Rich and powerful elites have long dreamed of world control. The ambitious Romans, Attila the Hun, great Muslim leaders of Medieval Spain, the Mughals of India all exercised immense influence over different parts of the globe in set periods of recognized ascendancy.
Sometimes tribal, sometimes national, sometimes religious, often dynastic, their success defined epochs, but was never effectively global until the twentieth century. At that point, with the future of the British Empire under threat from other aspiring nations, in particular Germany, a momentous decision was taken by a group of powerful and determined men. Their decision was that direct action had to be taken to assert their control, and that of the British race, over the entire civilized world. It has grown from that tiny select cabal into a monster that may already be beyond control.
“One wintry afternoon in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance for the British Empire and to the world as a whole.”
So begins Professor Carroll Quigley’s book The Anglo American Establishment. It may read like a John Le Carre thriller, but this was no spy fiction. The three staunch British Imperialists who met in London that day, Cecil Rhodes, William Stead and Lord Esher, were soon joined by Lords Rothschild, Salisbury, Rosebery and Milner, men whose financial, political, and administrative powers set them apart.
Some of these names may not be familiar to you, but that is a mark of the absolute success of this group. From the outset they insisted on secrecy, operated in secret and ensured that their influence was airbrushed from history. They believed that white men of Anglo-Saxon descent rightly sat at the top of the racial hierarchy and they fully understood the impending threat from a burgeoning Germany whose modern, expanding economy had begun to challenge British hegemony on the world stage.
The above named elites drew up a plan for a secret society that aimed to renew the bond between Great Britain and the United States [1] and bring all habitable portions of the world under their influence and control. The U.S. had grown rapidly in self-esteem, wealth and opportunity since the declaration of independence in 1776, but Anglo-American connections remained strong and would embroil her in the long-term plan for one world government. The meeting in 1891 was, in effect, the birth of the New World Order cabal.
Cecil Rhodes
Great financiers frequently used their fortunes to influence questions of peace and war and control politics for profit. Cecil Rhodes was different. He was determined to use his vast fortune not simply to generate ever-increasing profit, but to realize his dream, a dream he shared with his co-conspirators. Rhodes turned the profit objective on its head and sought to amass great wealth into his secret society in order to achieve political ends, to buy governments and politicians, buy public opinion and the means to influence it. [2]
He intended that his wealth should be used to grasp control of the world, secretly. Secrecy was the cornerstone. No one outside the favored few knew of the group’s existence. They have since been referred to obliquely in speeches and books as “The Money Power”, “The Hidden Power” or “the men behind the curtain”. All of these labels are pertinent, but we have called them, collectively, the secret elite.
Carroll Quigley revealed that secret elite influence on education was chiefly visible at the exclusive English private schools, Eton and Harrow, and at Oxford University, especially All Souls and Balliol Colleges. [3] This immensely rich and powerful group was given intellectual approval and inspiration by the philosophy of John Ruskin, professor of fine arts at Oxford. He spoke to the Oxford undergraduates as members of the privileged ruling class, telling them that they possessed a magnificent tradition of education, rule of law and freedom. He championed all that was finest in the public service ethic, duty and self-discipline, and believed that English ruling class tradition should be spread to the masses across the empire. [4]
But behind such well-serving words lay a philosophy strongly opposed to the emancipation of woman, had no time for democracy and supported the “just” war. [5] Ruskin advocated that control of the state should be placed in the hands of a small ruling class. Social order was to be built upon the authority of superiors, imposing upon their inferiors an absolute, unquestioning obedience. He was repelled by the notion of leveling between the classes and by the disintegration of the “rightful” authority of the ruling class. [6]
Ruskin’s philosophy was music to the ears of the elitists. It gave their lust for global power the blessing of academic approval. What they did, they would claim, was not for them, but for mankind. They would rise to power on the spurious justification that the world would consequently be a better place for humanity.
