C
by Douglas Reed
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If such words were to be fulfilled, and thus to acquire the status of “uncanny knowledge” revealed in advance of the event, the conspiracy had to gain control of the governments involved so that their acts of State policy, and in consequence their military operations, might be diverted to serve the ends of the conspiracy, not national interests. The American president was already (i.e., from 1912) the captive of secret “advisers,” as has been shown; and if Mr. House's depictment of him (alike in the anonymous novel and the acknowledged Private Papers) is correct, he fits the picture given in the earlier Protocols, “… we replaced the ruler by a caricature of a president, taken from the mob, from the midst of our puppet creatures, our slaves.”
However, Mr. Wilson was not required to take much active part in furthering the great “design” in the early stages of the First World War; he fulfilled his function later. At its start the main objective was to gain control of the British Government. The struggle to do this lasted two years and ended in victory for the intriguers, whose activities were unknown to the public masses. This battle, fought in the “labyrinth” of “international politics,” was the decisive battle of the First World War. That is to say (as no decision is ever final, and can always be modified by a later decision), it produced the greatest and most enduring effects on the further course of the 20th Century; these effects continued to dominate events between the wars and during the Second World War, and in 1956 may be seen to form the most probable cause of any third “universal war.” No clash of arms during the 1914-1918 war produced an effect on the future comparable with that brought about by the capture of the British Government in 1916. This process was hidden from the embroiled masses. From start to finish Britons believed that they had only to do with an impetuous Teutonic warlord, and Americans, that the incorrigible quarrelsomeness of European peoples was the root cause of the upheaval.
In
obstructive men and to supplant them by other, submissive men.
Before 1914 the conspiracy had penetrated-only into antechambers (apart from the Balfour Government's fateful step in 1903). After 1914 a widening circle of leading men associated themselves with the diversionary enterprise, Zionism. Today the “practical considerations” (of public popularity or hostility, votes, financial backing and office) which influence politicians in this matter are well known, because they have been revealed by many authentic publications. At that time, a politician in
This comes from a Mr. Oliver Locker-Lampson, early in this century a Conservative Member of parliament. He played no great part and was notable, if at all, only for his later, fanatical support of Zionism in and outside parliament, but he was a personal friend of the leading men who fathered Zionism on the British people. In 1952, in a
“Winston, Lloyd George, Balfour and I were brought up vigorous Protestants, who believe in the coming of a new Saviour when
The First World War began, with these Vigorous Protestants ambitious to attain power so that they might divert military operations in Europe to the cause of procuring
native cause. Mr. Scott was enchanted to learn that his visitor was “a Jew who hated
Dr. Weizmann did not grasp eagerly at Mr. Balfour's “quite nonchalant” offer for a good reason. The Zionist headquarters at that moment was in
Significantly, some of the men concerned in these publicly-unknown interviews seem to have sought to cover up their dates; at the time the fate of
A third meeting with Mr. Balfour followed, “a tremendous talk which lasted several hours” and went off “extraordinarily well.” Dr. Weizmann, once more, expressed his “hatred for
Mr. Lloyd George also warned Dr. Weizmann that “there would undoubtedly be strong opposition from certain Jewish quarters” and Dr. Weizmann made his stock reply, that in fact “rich and powerful Jews were for the most part against us.” Strangely, this insinuation seems greatly to have impressed the Vigorous Protestants, who were mostly rich and powerful men, and they soon became as hostile to their fellow-countrymen, the Jews of England, as their importuner, Dr. Weizmann from
Opposition to Zionism developed from another source. In the highest places still stood men who thought only of national duty and winning the war. They would not condone “hatred” of a military ally or espouse a wasteful “sideshow” in
Mr. Asquith was the last Liberal leader in England who sought to give “Liberalism” a meaning concordant with national interest and religious belief, as opposed to the meaning which the term has been given in the last four decades (the one attributed to it by the Protocols: “When we introduced into the State organism the poison of Liberalism its whole political complexion underwent a change; States have been seized with a mortal illness, blood-poisoning …”). With his later overthrow Liberalism, in the first sense, died in
Mr. Asquith first learned of the intrigue that was brewing when he received a proposal for a Jewish state in
Mr. Asquith (who correctly summed-up Mr. Lloyd George) remained of the same opinion to the end. Ten years later, when long out of office, he visited
Lord Kitchener, who held this view, was of immense authority and public popularity. The paramount military objective at that stage, he held, was to keep
After that only Asquith, Robertson, Haig and the Jews of England stood between Zionism and its goal. The circle of intrigue widened. The Times and Sunday Times joined the Manchester Guardian in its enthusiasm for Zionism, and in or around the Cabinet new men added themselves to Balfour and Lloyd George. Lord Milner (about to join it) announced that “if the Arabs think that
By means of such false suggestions is “the multitude” ever and again “persuaded.” The Arabs and Armenians were where they always had been and did not aspire to be removed elsewhither. The Jews in Europe were as free or unfree as other men; the Jews of
Another recruit, Lord Robert Cecil, also used this deceptive formula, “Arabia for the Arabs, Judea for the Jews,
Lord Cecil's case is similarly unaccountable. I remember a lecture he gave in
Yet Dr. Weizmann says specifically of Lord Robert, “To him the re-establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine and the organization of the world in a great federation were complementary features of the next step in the management of human affairs … One of the founders of the League of Nations, he considered the Jewish Homeland to be of equal importance with the League itself.”
