason."
And then he goes on to discuss the "big" Jew and the "little" Jew, the "big" Jew being the Jewish leader against whom Mr. Hapgood brings the true charge — "He made moral ghettos for his fellow-Jew."
With these bare gleams of showing fact through to the bone, he desists, and drifts away into inane compliment and praise, returning only once to mention "the moral disintegration of the young Jews, especially in the New York slums," and the rest is mere words.
In Harper's of August 14, 1915, Hapgood has another article on "The Soul of Zionism," of which he knows nothing more than is contained in the propagandist literature put out from the Zionist publicity officers in lower Fifth Avenue.
In the issue of August 21 he discusses "The Jew and This War," being an appeal for pity for the Jews, another glance at Zionism as a solution, possibly with intermarriage on the side for those who do not go to Palestine.
Then on November 13, Mr. Hapgood takes up the question "Do Americans Dislike Jews?" and does not do very creditable work in dealing with it. He gives the yearly Jewish immigrant arrivals from 1880 to 1913, without saying where he gets the figures, and without alluding to the fact that the Jewish lobby at Washington prevented the United States Government from compiling those same statistics. (See first article, "How Jews in the United States Conceal Their Strength," Volume II, Jewish Activities in the United States—a reprint of previous articles in this series.) He hazards the guess that Jewish immigration would go down after the war. He was wrong, of course. Jewish immigration went up so rapidly and so high that Congress felt it necessary to pass laws curtailing it.
Failing in Frankness, Becomes Impudent
IN THIS article Mr. Hapgood says: "As to the United States, the simple truth is that Americans do not deprive Jews of any rights, but that they do not on the whole like them, and do not therefore bring out their more ideal sides." That is, it is the Americans who are to blame for the Jew. This is a variation of the Jewish statement, "Every country has the Jews it deserves."
November 20 appears another Hapgood article, "Jews and Intermarriage," in which he has the effrontery to do what no student of the Jewish Question would think of doing, namely, propose intermarriage to the Jews. Hapgood never got beneath his reading in this matter; he indulges in mere clap-trap. It is the right of the Jews to remain separate in any way they choose; they may keep socially segregated, racially separate, religiously separate, linguistically separate, if they choose. None of these things is the cause of the charges against them. The charge is that, being separate, they have a foreign policy against the people among whom they live. If the Jewish people, casting off the false leaders who have ensnared and enslaved them, will live to the common good, and not exclusively for that Jewish type of good which spells enmity to others, then the problem is solved. It is the Jewish idea, the Talmud idea, the anti-Gentile, anti-Christian idea which must be got rid of. Then, even the over-developed commercial instinct of the Jews will become an asset of the common good, which it is not now. Mr. Hapgood, besides betraying a fear of facts, a cowardice in the face of conclusions, betrays in his discussion of intermarriage an unconscious and coarse discourtesy which reflects seriously upon his knowledge of the Jewish Question.
In the November 27 article, "The Future of the Jews in America," a reward should have been offered for Jew or non-Jew finding what it is about. One absolute proof of Hapgood's incapacity on the whole subject is embodied in his words: "and since the war broke up the Zionist movement in Europe"!! That is one of the pathetic things about the Jews' use of their "Gentile fronts"—they keep them in such ignorance of the facts, permit them to go before the curtain and spout their errors, and then let them take the consequences.
That, however, was not the end of Mr. Hapgood's obsession on the subject of the Jews. It seems that he could not keep his hands off it. Apparently he knew of something that ought to be said, and he was always trying to say it by indirection, but somehow he could not pump up courage enough to get it squarely said. He was constantly muffling it with words and a patronizing attitude. It was nothing for him to charge the utmost ignorance, cruelty, narrowness and baseness against his own people, against the American people, but apparently he could not screw up even a mild reprimand for people who he must have known were in collusion and whose influence he could not have misunderstood.
