In the face of this fact, is there not some justification for the opinionthat the United States owe their very existence to the Jews? And if thisbe so, how much more can it be asserted that Jewish influence made theUnited States just what they are that is, American? For what we callAmericanism is nothing else, if we may say so, than the Jewish spiritdistilled.But how comes it that American culture is so steeped in Jewishness?The answer is simple through the early and universal admixture ofJewish elements among the first settlers. We may picture the process ofcolonizing somewhat after this fashion. A band of determined men andwomen let us say twenty families went forth into the wilds tobegin their life anew. Nineteen were equipped with plough and scythe,ready to clear the forests and till the soil in order to earn their livelihoodas husbandmen. The twentieth family opened a store to provide theircompanions with such necessaries of life as could not be obtained fromthe soil, often no doubt hawking them at the very doors. Soon this twentiethfamily made it its business to arrange for the distribution of theproducts which the other nineteen won from the soil. It was they, too,who were most likely in possession Of ready cash, and in case of needcould therefore be useful to the others by lending them money. Veryoften the store had a kind of agricultural loan-bank as its adjunct, perhapsalso an office for the buying and selling of land. So through theactivity of the twentieth family the farmer in North America was fromthe first kept in touch with the money and credit system of the OldWorld. Hence the whole process of production and exchange was fromits inception along modern lines. Town methods made their way at onceinto even the most distant villages. Accordingly, it may be said thatAmerican economic life was from its very start impregnated with capitalism.And who was responsible for this? The twentieth family in eachvillage. Need we add that this twentieth family was always a Jewishone, which joined a party of settlers or soon sought them out in theirhomesteads?No form of organizationor tendency in economic life can be traced to a particular day or even aparticular year. It is all a matter of growth, and the most that the economichistorian can do is to show that in any given period this or thatcharacteristic is found in business life, this or that organization dominatesall economic activities.It is a well-known fact that the specifically Roman conception ofindebtedness was a strictly personal one.43 The obligatio was a bondbetween certain persons. Hence the creditor could not transfer his claimto another, except under exceedingly difficult conditions. True, in laterRoman law the theory of delegation and transmission was interpretedsomewhat liberally, yet the root of the matter, the personal relationship,remained unchanged.In German law a contract was in the same way personal; nay, to acertain extent it was even more so than in Roman law. The Germanprinciple on the point was clear enough. The debtor was not obliged torender payment to any one but the original creditor to whom he hadpledged his word. There could in no wise be transference of claim aswas the case in English law until 1873. It was only when Roman lawobtained a strong hold on Germany that the transfer of claims first cameinto vogue. The form it took was that of bearer bonds the embodimentof an impersonal credit relationship.It is admitted that the legal notion underlying all bearer instruments that the document represents a valid claim for each successiveholder was not fully developed either in the ancient world or in theMiddle Ages.44 But the admission holds good only if Jewish law be leftout of account. Jewish law was certainly acquainted with the impersonalcredit relationship.45 Its underlying principle is that obligationsmay be towards unnamed parties, that you may carry on business withMessrs. Everybody. Let us examine this principle a little more closely.Jewish law has no term for obligation: it knows only debt (Chov)and demand (Tvia). Each of these was regarded as distinct from theother. That a demand and a promise were necessarily bound up withsome tangible object is proved by the symbolic act of acquisition. Consequentlythere could be no legal obstacles to the transfer of demands orto the making of agreements through agents. There was no necessitytherefore for the person against whom there was a claim to be defined,the person in question became known by the acquisition of certain commodities.In reality claims were against things and not against persons.It was only to maintain a personal relationship that the possessor of thethings was made responsible. Hence the conception that just as an obligationmay refer to some specified individual, so also it may refer tomankind as a whole. Therefore a transference of obligations is effectedmerely by the transference of documents.So much would appear from the view held by Auerbach. Jewishlaw is more abstract in this respect than either Roman or German law.Jewish law can conceive of an impersonal, standardized legal relationship.It is not too much to assume that a credit instrument such asthe modern bearer bond should have grown out of such a legal system asthe Jewish. Accordingly, all the external reasons which I have adducedin favour of my hypothesis are supported by what may be termed aninner reason.And what is