Why the Money Trust wanted war: The British "Gold Plot"

The two J. P. Morgans, father and son, stroll together dressed in identical clothing, the uniform of the wealthy banker of the day, except for their hats. The elder Morgan died in 1913, leaving everything to his son, who became the agent for the British Government in the U.S. during the Great War. The Morgans were not Jewish, but Episcopalian.

vol. 3 no. 6   September 15, 1915   Page 3

WHY THE MONEY TRUST WANTS WAR

Part IV—WALL STREET'S BRITISH GOLD PLOT

by Charles A. Collman

I INTEND to tell an amazing story of a plot engineered by London bankrupts, with whom miserable men in Wall Street have combined to ruin us—their fellow countrymen. I shall describe how all the insidious weapons of the Money Trust are being used to further this traitorous design.

It was nearing the end of last June when the munition makers of Wall Street found themselves in an embarrassing, if not terrible, position. Their trade in guns, bayonets and shrapnel had swollen to enormous proportions; in fact far beyond their initial calculations—approximating $2,000,000,000. Two Billion Dollars. And suddenly their customers, the Allies—England, France and Russia—could no longer pay them!

A series of bond flotations had just failed in London—Canadian, Australian and South African loans. A large war loan had just been launched in Threadneedle Street. Private cable advices reached Wall Street, with disquieting rumors concerning the solvency of the United Kingdom.

Then Mr. Henry P. Davison, the partner of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, of “Morgan, Grenfell & Co., London,” departed hastily on the swiftest steamship bound for English shores. Mr. Davison investigated the situation abroad and returned, accompanied by a bodyguard of private detectives to protect him from bodily harm. He made his report.

The conditions resulting from Britain's great war loan had been found ghastly. The government had placed a minimum price of 65 on Consols, the premier security of the British Empire, to prevent their price from dropping to 40. And Consols were unsaleable.

Then the British government, driven to desperate straits, found itself obliged to scale down its great national debt, by forcing the holders of Consols to exchange them at the ratio of £75 in Consols for £50 in the new war loan. By this autocratic act Englishmen were compelled to reduce the capital of their fortunes by one-third. A man who had invested £300,000 in Consols had now a fortune of but £200,000, although his income was temporarily higher.

Bankers who hold London's finance in their hands were coerced and blackmailed by their own government to exchange their securities.

Many of them were the heaviest holders of Consols, and the threat was made that if they did not exchange, the minimum price of Consols would be lowered to 40, and they would be ruined.

So England treats her own subjects, the holders of her best security. What will she do to the Americans who have been forced by pro-British bankers to take over already $500,000,000 of her paper?

And the proportion of the reserve to liabilities of the Bank of England had dropped during the week ended July 21st to 18.09%! This reserve in July 1914 had been 52.4%; in July 1913, 53.69%; in July 1911, 54.5%. Great Britain's credit was lost! She could send us no more gold in sufficient quantities to pay her debts to us.

I am quoting the official figures. No man can dispute them. They are accessible to every one, but not one of the Money Trust newspapers in New York dared to print the facts. For the Money Trust holds in its bank vaults loans on many of these dailies, or finances them, or would withdraw its immense advertising were they to offend.

This “bold scheme” was the inauguration of Wall Street's British gold plot. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, who planned it, is the friend of Morgan, of “Morgan, Grenfell & Co., of London.”

England fears bankruptcy. And in this she is now using us as she used Belgium to fight her battles—and deserted her. As she used France to do her fighting—and now fails to aid her. As she has used Russia and Italy, and will in turn desert them. And she is using us, to ruin us.

We Pay Britain's Debt

But England has promised to “finance” Belgium, France, Russia and Italy. True to her traditions, she has done it in this wise. She has said to the representatives of those four countries, through the Chancellor: “Gentlemen, I have no money to give you, but I shall use Morgan, my agent in Wall Street. I shall get him to force the Yankees to give you credit for your war munitions, and he and his friends will pay themselves by taking the money the Yankees have put in their banks. My financial agents shall take your agents to Wall Street, and there we will close the deal.”

And these financial agents are coming to us: Sir Edward Holden, Baron Reading, Sir Henry Babington Smith, and Basil B. Blackett. They bring their French dupes, Octave Homberg and Ernest Mallet.

It is a case of “Hands Across the Sea”—but this time the thieving hands are in our pockets.

As well may be imagined, there was fear and trembling in the councils of the Money Trust bankers in Wall Street when they learned the orders the British Chancellor had issued to them through his British agent, Morgan. You see, they had expected months before that England would crush Germany, and she had done nothing of the sort. They had expected it, as the Belgian dupes had expected it, as the French dupes had expected it.