So, the Jews come up again in the issue of January 8, 1916, in an article "The Case for Intermarriage" by Armand Schreiber. This article contains some forthright statements:
"Why are the Jews, after so many centuries, still persecuted? Let us be frank. Nobody seriously contends that anti-Semitism is religious intolerance; it is purely racial animosity. And when accounting for the racial animosity, it will never do to raise the finger of scorn and point out the Gentile as the only cause of our suffering. This would be but a very simple device of hiding our own guilt. Though I do not for one moment admit that the absurd charges of the anti-Semitic propaganda are true, yet I freely concede our guilt to the extent that living among Gentile nations, we, on the theory of being the chosen people, the Simon Pure people, have scrupulously kept up our isolation."
Always Running Down His Own Race
AND in the next week's issue (January 15) Hapgood himself opens up again a new series about the treatment of Jews in schools and colleges, the first article being "Jews and College Life," the second one (January 22) being "Schools, Colleges and Jews," and the third one (January 29) on "How Should Jews Be Treated?" He says very little, the following quotations being as near as he ever comes to his apparent dream of saying something that has rock-like substance and strength.
The first quotation will throw light on Mr. Hapgood's quality of prejudice: "The two great influences in the schools of New York are the Jews and the Catholics. The Jews desire only to have the places assigned according to examinations, but Catholic politicians and office-seekers have sought constantly to have them assigned arbitrarily, so as to allow personal choice." Here he lauds the Jew at the expense of the Catholic Christians.
He does recognize, however, without entering into an adequate defense or even a complete explanation of the fact, that certain schools do not encourage Jews to attend:
"In some of the small preparatory schools, and even in some of the colleges, steps are taken to limit the number of Jews admitted. Usually this does not mean entire exclusion. The school does not wish to take a definite anti-Semitic stand. It simply wishes to prevent itself from becoming a Jewish institution, as it would become if everything were competitive" (Here is Hapgood putting the American student a notch below the Jew again.) "There, it establishes a waiting list, even if the prospects are that for the coming season it will have too few students, rather than too many. By tactful use of the waiting list, it is able to have about three or four Jews in a hundred, instead of allowing the number to increase rapidly. In many cases, where this device is used, the result is that the few admitted are treated very largely without prejudice, since it is to a large extent true that the prejudice that does exist is not against the individual Jew but against the race."
A Man Who Told the Truth in Harper's
ON FEBRUARY 5, Harper's contains an article by Stanley Washburn on "America's Chance in Russia." Washburn is rather refreshing after the noncommittal stuff of Hapgood. He says what he has to say, and what he says is not something he has read in literature sent out by a Kehillah, it is the result of observation:
"The question of the Jews is a delicate one to handle, but the Russian treatment of the Jews in this war has been, all things considered, extremely lenient, and many measures looking toward the alleviation of the Jews in Russia are under way. When I say that the Russian treatment of the Jews has been lenient in this war, I am quite well aware that I shall be contradicted vehemently by many persons, for certainly the German press agents have not been slow to capitalize Jewish sentiment by piling up stories of alleged Jewish atrocities.
I cannot, of course, prove a negative and state that there have been no excesses in regard to the Hebrews, but I can say this, that I have been, as correspondent of the London Times, with instructions to look out for this very aspect, in the theater of operations from October, 1914, to November 1, 1915, and in all of this time I have seen nothing to warrant any statements of Russian cruelty to the Jews nor have I received any evidence from any credible source to establish the truth of any such story.
During these months I suppose that I have been in not less than one thousand villages in Russia, covering country all the way from the Bukovina to the Baltic, and barring the expulsion of Jews from the war zone, I have seen nothing whatever that can be considered as an outrage on the Jews. . . . I think it safe to say that the major portion of the Jews in Poland were pro-German in their sympathies, and that the greater portion of spies in Poland proved guilty, were Jews. Yet there has been at no time during the war in Russia any, save possibly isolated cases of which I have no information, general persecution of the Jews."