this hypothesis? That instruments such as modern bearerbonds owe thenorigin chiefly to Jewish influences.Extracts from the interesting Introduction to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelsPhilosophy of History:The peculiarly African character is difficult to comprehend, for the very reasonthat in reference to it we must quite give up the principle which accompanies all our ideas the category of Universality. ... Another characteristic fact in reference to the Negro isslavery Bad as this may be, their lot in their own land is even worse, since a slaverythere quite as absolute exists; for it is the essential principle of slavery, that man has notyet attained to a consciousness of his own freedom, and consequently sinks down to amere Thing an object of no value. Among the Negro moral sentiments are quite weak,or more strictly speaking, non-existent. Parents sell their children and converselychildren their parents, as either has the opportunity the polygamy of the Negroes hasfrequently for its object the having of many children, to be sold, every one of them, intoslavery. ... From these various traits it is manifest that want of self-control distinguishesthe character of the Negroes. This condition is capable of no development or culture, andas we see them at this day, such have they always been. ... At this point we leave Africa,not to mention it again. For it is no historical part of the World; it has no movement ordevelopment to exhibit."I know that in the world there is certainly no other people who would be complaining as much about their lot, incessantly, after each step and word of theirs -- about their humiliation, their suffering, their martyrdom. One might think that it is not they who are reigning in Europe, who are directing there at least the stock exchanges and, therefore, politics, domestic affairs, the morality of the states...""...Now, how would it be if in Russia there were not three million Jews, but three million Russians and there were eighty million Jews -- well, into what would they convert the Russians, and how would they treat them? Would they permit them to acquire equal rights? Would they permit them to worship freely in their midst? Wouldn't they instead convert them into slaves? Worse than that: wouldn't they skin them altogether? Wouldn't they slaughter the Russians down to the last man, to the point of complete extermination, as they used to do with alien peoples in ancient times, during their ancient history?""...It is possible to outline, at least, certain symptoms of that status in statu -- be it only externally. These symptoms are: alienation and estrangement in the matter of religious dogma; the impossibility of fusion; belief that in the world there exists but one national entity, the Jew, while, even though other entities exist, nevertheless, it should be presumed that they are, as it were, nonexistent. 'Step out of the family of nations and form your own entity, and thou shalt know that henceforth thou art the only one before God; exterminate the rest, or make slaves of them, or exploit them. Have faith in the conquest of the whole world; adhere to the belief that everything will submit to thee. Loathe strictly everything, and do not have intercourse with anyone in thy mode of living. And even when thou shalt lose the land, thy political individuality, even when thou shalt be dispersed all over the face of the earth, amidst all nations -- nevermind, have faith in everything that has been promised thee, once and forever; believe that all this will come to pass, and meanwhile live, loathe, unite, and exploit -- and wait, wait...""Thus, Jewry is thriving precisely there where the people are still ignorant, or not free, or economically backward. It is there that Jewry has a champ libre! And instead of raising, by its influence, the level of education, instead of increasing knowledge, generating economic fitness in the native population -- instead of this the Jew, where he has settled, has still more humiliated and debauched the people; there humaneness was still more debased and the educational level fell still lower; there inescapable, inhuman misery, and with it despair, spread still more disgustingly. Ask the native population in our border regions: What is propelling the Jew -- and hasd been propelling him for centuries? You will receive a unanimous answer: mercilessness. 'He has been prompted so many centuries only by pitilessness for us, only by the thirst for our sweat and blood.'""And, in truth, the whole activity of the Jews in these border regions of ours consisted of rendering the native population as much as possible inescapably dependent on them, taking advantage of the local laws. They have always managed to be on friendly terms with those upon whom the people were dependent... Point to any other tribe from among Russian aliens which could rival the Jew in his dreadful influence in this connection! You will find no such other tribe. In this respect the Jew preserves all his originality as compared with other Russian aliens, and, of course, the reason therefore is that status in statu of his, the spirit which specifically breathes with pitilessness for everything that is not Jew, with disrespect for any people and tribe, for every human creature who is not a Jew...""Now, what if somehow, for some reason, our rural society should disintegrate, the society that