But how were the Money Trust munition makers to be paid? England could not pay them; France and Russia could not pay them. THEN THE MONEY TRUST BANKERS DECIDED THAT THEY MUST OBEY THE BRITISH CHANCELLOR'S INSTRUCTIONS; THAT THEY WOULD SAVE THEMSELVES BY MAKING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE PAY THEM FOR THE BAYONETS AND SHRAPNEL THEY HAD SOLD TO THE ALLIES.

Quickly, secretly, hurriedly the members of the Money Trust began to “plant” the “paper” of England, France and Russia in their banks. And these banks, without the knowledge or consent of their American depositors, gave the money of their depositors to the members of the Money Trust.

When Britain, France and Russia default on their securities, or scale them down, as they have done with their securities at home, the American people will lose their money. It is the same old story over again. The Money Trust has the cash. What does it care for the people?

We have seen that the British Chancellor's bold scheme is to be “in line with his handling of the recend war loan.” Through his handling of the war loan we have seen that Englishmen were forced to sacrifice one-third of their fortunes. What proportion of the American fortunes are to be sacrificed to the British Chancellor's orders?

On July 15, Dr. E. E. Pratt, Chief of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, before the Virginia Bankers' Association, estimated that the total loans of American money and credit to Europe, so far during the war, amounted to $500,000,000. He suggested that these loans were an “economic fallacy.”

[…]

Half a Billion Loaned

We have seen then that up to July 15th $500,000,000 of the American people's money had been loaned to countries whose solvency is doubtful, if not altogether gone. And all this had been done, swiftly, secretly by the Money Trust, through its power of holding the whiplash over financial institutions, in order that it might get back its money.

But the public had by this time become uneasy. It had made inquiries at its banks and learned the truth. Then the Money Trust adopted the methods it knows so well to use in order to disabuse the public mind of any apprehensions. The people might become alarmed, you see, and withdraw their money from the banks. So reports were carefully spread throughout the country that the finances of England, France and Russia were in excellent shape, and that they were sending us vast sums of gold.

Accordingly, on August 10th, the Money Trust, through one of its bankers, “planted” a story with glaring headlines in the New York Times, an organ which it uses for such purposes. The story dwelt on the importance of the shipment of $100,000,000 in English gold to this country, and alleged that it had been sent to this side on a British warship commanded by Admiral Beatty. Through its syndicate news service, which has been serviceable to the Money Trust in misleading the public for the last year, the Times sent this story broadcast.

[…] the next morning the truth could not be concealed, since the Sub-Treasury figures could not be falsified, and the reluctant official statement was to the effect that the shipment amounted to only about $19,000,000. But the lie had served its purpose in calming the public mind.

On June 26th the Times had published a story that the Teutonic Allies were bankrupt, that Austria could pay only 11% of her obligations, while Germany might be able to pay 16%. This was done also to bolster up the waning British credit.

[…] Again, on August 13th, the Money Trust “planted” the following in its organ, the Times:

“We don't want gold,” said an international banker, who is taking an active part in negotiations with financiers in London and Paris. “The gold is of no use to us, and might better stay in London. The banks of this country have unprecedented cash reserves, which are not doing any good. What is needed is a credit arrangement, under which the money can be paid out on behalf of foreign nations.”

The subtle infamy of this statement can best be appreciated by the average American merchant who has tried to obtain credit from the Wall Street banks within the last twelve months.

[…]

Let us learn the truth of this thing. We shall transpose ourselves across the ocean to London and learn whether London “insists on sending us $250,000,000 gold against our will.”

We Must Keep Our Gold

Sir George Paish, addressing his fellow countrymen in the Statist, says: “No country can purchase more than its income permits, unless it is able to borrow.” Again he says: “We are glad to see that steps are to be taken to mobilize our gold reserves.” And he quotes the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, “It is highly important for us to keep and to increase our supply of gold. We have already given directions that all these smaller payments which are made to those in our employ are not to be made in gold but in the paper currency.”

We read nothing here of London's eagerness to send us gold. On the contrary, just before the departure of London's financial agents for Wall Street, there is a concerted move on the part of London's financial spokesmen to educate the Yankees to the fact that it is their duty to extend a vast credit to England by means of the money stored in American savings banks. They say: “The amount we may need to borrow in the United States is about $500,000,000. We might arrange a $400,000,000 or $500,000,000 issue in New York and Boston, and if necessary, in other American cities. A good deal of the amount we ask for must be what Americans call savings bank investments.”

Do you see the plot progressing for the spoliation of the American people? There is first the over-extension of credit by the Wall Street munition makers; the concealment of London's war loan fiasco; the Money Trust's realization that it has been selling goods to bankrupt countries; then comes the British Chancellor's instructions to the Money Trust bankers; swiftly ensues the secret seizure of $500,000,000 of the public money; and the Printed Lie is used to delude the people into the belief that England sends us great stores of gold; the Hidden Voice of the anonymous banker is used to further the belief that we do not want this gold; then comes the chorus from the financial wolves of London that we must give England credit; now come the financial agents, hands extended, asking for only half a billion more.