This was a bomb shell among people nourished on the thin Hapgood pap, and Harper's heard of it from its readers, for in an editorial for the February 26 issue, Mr. Hapgood refuses to let the discussion burst forth, but gives instead an appeal to send money to those same Jews of whom Mr. Washburn wrote.
The last utterance, until he took up the task of getting into the daily papers his attacks against THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT, was in the Jewish college fraternity publication, the Menorah Journal. In the October, 1916, issue he writes a special article in which he addresses the Jews directly:
Taffy—And a Slap on the Wrist
“DURING most of my life my individual acquaintance with Jews has been fairly wide, but not nearly so wide as it has been in the last few years. . . . The ablest young publicist whom I know in this country, the man who has the widest grasp among the distinctly young men, is a Jew. The man who in the last few years, without conspicuous credit, has done the most careful and patient work to organize the forces of reform in New York, is a Jew. He among the distinctly young men who has made the highest impression in the law is a Jew. The man of my acquaintance among the very young with the widest historical knowledge is a Jew. The man who understands finance from the intellectual side best in New York is a Jew. The man who seems to me, over a long period of years, to have contributed the greatest number of reform ideas to the solution of economic problems, is a Jew."
That is the way all Gentile pro-Jews begin. And the Jews hate it. Read their books, their papers, their correspondence, and see how they detest it. The exceptional Jew (as far as publicity goes), the flashy Jew, the well-advertised Jew, is often too well known to his people, to render palatable the Hapgood sort of compliment.
When Hapgood, with a glimmer of his old ambition to say the truth, turns to serious things, he says:
"I need hardly explain that I do not think Jews ought to insist overmuch on their rights or nationality in a negative sense. They ought to be as much Jews as they can, but ought to be as little as possible of what is merely anti-Christian. For the Jews to try to get a song out of the public schools because it praises Jesus is natural but perhaps hardly wise. I admit that question, however, is an extremely complex and baffling one. Again, the Jews have naturally taken a great interest in this war, but in that case also they ought to choose as far as possible the more tolerant view. Too much hostility to Russia was shown, it seems to me, when some of their spokesmen were fighting over the wording of the Immigration Act. They seemed to be fighting not for a real gain, but simply to rub their political power in America into the Russian mind."
Knowing so much about the Jews, their anti-Christian activities, their intolerance of the Christian American majority, "their political power in America" which they have no grossly misused, Norman Hapgood is guilty of plain cowardice in starting out with sugary praise and ending with a sweet little slap on the wrist.
He knows too much to say so little, and to say that little so timidly.
IN response to numerous inquiries: The testimony given by David S. Franks, the Jewish aid of Benedict Arnold, may be found in Volume 5 of "The Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society," published in 1897. Other important information concerning the Franks family is contained in Volumes 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 16, 18 and 20. Consult the Index which was published in 1914.
Why Should They Use the Daily Press?
IT IS a question, how much right Mr. Hapgood and Mr. Hearst have to use Norman Hapgood's name to get American Jewish Committee stuff into the American newspapers. We shall not now discuss the part of the newspapers themselves in this, for at the present time too many American newspapers are caught in a vise; the cure is not in scolding them, but in liberating them.
Norman Hapgood, with all his boasted independence, is not free today to write a series on "What Is Really the Cause of the American People's New Scrutiny of the Jew." He is not free even to quote what the true Jewish leaders say, leaders such as Herzl and others who have been quoted at length in this series. He is free to say only what is pleasing to the New York Jews, who for the most part are not Jews at all, and who are a curse to their people. He can please these New York leaders only by praising the Jews and attacking all who speak plainly about the facts of the Jewish Question. Even to discuss it at all is a mistake, in Hapgood's judgment. This is in implicit obedience to the Jewish decree that discussion of Jews as Jews must be prevented at any cost. That Hapgood accepts that view in the main is indicated in the quotation with which this article begins.