Inspired by Ruskin, Cecil Rhodes and his accomplices created the secret society with an inner core of trusted associates called “The Society of the Elect”, who unquestionably knew that they were members of an exclusive cabal devoted to taking and holding power on a world-wide basis.[7]
A second outer ring, larger and quite fluid in its membership, was named “The Association of Helpers”. At this level members might not have known that they were an integral part of, or inadvertently being used by, a secret society. Many on the outer edges of the group, idealists and honest individuals, may never have been aware that the real decisions were made by a ruthless clique about whom they had no knowledge. [8]
The man who exposed the secret society, Carroll Quigley (1910 – 1977), was the highly esteemed professor of history at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a lecturer at Princeton and Harvard. He revealed that the organization was able to “conceal its existence quite successfully, and many of its most influential members… are unknown even to close students of British History”. [9]
Quigley’s greatest contribution to our understanding of modern history came with his books, The Anglo-American Establishment and Tragedy and Hope, A History of the World in Our Time. The former was written in 1949 but only released after his death. His disclosures placed him in such potential danger from an Establishment backlash that it was never published in his lifetime. In a 1974 radio broadcast, Quigley warned the interviewer, Rudy Maxa of the Washington Post, “You better be discreet. You have to protect my future as well as your own.” [10]
Quigley had received assistance of a “personal nature” from individuals close to what he called the “Group”, but “for obvious reasons” he could not reveal their names. [11] He made it clear that evidence about them was not hard to find “if you know where to look,” [12] and it has to be asked why generations of historians have failed to pursue his trail.
Though sworn to secrecy, Professor Quigley revealed in the radio interview that Sir Alfred Zimmern, the British historian and political scientist, had confirmed the names of the main protagonists within the secret society. Without a shadow of doubt, Zimmern himself was a close associate of those at the center of real power in Britain. He knew most of the key figures personally and was himself a member of the inner core of the secret society for twelve years between 1910 and 1922. [13]
The enigma of Professor Quigley’s work lies in his statement that while the secret cabal had brought many of the things he held dear close to disaster, he generally agreed with its goals and aims. [14] Were these merely words of self-preservation? Be mindful of his warning to Rudy Maxa as late as 1974. Quigley clearly felt that these revelations placed him in danger.
Unknown persons removed his major work, Tragedy and Hope, from the bookstore shelves in America, and it was withdrawn from sale without any justification soon after its release. The book’s original plates were unaccountably destroyed by Quigley’s publisher, the Macmillan Company, who, for the next six years “lied, lied, lied” to him and deliberately misled him into believing that it would be reprinted. [15] Why? What pressures obliged a major publishing house to take such extreme action? Quigley stated categorically that powerful people had suppressed the book because it exposed matters that they did not want known. The reader has to understand that we are discussing individuals whose power, influence and control were unrivaled.
From the very start, each of the initial conspirators brought valuable qualities and connections to the society. Cecil Rhodes was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and master and commander of a vast area of Southern Africa which some were already beginning to call Rhodesia. His wealth had been underwritten by brutal native suppression [16] and the global mining interests of the House of Rothschild, [17] to whom he was answerable. William Stead was the most prominent journalist of his day and a voice to which ordinary people listened.
Lord Esher represented the interests of the monarchy from Queen Victoria’s final years, through the exuberant excesses of King Edward VII, to the more sedate but pliable King George V. His influence was immense because he operated between monarchs, the aristocracy and leading political figures. He chaired important secret committees, was responsible for appointments to the Cabinet, the senior ranks of the diplomatic corps and voiced strong personal opinion on top army posts. [18] Esher exerted a power behind the throne far in excess of his constitutional position. His role of power-broker on behalf of the secret elite was without equal. Indeed Professor Quigley dubbed him, “the greatest wire puller of the period.” [19]
Another name that pervaded all that was powerful and influential during this period was that of the Rothschild dynasty, and Quigley placed Lord Nathaniel (Natty) Rothschild within the very core of the secret organization. [20] Rothschild was all-powerful in British and world banking and virtually untouchable.
Mater Amschel Rothschild
“The House of Rothschild was immensely more powerful than any financial empire that had ever preceded it. It commanded vast wealth. It was international. It was independent. Royal governments were nervous of it because they could not control it. Popular movements hated it because it was not answerable to the people. Constitutionalists resented it because its influence was exercised behind the scenes – secretly.” [21]
Taken together, the principal players, Rhodes, Stead, Esher, Rothschild and Milner represented a new force that was emerging inside British politics, but powerful old traditional aristocratic families that had long dominated Westminster, often in cahoots with the reigning monarch, were also deeply involved, and none more so than the Cecil family. Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, the patriarchal 3rd Marquis of Salisbury, ruled the Conservative Party at the latter end of the nineteenth century. He served as prime minister three times for a total of fourteen years, between 1885 and 1902 (longer than anyone else in recent history). When he retired as prime minister in July 1902, he handed over the reins of government to his sister’s son, Arthur Balfour.