Here the great secret is out; but did Lord Robert discern it? The conquest of
Thus Lord Robert's espousal of Zionism becomes incomprehensible, for his inherited wisdom made him fully aware of the perils of world-despotism and at that very period he wrote to Mr. House in
“That we ought to make some real effort to establish a peace machinery when this war is over, I have no doubt … One danger seems to me to be that too much will be aimed at … . . Nothing did more harm to the cause of peace than the breakdown of the efforts after
The quotation shows that Lord Cecil should have been aware of the danger of “diverting energies”; it also shows that he misunderstood the nature of Zionism, if the opinion attributed to him by Dr. Weizmann is correct. When he wrote these words, a new “League to Enforce Peace” was being organized in
powerful groups to set up “a league to uphold tyranny” in the world has been plainly revealed.
Thus, as the second twelvemonth of the First World War ended, the Vigorous Protestants, who looked toward
The obstructive prime minister, Mr. Asquith, was removed at the end of 1916. The pages of yesterday now reveal the way this was done, and the passage of time enables the results to be judged. The motive offered to the public masses was that Mr. Asquith was ineffective in prosecuting the war. The sincerity of the contention may be tested by what followed; the first act of his successors was to divert forces to
On November 25, 1916 Mr. Lloyd George recommended that his chief retire from the chairmanship of the War Council in favour of Mr. Lloyd George. Normally such a demand would have been suicidal, but this was a coalition government and the Liberal Mr. Lloyd George was supported in his demand by the Conservative leaders, Mr. Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson, so that it was an ultimatum. (These two presumably had honest faith in Mr. Lloyd George's superior abilities; they cannot be suspected of Tory duplicity deep enough to foresee that he would ultimately destroy the Liberal Party!)
Mr. Lloyd George also required that the incompetent (and Conservative) Mr. Balfour be ousted from the First Lordship of the Admiralty. The Liberal prime minister indignantly refused either to surrender the War Council or to dismiss Mr. Balfour (December 4). He then received Mr. Balfour's resignation, whereon he at once sent Mr. Balfour a copy of his own letter refusing to dismiss Mr. Balfour. Thereon Mr. Balfour, though kept indoors by a bad cold, found strength to send another letter in which he insisted on resigning, as Mr. Lloyd George had demanded, and Mr. Lloyd George also resigned.
Mr. Asquith was left alone. On December 6 Mr. Balfour (resigned at Mr. Lloyd George's dictate) felt well enough to receive Mr. Lloyd George. That afternoon the party leaders met and announced that they would gladly serve under Mr. Balfour. Mr. Balfour declined but offered gladly to serve under Mr. Lloyd George. Mr. Lloyd George then became Prime Minister and appointed the incompetent Mr. Balfour Foreign Secretary. Thus the two men privily committed to support Zionism moved into the highest political offices and from that moment the energies of the British Government were directed to the procurement of
journal Commentary, of
Thus the central figures on the stage regrouped themselves. Mr. Lloyd George, a small, smart-lawyer in a cutaway among taller colleagues, many still in the old frock coat, looked like a cocksparrow among crows. Beside him stood Mr. Balfour, tall, limp, ever ready with a wearily cynical answer to an honest question, given to a little gentle tennis; I see him now, strolling dreamily across Saint James's Park to the House. Around these two, the Greek chorus of cabinet ministers, junior ministers and high officials who had discovered their Vigorous Protestantism. Some of these fellow-travellers of
As to the diversion of British military strength to an alien purpose, one stout resistant alone remained after the death of Lord Kitchener and removal of Mr. Asquith. The sturdy figure of Sir William Robertson faced the group around Mr. Lloyd George. Had he joined it, he could have had titles, receptions, freedoms, orders, gilt boxes, and ribbons down to his waistbelt; he could have had fortunes for “the rights” of anything he wrote (or any ghost for him); he could have had boulevards named after him and have paraded through cheering cities in Europe and America; he could have had Congress and the House of Commons rise to him and have entered Jerusalem on a white horse. He did not even receive a peerage, and is rare among British field marshals in this.