This is Hapgood's weakness as a writer on the Jewish Question—he never crosses the boundary line of Jewish opinion, he is saturated in it.
It is indeed sad to contrast and contemplate the might-have-been and the reality, in Hapgood's case. Once he seemed to see clearly marked the path by which plain-speaking could have brought a more wholesome atmosphere into our national thinking. But what "the fear of the Jews" dampened in him, the lure of Hearst has quenched. Hapgood flinched, therefore he failed.
Jewish World Notes
- The Jewish press writers are feeling very sore over the success of the Polish Republic in placing a $250,000,000 loan in this country. The worst of it is that Jewish money lenders, despite persistent Jewish attempt to defeat the effort to finance the struggling new nation and so punish it for alleged "pogroms," seem to have succumbed to the temptation to participate in the profits of the loan. "Emes" in "Modern View" commenting on the report that the Guggenheims subscribed for a large share of the bonds, waxes almost tearful in his reproach of his brethren for "placing financial gain above the principles of humanity . . . thereby aiding and abetting in the nefarious policy of pogrom and massacre."—Chicago Israelite. But possibly the reproach is a bit premature. In catching the creditor's whip from the hands of Gentile bankers, the Jews need not necessarily have been moved by any very friendly feelings toward Poland, nor have proved themselves false to their tribe and its program.
- Identification of the World Zionist Organization with the International Jewish Banking Combine is no longer a matter of any difficulty. The presiding officer of the Twelfth Zionist Congress, which held a two weeks' session in September at Carlsbad, is Lord Rothschild, head of the great London banking house of M. Rothschild and Son and the central headquarters of the Frankfort, Paris and Vienna "Rothschilds" and their numerous branches and agencies throughout the world. He is assisted in his presidential duties by Professor Otto Warburg, and vice-chairmen, who will conduct special sessions, include Louis Lipsky, secretary of the American Zionist Organization; David Yellin, of Palestine; Professor Pick, of the Mizrachi, and Dr. Arthur Hanke.
- In connection with the petition of the Arab deputation now in London to the British Colonial Secretary for the establishment of self-government in Palestine through an elective national assembly in which Christians, Mohammedans and Jews should be represented according to their respective percentage in the population, the Chicago Israelite declares: "There seems to be a terrible storm brewing in Palestine and one which will prove disastrous to the Jews unless they are willing and able to meet these demands of the native population fairly and squarely." The Arabs charge that they are being unfairly treated by the present administration, which is entirely under Jewish influence. In conversation with the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, a member of the Arab delegation said: "We do not object to the Jews, but we do object to the policy of Zionism, which is gradually to obtain a dominant power by immigration and finally to establish a Jewish state. The immigrants who have come are the most objectionable class, including Bolsheviki, and this low-class Jewish labor is displacing Arab workers. In the Parliament we want, the Jews would have as many members as their numbers justify."
- Numerous inquiries reach this office asking if there is anything in the book, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which shows a monkey searching for lice through the hair of a non-Jewish American soldier, while the other American soldier shown—a Jew—reads a newspaper printed in Yiddish. No! These delicate touches are the contributions of the Jew-owned, Jew-controlled and Jew-degraded motion picture industry of the United States.
- "The great German editor" is the style in which Maximilian Harden is described for his forthcoming lecture tour of the United States. This "German" is a Jew of Polish origin, as were many of the "Germans" whose behavior puzzled the world. "Harden" is a "cover name"; his real Hebraic name is Witkowski.
- The Boston Post prints the story of "a camp of anarchy" near Steelton, New Jersey, of which it says, "The only flag on the 57-acre plot is the red flag of anarchy." It is only another instance of the increased liberty being taken by American newspapers that the Post should add, "There are 175 persons living in the colony, chiefly Russian Jews." Even if that had not been stated, the intelligent reader could have assumed it.