Lord Salisbury had four siblings, five sons and three daughters who were all linked and interlinked by marriage to individuals in the upper echelons of the English ruling class. Important government positions were given to relations, friends and wealthy supporters who proved their gratitude by ensuring that his views became policy in government, civil service and diplomatic circles. This extended ‘Cecil-Bloc’ was intricately linked to “The Society of the Elect” and secret elite ambitions throughout the first half of the twentieth century. [22]
Another member of the inner core, Lord Alfred Milner, offers cause for greater scrutiny because he has been virtually airbrushed from the history of the period. Alfred Milner was a self-made man and remarkably successful civil servant who became a key figure within the secret elite and absolutely powerful within the ranks of these privileged individuals. He and Rhodes had been contemporaries at Oxford University, and were inextricably connected through events in South Africa. Rhodes recognized in him the kind of steel that was required to pursue the dream of world domination, “I support Milner absolutely without reserve. If he says peace, I say peace; if he says war, I say war. Whatever happens, I say ditto to Milner.” [23] Milner grew in time to be the most able of them all, to enjoy the privilege of patronage and power, a man to whom others turned for leadership and direction.
Boer War
When governor general and high commissioner of South Africa, Milner deliberately caused the Boer War in order to grab the Transvaal’s gold and use the economic resources of South Africa to extend and perpetuate secret elite control. He had the grace to confess in a letter to Lord Roberts, Commander in Chief in South Africa, that
“I precipitated the crisis, which was inevitable, before it was too late. It is not very agreeable, and in many eyes, not very creditable piece of business to have been largely instrumental in bringing about a big war.” [24]
This was no immodest boast. Alfred Milner’s matter-of-fact explanation displayed the cold objectivity that drove the secret elite cause. War was unfortunate, but necessary. It had to be. They were not afraid of war.
On December 29, 1895, a band of 500 British adventurers led by Rhodes’ lover Jameson forcibly tried to seize control of the Boer republics in an “unofficial” armed takeover. Rhodes, who was then also prime minister of the British-ruled Cape Colony, organized the venture, which Alfred Beit financed to the tune of 200,000 pounds. Lionel Phillips also joined the conspiracy. According to their plan, the raiders would dash from neighboring British territory into Johannesburg to “defend” the British “outlanders.” By secret prior arrangement, the outlanders would simultaneously seize control of the city in the name of the “oppressed” aliens and proclaim themselves the new government of Transvaal.
“Johannesburg is ready,” Rhodes confided to Beit in a letter about the plan written four months before the raid. “[This is] the big idea which makes England dominant in Africa, in fact gives England the African continent.”
After 21 men lost their lives in the takeover attempt, Jameson and his fellow raiders were captured and put on trial. In Johannesburg, Transvaal authorities arrested Phillips for his part in organizing the raid. They found incriminating secret correspondence between him and co-conspirators Beit and Rhodes, which encouraged Phillips to confess his guilt.
Transvaal court leniently sentenced Jameson to 15 months imprisonment. Phillips was sentenced to death, but this was quickly commuted to a fine of 25,000 pounds. Later, after returning to Britain, the financier was knighted for his services to the Empire, and during the First World War was given a high and lucritive war profiteering post in the Ministry of Munitions.
The secret elite’s war against the Dutch settlers began in October 1899 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. The Boer Republics were annexed to the British Empire. The Transvaal’s gold was finally in the hands of the secret elite at a cost of some 70,000 dead on the battlefields, plus 32,000 dead in British concentration camps, including more than 20,000 children of Dutch descent.
Charles Aked, a Baptist minister in Liverpool, said on December 22nd of 1901 about the war: “Great Britain cannot win the battles without resorting to the last despicable cowardice of the most loathsome cur on earth — the act of striking a brave man’s heart through his wife’s honour and his child’s life. The cowardly war has been conducted by methods of barbarism… the concentration camps have been Murder Camps.” A crowd follows him home and breaks the windows of his house.”[2]
Another key actor in the Imperial Factor and in the Boer Wars was the brutal Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Pro-French and eager to see action, he joined a French field ambulance unit in the Franco-Prussian War. Kitchener carried out a scorched-earth policy against the Boers and established concentration camps for malnourished Boer women and children during the Second Boer War.