Is it not the highest duty of every banker in the land to see that these financial agents are sent back with empty hands?

[...]  Here the author names the heads of the trust companies involved and links them up with the munition companies in a graphic that I cannot reproduce. To see it and complete reading this article, click on the link at the top. -cy

Theodore Roosevelt speaks from the balcony of the Hotel Allen in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1914. He was a leading pro-England voice urging the U.S. to enter the war against Germany.

vol. 3 no.   5 Sept. 8, 1915   Page 8

GERMAN SYMPATHIZERS, ROOSEVELT AND OTHERS

By Frederick Franklin Schrader

NOTHING has occurred in the United States since the famous Sand-lot Riots against the Chinese in San Francisco a generation ago which equals the vindictive campaign against the German-American element in the United States of the present day. When we speak of the German-American element we mean every American of German descent who dares to raise his voice in opposition to the efforts of the subsidized Wall Street newspaper organs and blatant pro-English propagandists headed by Theodore Roosevelt.

In Roosevelt's opera bouffe heroics the world discerns again the fantastic vaporings of the reincorporated General Boum of Offenbach. The only vestige of dignity retained by him is the memory that he at one time filled the Presidential office. His ignorance is graphically exposed by a paper fighting on his own side, the New York Sun, which takes him to task for preaching the doctrine that the United States are committed to go to war with Germany because of their obligation under the Hague treaty, when, as a matter of fact, France and England refused to sign the articles whose obligations Col. Roosevelt says we have failed “with criminal timidity” to fulfill. Back of the entire movement against the German sympathizers is the vast Money Trust of Wall Street under the generalship of J. P. Morgan, the Ammunition Agent of the British Government in the United States.

The United States must save England in order to save Wall Street's investments in ammunition factories, and those who are bold enough to demand that our country shall remain neutral in fact and keep out of the war are denounced as “German spies,” or German Government agents, in face of the avowed fact that Morgan is the paid agent of the British Government and Frederic C. Coudert is the counsel of the French Government in the United States.

Today every irresponsible pen-pusher in the country may with impunity denounce every citizen as disloyal who refuses to sanction the great crime of the Wall Street conspirators […] Tomorrow concentration camps and the demolition of German business houses and industries may be the order.

The first blood has been shed. At Gary, Ind., the Rev. Edmond Kayser, a Lutheran minister, was assassinated for his pro-German sentiments August 24th. In Washington, F. X. Weinschenk, a man of independent wealth, was rushed to a government insane asylum because he “conducted an International Information Bureau and mailed thousands of propaganda for the German cause and against the export of arms to the Allies.” He could not be held, and was soon discharged, to be kept under surveillance like a criminal. [See here for full story -cy] Charles P. Steinmetz, the greatest electrical expert in America, has been persistently hounded by Frank A. Munsey's paper, the Press, and other Wall Street organs, and all but forced off the Naval Advisory Board because he was born in Germany and had the courage to speak out against war in the interest of England.

Prominent labor leaders are accused of being German agents because their names are German, while hosannahs of praise are sung to the glory of Samuel Gompers, born in England. The N.Y. Journal of Commerce denounces the protests of American importers against the arbitrary seizure of American cargoes by England because their committee consisted of men “a majority of whom have such significant names as Bach, Kauffman, Strauss, Schmidt and Illfelder.” A harmless instrument maker named Gustav Kopsch is cast into a dungeon as a spy because, like thousands of others, he beguiled his vacation with amateur photography in and about Fortress Monroe and the military reservation at Cape Henry, Va.—because he is a German. […] The New York Herald, owned and edited in Paris, has actually advocated the lynching of German-American citizens. [This actually took place in 1918 in Illinois when German immigrant Robert Prager was lynched by a mob. -cy)

[...]

“The leaders among the professional German-Americans,” declared Roosevelt in his Plattsburg speech, “have preached what comes perilously near to treason against the United States.” The German-Americans, professional and amateur, have preached a policy of unimpeachable neutrality in accordance with President Wilson's neutrality proclamation. What Roosevelt has preached is war, war, WAR! He has tried day in and day out to drive this country into war; he will be chiefly responsible if the mob spirit is unchained and inoffensive Germans are swung from lamp-posts because they refuse to follow his leadership.

Do the Roosevelts, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Couderts, the “Max and Morris” Leons really represent public opinion in America? Who knows? Congress has not been called to ascertain the sentiment of the people. Are we drifting in a rudderless fashion into complications whose only solution is war?

(And so it continues for a bit longer … but this is sufficient to get across the seriousness of the offenses taking place.)