is protecting our poor native peasant against so many ills; what if, straightaway, the Jew and his whole kehillah should fall upon that liberated peasant -- so inexperienced, so incapable of resisting temptation, and who up to this time has been guarded precisely by society? Why, of course, instantly this would be his end; his entire property, his whole strength, the very next day would come under the power of the Jew, and there would ensue such an era as could be compared not only with the era of serfdom but even with that of the Tartar yoke."On the other hand, it is certain and must be carefully observed that, if the Jews areresponsible for many a shocking historical development, for the fall of many heroic,powerful peoples, still greater is the responsibility of those Europeans who have alwaysfrom the most base motives encouraged, protected and fostered the disintegrating activityof the Jews, and these are primarily the Princes and the nobility and that too from thefirst century of our era to the present day. Open the history of any European nation youlike wherever the Jews are numerous and begin to realise their strength, you will alwayshear bitter complaints against them from the people, from the commercial classes, fromthe circles of the learned and the poets; everywhere and at all times it is the Princes andthe nobility that protect them: the Princes because they need money for their wars, thenobility because they live extravagantly.As regards the social influence in particular, I will only quote two wise and fairauthorities, whose judgment cannot be suspected even by the Jews, namely, Herder andGoethe. The former says, A ministry, in which the Jew is supreme, a household, in whicha Jew has the key of the wardrobe and the management of the finances, a department orcommissariat, in which Jews do the principal business ... are Pontine marshes that cannotbe drained; and he expresses the opinion that the presence of an indefinite number ofJews is so pernicious to the welfare of a European State, that we dare not be influencedby general humane principles; it is a national question,and it is the duty of every State to decide how many of this alien people can be toleratedwithout injury to the true citizens? * Goethe goes still deeper: How should we let theJews share in our highest culture, when they deny its origin and source? And he becameviolently enraged when the law of 1823 permitted marriage between Jews and Germans,prophesying the worst and most frightful consequences, particularly the undermining ofall moral feelings and declaring that the bribery of the all-powerful Rothschild must bethe cause of this folly. Goethe and Herder have exactly the same opinion as the greatHohenstauffen, the great Hohenzollern, and all great men before and after them: withoutsuperstitiously reproaching the Jews with their peculiar individuality, they consider theman actual danger to our civilisation and our culture; they would not give them an activepart in our life. We cannot proceed with our discussion and simply pass over such aconsensus ingeniorum. For to these well-weighed, serious judgments derived from thefulness of experience and the insight of the greatest intellects we have nothing to opposebut the empty phrases of the droits de lhomme a parliamentary clap-trap.I have intentionally limited my quotations. But I cannot refrain from defending in anote the great Voltaire against the almost established myth that he was altogetherfavourable and as superficial in his humanitarian judgment of the influence of the Jewsupon our culture, as is the modern fashion. Even Jews of such broad culture as JamesDarmesteter (Peuple Juif, 2e d. p. 17) print the name Voltaire in thick type and representhim as one of the intellectual originators of their emancipation. The opposite is true; morethan once Voltaire advises that the Jews be sent back to Palestine. Voltaire is one of theauthors whom I know best, because I prefer interesting books to wearisome ones, and Ithink I could easily collect a hundred quotations of a most aggressive nature against theJews. In the essay of the Dictionnaire Philosophique (end of Section 1) he says: Vous netrouverez dans les Juifs quun peuple ignorant et barbare, qui joint depuis longtemps laplus sordide avarice la plus dtestable superstition et la plus invincible haine pour tous les peuples qui les tolrent et qui les enrichissent. In Dieu et les hommes (chap. x.)he calls the Jews La plus hassable et la plus honteuse des petites nations. Enough hassurely been said to make his attitude clear! But this opinion should have all the moreforce, since Voltaire himself in many long treatises has made a thorough study of Jewishhistory and the Jewish character (so thorough that he who has been decried as asuperficial dilettante is occasionally quoted to-day by a scholar of the first rank likeWellhausen). And so it is noteworthy when he writes (Essai sur les Moeurs, chap. xlii.):La nation juive ose taler une haine irrconciliable contre toutes les nations, elle servolte contre tous ses matres; toujours superstitieuse, toujours avide du bien dautrui,toujours barbare rampante dans le malheur, et insolente dans la prosprit. His judgmentof their mental qualities is brief and apodeictic, Les Juifs nont jamais rien invent (Ladfense de mon oncle, chap. vii.), and in the Essai sur les Moeurs he shows in severalchapters that the Jews had