Some thirty thousand Boer farms were burned to the ground, livestock slaughtered, and the women and children put in British concentration camps. In the camps, the families of men fighting for the Boer army were punished by being put on half the already meagre rations with no meat whatsoever. [25] W. T. Stead, former member of the inner core of the secret elite who had resigned in disgust over the Boer War, was overcome by the evidence presented to him. He wrote,
“Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed, stark and unashamedly as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of men whom we were not able to defeat on the field.” [26]
20,000 children dying in British concentration camps were of little consequence to Milner. He was so driven that he ignored the weight of opposition ranged against him. He warned his friend, Richard Haldane: “If we are to build up anything in South Africa, we must disregard, and absolutely disregard, the screamers.” [27] It takes a very strong man to disregard the screamers, to ignore moral indignation, to put the cause before humanitarian concerns. Some front line politicians find it all but impossible to stand against a torrent of public outrage, but those behind the curtain in the secret corridors of power can easily ignore ‘sentimentality’.
Milner’s period of stewardship in South Africa had a very important consequence. He administered the defeated Transvaal and Orange Free State as occupied territories, and recruited into the upper layers of his civil service a band of young men from well-to-do, upper-class, frequently titled families who became known as “Milner’s Kindergarten.” [28] They replaced the government and administration of the Boer republics, and worked prodigiously to rebuild the broken country. [29] The Kindergarten comprised new blood; young educated men – mostly Oxford graduates, with a deep sense of duty, loyalty to the Empire and capable of populating the next generation of the secret society. [30] In the period 1909-1913 the Kindergarten set up semi-secret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the United States and the chief British dependencies.
The Round Table Groups in Canada, as elsewhere, were merely different names for “The Association of Helpers” and only part of the secret society, since the real power still lay with “The Society of the Elect”. This all-powerful inner-core would bring in new members from the outer ring as was deemed necessary. [35] The alliance of powerful investment bankers, politicians, diplomats and press barons shared the same unwritten purpose, the destruction of German imperial power and the confirmation of Anglo-Saxon domination of the world.
Money was never a problem for the secret elite. As we have seen, Natty Rothschild, the richest man in the world, was directly involved from the beginning, but the ‘Money-Power’ extended well beyond that single source. The Rand multimillionaires, Sir Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit were members of the inner core [36] and always willing to finance secret elite proposals, fund their propaganda groups, and back Milner. Sir Ernest Cassel, an investment banker and one of the wealthiest men in pre-war Europe, was likewise involved. Cassel, a close friend of King Edward VII, acted as go-between for the British government and provided personal funds for Lord Esher. [37]
Other great financiers and bankers, centered in the City, the financial and banking district of London, shared the vision of a single world power based on English ruling class values. The world had entered an era of financial capitalism where these wealthy international investment bankers were able to dominate both industry and government if they had the concerted will to do so. [38] This “Money Power” seeped into the British Establishment and joined the aristocratic landowning families who had ruled Britain for centuries. Together, they lay at the heart of the secret elite.
In his “Confession of Faith”, Cecil Rhodes had written of bringing the whole uncivilized world under British rule, and the “recovery” of the United States to make the “Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire,” [39] 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 Rhodes dream was expanded to include the wealthy elites in the U.S. who shared a similar mind-set.
Rhodes suffered from heart and lung problems and was aware that his projected life span was limited. He wrote several wills to ensure that his fortune would be used to pursue his dream. Part of his strategy was to gift scholarship places at his alma mater, Oxford University, in the belief that exposure to British culture, philosophy and education would strengthen the best young minds from the colonies and, most importantly, the United States.