He was the only man ever to have risen to that highest rank from private. In
On this last man felt the task of thwarting the diversion of British armies to
He had told Mr. Asquith in 1915, “Obviously the most effective method” (of defeating the Central Powers) “is to defeat decisively the main German armies, which are still on the Western Front.” Therefore he counselled urgently against, “auxiliary campaigns in minor theatres and the depletion of the forces in
Peoples engaged in war, are fortunate if their leaders reason like this, and unfortunate if they deviate from this reasoning. By that conclusive logic the Palestinian enterprise (a political one) was out. When Mr. Lloyd George became prime minister he at once bent all his efforts on diverting strength to a major campaign in
Sir William Robertson corroborates: “Up to December 1916” (when Mr. Lloyd George became prime minister) “operations beyond the Suez Canal had been essentially defensive in principle, the government and General Staff alike … recognizing the paramount importance of the struggle in Europe and the need to give the armies there the utmost support. This unanimity between ministers and soldiers did not obtain after the premiership changed hands … The fundamental difference of opinion was particularly obtrusive in the case of Palestine … The new War Cabinet had been in existence only a few days when it directed the General Staff to examine the possibility of extending the operations in Palestine … The General Staff put the requirements at three additional divisions and these could only be obtained from the armies on the Western Front … The General Staff said the project would prove a great source of embarrassment and injure our prospects of success in France … These conclusions were disappointing to Ministers, … who wished to see Palestine occupied at once, but they could not be refuted … In February the War Cabinet again approached the Chief of the General Staff, asking what progress was being made with the preparation of an autumn campaign in Palestine.”
These passages show how the course of State policy and of military operations in war may be “deflected” by political pressure behind the scenes. In this case, the issue of the battle between the politicians and the soldier affects the lives of
nations at the present time, the 1950's.
Mr. Lloyd George then reinforced himself by a move which once more shows the long thought that must have gone into the preparation of this enterprise, and the careful selection of “administrators,” to support it, that must have gone before. He proposed that the War Cabinet “take the Dominions into counsel in a much larger measure than hitherto in the prosecution of the war.” Put in that way, the idea appealed greatly to the public masses in
However, “the diplomat's word” (and his intention) differed greatly from his deed; Mr. Lloyd George's proposal was merely a “cover” for bringing to London General Smuts from
The voting-population in South Africa is so equally divided between Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans that the “fluctuating 20 percent” was, if anything, more decisive there than in America. The Zionists felt able, and possibly General Smuts believed they were able, to “deliver” an election-winning vote. One of his colleagues, a Mr. B.K. Long (a Smuts Member of Parliament and earlier of the
However, the religious (or pseudo-religious) motive is frequently invoked in his biographies (as it was sometimes claimed by Mr. Lloyd George). They state that he preferred the Old Testament to the New, and quote him as saying, “The older I get the more of an Hebraist I become.” I met him many years later, when I knew how important a part he played in this earlier story. He was then (1948) much troubled about the declining situation in the world, and the explosive part of
when he died at his lonely
On March 17, 1917 General Smuts reached
General Smuts was presented to the Imperial War Cabinet as “one of the most brilliant generals of the war” (Mr. Lloyd George). General Smuts had in fact conducted a small colonial campaign in South West Africa, and when he was summoned to London was waging an uncompleted one in East Africa against “a small but efficiently bush-trained army of 2,000 German officers and 20,000 native askaris” (his son, Mr. J.C. Smuts). The tribute thus was generous (Mr. Lloyd George's opinion of professional soldiers was low: “There is no profession where experience and training count less in comparison with judgment and flair”) .