Rhodes scholarships favored American students, with two allocated for each of the fifty states and territories, but only sixty places for the entire British Empire. The “best talents” from the “best families” in the US were to be nurtured at Oxford, spiritual home of the secret elite, and imbued with an appreciation of “Englishness” and “retention of the unity of the Empire.” [40] Professor Quigley revealed that “the scholarships were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his [Rhodes] purpose.” [41]
The secret elite appreciated America’s vast potential, and adjusted the concept of British Race supremacy to Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Rhodes ‘s 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. [42] Alfred Milner became the undisputed leader of the secret society when Cecil Rhodes died in 1902. Like Rhodes, he believed that the goal should be pursued by a secret political and economic elite influencing “journalistic, educational and propaganda agencies” behind the scenes. [43]
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 they controlled. Railroads, steel, shipbuilding, construction, oil and finance blossomed in an oft-cut throat environment, though that was more apparent than real. These small groups of massively rich individuals on both sides of the Atlantic knew each other well, and the secret elite in London initiated a 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 [44] of what became known as the London Chapter of The Pilgrims Society, with a select membership limited by individual scrutiny to 500. Ostensibly, the society was created to “promote goodwill, good friendship and everlasting peace” [45] 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 “. [46] It presented itself as a spontaneous movement to promote democracy across the world [47] and doubtless many of the members 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 New York branch of The Pilgrims was launched at the Waldorf-Astoria on 13 January 1903, [48] and comprised the most important bankers, politicians and lawyers on the Eastern Seaboard. They established a tradition of close interaction with British and American ambassadors. [49] The ambassadorial connections with The Pilgrims would prove absolutely 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 eighteen members of the secret elite, including Lords Rothschild, Curzon, Northcliffe, Esher and Balfour attended Pilgrims dinners, though the regularity of their attendance is difficult to establish. Such is the perennial problem with secretive groups. We know something about the guests invited to dinner, but not what was discussed between courses. [50] 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. [51]
The power-elite in America was New York centered, carried great influence in domestic and international politics, and was heavily indulgent of Yale, Harvard and Princeton Universities. They conducted an American version of what Carroll Quigley termed the secret elite’s triple-front-penetration of politics, the press and education. [52] The Pilgrims Society brought together American money and British aristocracy, royalty, government ministers and top diplomats. It was indeed a special relationship.
Of all the American banking establishments, none was more Anglo-centric than the J. P. Morgan bank, itself deeply involved with The Pilgrims. An American, George Peabody, established the bank in London in 1835. In 1854 he took on a partner, Junius Morgan, (father of J. P. Morgan) and the bank was renamed Peabody, Morgan & Co. When Peabody’s retired in 1864 it became the J. S. Morgan bank.
The Rothschilds had developed a close relationship with Peabody and Morgan, and following a crash in 1857 saved the bank by organizing a huge bailout by the Bank of England. Although American by birth, the Morgan family wore their affinity to England like a badge of honor. Despite stinging criticism from Thomas Jefferson that Junius’s father-in-law, the Rev John Pierpont, was “under the influence of the whore of England,” [53] Junius sent his son to the English High School in Boston. J. P. Morgan spent much of his younger years absorbing English traditions, and was an ardent anglophile and admirer of the British Empire.
In 1899 J. P. Morgan traveled to England to attend an international Bankers Convention and returned to America as the representative of Rothschild interests in the United States. [54] It was the perfect front. Morgan, who posed as an upright Protestant guardian of capitalism, who could trace his family roots to pre-Revolutionary times, acted for the Rothschilds and shielded their American profits from the poison of antisemitism.
In 1895 the Rothschilds had secretly replenished the US gold reserves through J.P. Morgan, and raised him to the premier league of international banking. [55] In turn, his gratitude was extended to another Rothschild favorite and leading figure in the secret elite, Alfred Milner. In 1901, Morgan offered Milner a then massive income of $100,000 per annum to become a partner in the London branch [56] but Milner was not to be distracted from the vital business of the Boer War. J. P. Morgan was an 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. Jacob Schiff, a German who ran the bank, came from a family close to the Rothschilds. [57] He had been born in the house his parents shared with the Rothschilds in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt. [58] Schiff was an experienced European banker whose career straddled both continents, with contacts in New York, London, Hamburg and Frankfurt. His long-standing friend, Edward Cassel of the secret elite, was appointed Kuhn, Loeb’s agent in London. Schiff even dined with King Edward on the strength of Cassel’s close friendship with the King. [59]
Jacob Schiff had married Solomon Loeb’s daughter and, backed by Rothschild gold, quickly gained overall control of the Kuhn, Loeb Bank. [60] Schiff in turn brought a young German banker, Paul Warburg, over to New York to help him run the bank. Paul and his brother Max had served part of their banking apprenticeships with Natty Rothschild in London. Like the Peabody-Morgan bank in London, the Warburg family bank in Hamburg had been saved by a very large injection of Rothschild money, and undoubtedly acted as a Rothschild front thereafter.
On the surface there were periods of blistering competition between the investment banking houses and international oil goliaths J. D. Rockefeller and the Rothschilds, but by the turn of the century they adopted a more subtle relationship that avoided real competition. A decade earlier, Baron Alphonse de Rothschild had accepted Rockefeller’s invitation to meet in New York behind the closed doors of Standard Oil’s headquarters on Broadway.
Standard’s chief spokesman, John D Archbold [61] reported that they had quickly reached a tentative agreement, and thought it desirable on both sides that the matter was kept confidential. Clearly both understood the advantage of monopolistic collusion. It was a trend they eventually developed to their own advantage. By the early years of the twentieth century much of the assumed rivalry between major stakeholders in banking, industry and commerce was a convenient facade, though they would have the world believe otherwise.
Consider please this convenient facade. Official Rothschild biographers maintain that the dynasty’s interests in America were limited, and that the American Civil War led to “a permanent decline in the Rothschild’s transatlantic influence”. [62] All our evidence points in the opposite direction. Their associates, agents and front companies permeated American finance and industry. Their influence was literally everywhere. J. P. Morgan, the acknowledged chieftain of the Anglo-American financial establishment was the main conduit for British capital [63] and a personal friend of the Rothschilds.
Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb, another close friend of the Rothschild family, worked hand-in-glove with Rockefeller in oil, railroad and banking enterprises. Jacob Schiff the Pilgrim was both a Rothschild agent and a trusted associate of J. D. Rockefeller the Pilgrim. Morgan, Schiff and Rockefeller, the three leading players on Wall Street, had settled into a cosy cartel behind which the House of Rothschild remained hidden, but retained immense influence and power. Control of capital and credit was increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer men until the rival banking groups ceased to operate in genuine competition. [64]
This trans-Atlantic financial collusion underpinned the Anglo-American bond on which the secret elite built their dream of world domination. Political control moved hand in glove with the Money-Power.
One of the problems the secret elite had to contend with was democracy, even the very limited choice that British and American democracy had to offer. Professor Quigley observed that Alfred Milner, and apparently most members of the secret elite, believed that “democracy was not an unmixed good, or even a good, and far inferior to the rule of the best…” [65] They, of course, believed themselves “the best” and their morality did not exclude the use of warfare to carry out what they deemed to be their civilizing mission; a new world order based on ruling class values in which they would be first amongst men.
In Britain, faced with an electorate that frequently changed allegiance from the Conservative party to the Liberal party and back again, the secret elite selected reliable and trusted men to hold high office in both parties. Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, a member of the inner circle of the secret elite, [66] and Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne began the transformation of British Foreign policy towards war with Germany in the sure knowledge that senior Liberals would continue that policy if and when the people voted for change.
Herbert Henry Asquith, Richard Haldane and Sir Edward Grey were Milner’s chosen senior men in the Liberal Party and “objects of his special attention”. [67] Their remit was to ensure that an incoming Liberal government maintained a seamless foreign policy that served the grand plan. Their secret elite connections were impeccable. Together, with their good friend Arthur Balfour, they were intimately involved with the inner circles of the cabal. Their duty was to the King, the Empire, to Milner’s dream, to Rhode’s legacy. They confronted the same problems, analyzed the same alternatives and agreed the same solution. Germany had to go.
The senior Liberals, Asquith, Grey and Haldane, conspired to undermine the anti-war Liberal Party leader Campbell-Bannerman from within and were supported by both the Conservative party leaders and King Edward VII, himself a key figure inside the secret elite. Every major step taken by the British Foreign Office from 1902 onwards was dictated by the overall objective to destroy Germany. Treaties with Japan, the Entente Cordiale with France and all of its secret clauses, the secret conventions agreed between King Edward and the Russian Czar had that single purpose. Simply put, the large field armies of France and Russia were needed to crush Germany.