By that time, the better to seclude themselves from “the generals” (other than General Smuts) Mr. Lloyd George and his small war-waging committee had taken a private house “where they sit twice a day and occupy their whole time with military policy, which is my job; a little body of politicians, quite ignorant of war and all its needs, are trying to run the war themselves” (Sir William Robertson). To this cloistered body, in April 1917, General Smuts by invitation presented his recommendations for winning the war. It was couched in this form: “The
This recommendation gave Mr. Lloyd George the high military support (from East Africa) which he needed, and he at once had the War Cabinet order the military commander in
Sir William Robertson then won his greatest victory of the war. He had a talk with General Smuts. His visitor's qualities as a general can never be estimated because he never had an opportunity to test them, in the small campaigns in which he served. His qualities as a politician, however, are beyond all doubt; he was the wariest of men, and strongly averse to exchanging the triumphs of
Mr. Lloyd George was not to be deterred even by this volte-face, or by the collapse of
Only God can have preserved Mr. Lloyd George's fellow countrymen from the full penalties of this decision. The war could not be won in
This was one Sir Henry Wilson, who thus portrays himself during a wartime mission to Russia in January 1917: “Gala dinner at the Foreign Office … I wore the Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour and the Star and Necklace of the Bath, also Russian shoulder-straps and grey astrakhan cap, and altogether I was a fine picture of a man. I created quite a sensation at the Foreign Office dinner and the reception afterwards. I was much taller than the Grand Duke Serge and altogether a ‘notable,' as I was told. Superb!”
To this man, posturing against the tragic Russian background, Mr. Lloyd George and Zionism owed their golden opportunity, arrived at last, and
Sir Henry earlier had agreed with all other military leaders about the paramountcy of the main front and the madness of wasteful “sideshows” and excelled others in the vigour with which he stated this principle: “The way to end this war is to kill Germans, not Turks … The place where we can kill most Germans is here” (France) “and therefore every pound of ammunition we have in the world ought to come here. All history shows that operations in a secondary and ineffectual theatre have no bearing on major operations except to weaken the forces there engaged” (1915).
No staff graduate, or any fighting private, would dispute that. Sir Henry cannot by 1917 have discovered any military reason to abandon this basic principle of war for its opposite. The explanation of his volt-face can only be the obvious one. He had observed the rise of
In this report Mr. Lloyd George at long last found the support he needed for his order of September 1917, quoted six paragraphs back. He seized on the alluring phrase “mud-months”; it gave him a military argument! General Wilson explained to him that these “mud-months” in
Sir William Robertson vainly pointed out that the time-table was illusory; the movement of armies entailed major problems of transport and shipping, and by the time the last divisions landed in
At that fateful instant chance, ever the arch-conspirator in this story, struck in favour of the Zionists. Cabinet Ministers in
“extraordinary flippancy” about the war which Dr. Weizmann earlier attributed to Mr. Lloyd George). In Palestine General Allenby, under similar pressure, made a probing advance, found to his surprise that the Turks offered little opposition, and without much difficulty marched into
The prize was of no military value, in the total sum of the war, but Mr. Lloyd George thenceforward was not to be restrained. Troops were diverted from
A free press might at that period have given Sir William Robertson the backing he needed, in public opinion, to avert all this. He was denied that, too, for at that stage the state of affairs foretold by the Protocols of 1905 was being brought about: “We must compel the governments … to take action in the direction favoured by our widely-conceived plan … by what we shall represent as public opinion, secretly prompted by us through the means of that so-called ‘Great Power,' the Press, which, with a few exceptions that may be disregarded, is already entirely in our hands.” Writers of great repute were ready to inform the public of the imminent danger; they were not allowed to speak.