In the United States, and indeed in France, political power was guaranteed by financial incentives and the appointment of suitable candidates, in other words through bribery and corruption. Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island was chosen by the secret elite to be the voice of “sound economics” in the Senate. A wealthy businessman and father-in-law of J.D. Rockefeller Jr., Aldrich was known as “Morgan’s floor broker in the Senate.” [68] Shameless in his excesses, he used public office to feather his own very large nest. Public service was to him little more than a cash cow through which he built a ninety-nine roomed chateau and sailed a two hundred foot yacht. [69]
Over a two-year period the Money-Power worked steadily on their chosen Senator to turn him into an “expert” on banking systems. Congress appointed a National Monetary Commission in 1908 with Aldrich as Chairman to review U.S. banking. Its members toured Europe, supposedly collecting data on various banking systems. Aldrich’s final report, however, was not the product of any European study tour, but of a collective conspiracy.
In November 1910, five bankers representing Morgan, Rockefeller and Kuhn Loeb interests, met in total secrecy with Senator Aldrich and the Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Treasury on Jekyll Island, an exclusive playground of the mega-rich off the coast of Georgia. Of the seven conspirators, five, Senator Aldrich, Henry Davison, Benjamin Strong, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg, were members of The Pilgrims. [70] Their objective was to formulate a Central Banking Bill that would be presented to Congress as if it was the brainchild of Aldrich’s Monetary Commission.
The proposed “Federal Reserve System” was to be owned entirely by private banks, though its name implied that it was a government institution. Individuals from the American banking dynasties, including Morgan, Warburg, Schiff and Rockefeller, would hold the shares. It was to be a central bank of issue that would have a monopoly of all the money and credit of the people of the United States. It would control the interest rate and the volume of money in circulation.
The Federal Reserve System constructed on Jekyll Island had powers that King Midas could never have contemplated. The objective was to establish a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending, get the taxpayer to pick up any losses, and convince Congress that the aim was to protect the public. [71]
The Aldrich proposals never went to a vote. President Taft refused to support the Bill on the grounds that it would not impose sufficient government control over the banks. The Money Power decided that Taft had to go. Their support in the 1912 Presidential election swung behind the little known Woodrow Wilson. The speed with which Wilson was bounced from his post at Princeton University in 1910, to Governor of New Jersey in 1911, then Democratic Party nominee for the Presidency in 1912 made him the Solomon Grundy of U S politics.
Not only did the secret elite put their man in the White House, they also gave him a minder, Edward Mandell House. Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States but this shadowy figure stood by his side, controlling his every move. House, an Anglophile who had been part educated in England, was credited with swinging the 1912 Democratic Convention in Baltimore behind Wilson. [72] He became Woodrow Wilson’s constant companion from that point onwards, with his own suite of rooms in the White House. He was also in direct, sometimes daily contact with J. P. Morgan Jr, Jacob Schiff, Paul Warburg, and Democrat Senators who sponsored the Federal Reserve Bill. [73]
Mandell House guided the President in every aspect of foreign and domestic policy, chose his Cabinet and formulated the first policies of his new Administration. [74] He was the prime intermediary between the President and his Wall Street backers. [75] The Anglo-centric Money Power had complete control of the White House and finally established its central bank in time for the secret elite’s war.
Ponder the significance of this coincidence. Provided with huge sums of secret elite money rerouted via St Petersburg, French politicians, newspapers and journalists were effectively corrupted to elect the Revanchist warmonger candidate Raymond Poincare to the Presidency of France. By February 1913, two major powers, the United States and France, had new Presidents who were elected to office through the machinations of the secret elite. They had positioned key players in the governments of Britain, France, and the United States and exerted immense influence over the foreign ministry in Russia.
Politics, money and power were the pillars on which the Anglo-Saxon elite would destroy Germany and take control of the world. All that was left to concoct was a reason for war.
The Kaiser’s refusal to be drawn into direct confrontation with France and Britain over crises in Morocco in 1905 and 1911 demanded a rethink. Public hysteria in Britain about spies was developed into a cottage industry, with barely literate novels and wild articles in Northcliffe’s papers portraying Germany as a dangerous warmongering nation of Huns preparing to pounce on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared Britain. Similarly in France, through blatant bribery and corruption, both the press and the Revanchistes in French politics fomented anti-German sentiment. But Germany remained stubbornly unwilling to become involved a European war.