Colonel Repington, of The Times, was the best-known military writer of that day; his reputation in this field was the highest in the world. He noted in his diary, “This is terrible and will mean the reduction of our infantry in
When the fulfilment of his warnings was at hand, Sir William Robertson was removed. Mr. Lloyd George, resolved to obtain authority for his Palestinian adventure, put his plan to the Supreme War Council of the Allies at
Before he left his post he used his last moments in it to make a final attempt to avert the coming disaster. He went (also in January) to Paris to ask help from General Pershing, the American commander, in replenishing the depleted front (only four and a half American divisions then had reached France). General Pershing, a soldier true to his duty, made the reply which Sir William expected and would himself have made in General Pershing's place: “He shrewdly
observed that it was difficult to reconcile my request for assistance in defence of the Western Front with Mr. George´s desire to act offensively in Palestine. There was, unfortunately, no answer to that argument, except that, so far as I was personally concerned, not a man or gun would be sent to
After that Sir William Robertson was no longer “concerned.” His account differs from the memoirs of Mr. Lloyd George and other politicians in that it shows no rancour; his sole theme is duty. Of his treatment he merely says, “It had frequently been my unpleasant duty during 1917 to object to military enterprises which the Prime Minister wished the army to carry out and this opposition had doubtless determined him to try another Chief of the Imperial General Staff … On the point of supersession, therefore, there was nothing to say and I said nothing.” Thus an admirable man passes from this story of many lesser men, but his work endured, because, up to the time of his dismissal, he may have saved just enough men and guns for the crumbling line to hold at the last extremity, in March, as a rending hawser may hold by a single thread.
When he was gone two men outside the government and army continued the struggle, and their efforts deserve record because theirs were among the last attempts to preserve the principle of free, independent and vigilant reporting. Colonel Repington was a former cavalry officer, an admirer of pretty women, a lover of good talk, a beau sabreur. His diaries give a lasting picture of the frothy life of the drawing-rooms that went on while armies fought in
He wrote, “We are feeding over a million men into the sideshow theatres of war and are letting down our strengths in France at a moment when all the Boche forces from Russia may come against us … I am unable to get the support from the editor of The Times that I must have to rouse the country and I do not think I will be able to go on with him much longer.” (I discovered Colonel Repington's diaries through my work on this book and then realized that his experience was identical with mine, just twenty years later, with the same editor). A month later he wrote, “In a stormy interview I told Mr. Geoffrey Dawson that his subservience to the War Cabinet during this year was largely the cause of the dangerous position of our army … I would have nothing more to do with The Times.”
This left one man in
retribution). Sir William Robertson wrote to Colonel Repington, “Like yourself, I did what was best in the general interests of the country and the result has been exactly what I expected … But the great thing is to keep on a straight course and then one may be sure that good will eventually come of what may now seem to be evil.”[13]
Thus the two wartime years of Mr. Lloyd George's leadership in
On March 7, 1918 he gave orders for “a decisive campaign” to conquer all
On March 21, 1918 the long-awaited German attack in The “decisive campaign” in
On March 27, 1918 Colonel Repington wrote, “This is the worst defeat in the history of the army.” By June 6 the Germans claimed 175,000 prisoners and over 2,000 guns.
At that point the truth was shown of the last words above quoted from Sir William Robertson's letter to Colonel Repington, and they are of continuing hopeful augury to men of goodwill today. By keeping on a straight course he had saved enough for the line to hold, at breaking point, until the Americans began to arrive in strength. Therewith the war was virtually at an end. Clearly, if
At this point in the tale I write with the feelings of a participant, and they probably influence what I have written of the long earlier story, because the effects, as I have seen them in my generation, appear to me to be bad. I recall the great German attack of March 21, 1918; I saw it from the air and on the ground and was in the fighting for the first month, until I was removed by stretcher. I remember Sir Douglas Haig's order, that every man must fight and die where he stood; it was posted on the walls of my squadron's mess. I have no complaints
about the experience, and would not delete it from my life if I could. Now that I have come to see by what ulterior means and motives it was all brought about, I think coming generations might be a little better able to keep Sir William Robertson's “straight course,” and so to ensure that good will eventually come of what seems to them to be evil, if they know a little more of what went on then and has continued since. This is my reason for writing the present book.
As a result of the victory in Europe the coveted territory in
Mr. Lloyd George had served his turn and his day was nearly done. The reader may now turn his eyes across the [13] In the sequel to all this Sir Edward Carson, who had unwittingly lped Mr. Lloyd George into the premiership, resigned from the government and told the editor of The Times that it was but Mr. Lloyd George's mouthpiece, the Morning Post being the truly independent paper. Mr. Gwynne told Colonel Repington that the government wished to destroy the Morning Post “as it is one of the few independent papers left.” Before the Second War came it ‘was “destroyed,” as already related. After that only one weekly publication survived in |