From 1912 onwards the secret elite looked to the Balkans to provide the excuse for war. Alexander Isvolsky, their top Russian agent, had been strategically moved to Paris, from which vantage point he directed the Balkan agitation. The mix of ethnic diversity, religious animosities, political intrigue and raw nationalism was deliberately provoked into two brutal Balkan wars which in themselves could have brought about a pan-European war, but the Kaiser refused to take the bait.
Something more dramatic, more sensational, was needed. The notion propagated by many historians that world war was ‘inevitable’ or that the world ‘slid’ into war is crass. Chance was not involved. It required a complex set of manipulated events engineered by determined men to set the fuse. What remained was a spark to ignite that fuse. It came with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-apparent to the Austrian Empire, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Millions of words have been written to describe the events in Sarajevo that day, but none have ever revealed the trail of complicity that led from the gunmen back to the secret elite in London. Be certain of one thing. It was not the man who fired the bullet that caused a world war.
Thus war engulfed the known world to a degree that had no precedent. Histories have been written to explain away the reasons why, histories that favored the victors and twisted the truth to blame Germany. How history has been manipulated, how evidence has been removed, burned, shredded or otherwise denied to genuine researchers remains a crime against truth, against humanity. The received history of the First World War is a deliberately concocted lie. Not the sacrifice, the heroism, the horrendous waste of life or the misery that followed. No, these were very real, but the truth of how it all began and how it was unnecessarily and deliberately prolonged beyond 1915 has been successfully covered up for a century.
Professor Quigley stated,
“No country that values its safety should allow what the Milner group accomplished – that is, that a small number of men would be able to wield such power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication of documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period.” [76]
Never were truer words uttered in dire warning. These Founding Fathers, the secret elite, began with Rhodes’ secret society and expanded across the Atlantic, always away from the public eye. They were deniers of democracy, men who always pursued their own malevolent agenda, who used this very process to advance their power. What they achieved in causing the First World War was but the first step in their long term drive to a new world order.
Note: This article was originally published in 2013 on the globalresearch.ca website. Read an excellent 10-page summary of Caroll Quigley’s masterpiece Tragedy and Hope. Then read other incisive summaries which dive deep beneath the surface to give a much broader view of our world.
Gerry Docherty is a former head teacher. Jim Macgregor was a family doctor. They took early retirement and worked full time together for the past five years researching and writing Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War – described at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as a “fascinating and incendiary book”. It reveals how historical accounts of the war’s origins have been falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of rich and powerful men (described in this article) and explains their manipulations and deceptions.
Initially an outspoken critic of Standard Oil, Archbold was recruited by Rockefeller to a directorship of the company, where he later served as vice president and then president until its ‘demise ‘ in 1911.
Ferguson, House of Rothschild, p. 117.
Chernow, Titan, The Life of John D Rockefeller Sr., p. 390.
[Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 436.
[Quigley, Anglo American Establishment, p. 134.
Ibid., p. 312.
Terence H. O’Brien, Milner, p. 187.
Gary Allen, None Dare Call it Conspiracy, Chapter 3, p8.
Christian, Patriot, Entrepreneur. Built ThePatriotConnection,com (Patri-X.com) to unite patriots, empower content creators, educate others, and to crowdsource a true accounting of history.
Some thirty thousand Boer farms were burned to the ground, livestock slaughtered, and the women and children put in British concentration camps. In the camps, the families of men fighting for the Boer army were punished by being put on half the already meagre rations with no meat whatsoever. [25] W. T. Stead, former member of the inner core of the secret elite who had resigned in disgust over the Boer War, was overcome by the evidence presented to him. He wrote,
On 11 July 1902, an inaugural meeting was held at the Carlton Hotel [44] of what became known as the London Chapter of The Pilgrims Society, with a select membership limited by individual scrutiny to 500. Ostensibly, the society was created to “promote goodwill, good friendship and everlasting peace” [45] 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.
Of all the American banking establishments, none was more Anglo-centric than the J. P. Morgan bank, itself deeply involved with The Pilgrims. An American, George Peabody, established the bank in London in 1835. In 1854 he took on a partner, Junius Morgan, (father of J. P. Morgan) and the bank was renamed Peabody, Morgan & Co. When Peabody’s retired in 1864 it became the J. S. Morgan bank.