always learned from other nations but had never taught othersanything; even their music, which is generally praised, Voltaire cannot endure: Retournezen Jude le plus tt que vous pourrez ... vous y excuteriez plaisir dans votre dtestablejargon votre dtestable musique (6me lettre du Dictionnaire). He explains elsewhere thisremarkable mental sterility of the Jews by their inordinate lust for money; Largent futlobjet de leur conduite dans tous les temps (Dieu et les hommes, xxix.). Voltaire scoffs at the Jews in a hundred places; forinstance, in Zadig (chap. x.), where the Jew utters a solemn prayer of thankfulness to Godfor a successful piece of fraud; the most biting satire against the Jews that exists isbeyond doubt the treatise Un Chrtien contre six Juifs. And yet in all these utterancesthere was a certain reserve, as they were destined for publication; on the other hand, in aletter to the Chevalier de Lisle on December 15, 1773 (that is, at the end of his life, not inthe heat of youth), he could speak his opinion freely: Que ces dprpuc dIsral se disentde la tribu de Naphthali ou dIssachar, cela est fort peu important; ils nen sont pas moinsles plus grand gueux qui aient jamais souill la face du globe. Evidently this fieryFrenchman had just the same to say of the Jews as any fanatical Bishop; he differs atmost in the addition which he occasionally makes to his bitterest attacks, Il ne fautpourtant pas les brler. There is a further difference in the fact that it is a humane,tolerant and learned man that utters this very sharp judgment. But how, in a man of suchopen mind, can we explain the existence of a view so pitilessly one-sided and soruthlessly intolerant, a view which in its utter lack of moderation compares veryunfavourably with the words of the German sages quoted above? Our age could learnmuch here, if it wished to! For we see that the Gallic love of equality and freedom is notbased upon love of justice nor respect for the individual; and we may draw the furtherconclusion; understanding is not got from principles, and universal humanity does notensure the possibility of living together in dignified peace, it is only the frank recognitionof what separates our own kind and our own interests from those of others that can makeus just towards an alien nature and alien interests.Government loans, government bonds,railroad bonds, war bonds, mortgages,covered-bond obligations -- in shortloan-instruments of every kind have in amanner ensnared our entire economiclife, so that henceforth all the peoples ofthe world wriggle helplessly in thegolden webs. For the sake of theinterest-principle, in keeping with athoroughly mad political delusion thatevery kind of possession carries anentitlement to earnings, we havesubmitted to enslavement to interest onmoney. Not a single real, valid moralreason can be given as to why merepossession of money should bring anentitlement to perpetual interestpayments.Never has Mammonism been preparedin such a world-encompassing manner tobegin world-domination. Never yet hasit placed in its service all baseness, lustfor power, lust for revenge, greed, envy,and falsehood in such a cleverlyconcealed and yet brutally pushy manneras now. The World War is at its inmostcore one of the biggest decisions in theevolutionary process of humanity in thestruggle to decide whether in the futurethe Mammonistic-materialisticworldview or the socialistic-aristocraticworldview should determine the fate ofthe world.On the surface, the Mammonistic Anglo-American coalition has without a doubtbeen initially victorious. As a reactionagainst it, Bolshevism arose in the East,and if one wishes to see a great idea inBolshevism, it is without a doubt theposition diametrically opposed to theMammonistic worldview. The methodsthat Bolshevism seeks to employ for thishowever are the botched cures of a Dr.Eisenbarth. They are the attempt to helpsomeone sick from internal poisoningwith a scalpel, by amputating his head,arm, and legs.It should be most emphatically stressedthat precisely our contemporary culture,precisely the internationality ofeconomic relations, make the interestprincipleso murderous. The foregoinghistorical retrospective should also notbe regarded as providing an analogy forthe circumstances of today. When theBabylonians overcame the Assyrians,the Romans the Carthaginians, theGermans the Romans, then there was nocontinuation of enslavement to interest;there were no international worldpowers.The wars were also notfinanced through borrowing but withtreasures accumulated during peace.David Hume gives a very nice overviewof this in his Essay on Public Credit.Only the modern age with its continuityof ownership and its international lawallows loan-capital to escalate intoinfinity. The penny that was invested atinterest at the time of the birth of Christexists no more, because since then allrights of ownership have had to giveway to violence several times; bycontrast the penny that old Rothschildinvested at interest still exists, and willexist, if there is international law, for alleternity.In addition it ought to be considered thatbroad stretches of the Earth have only inthe modern age gone over from naturaleconomy to money-economy. It is quiteespecially important in this connectionthat only in the middle of the 19th centurywere all restrictions on charginginterest, and likewise all prohibitions oninterest, abolished: thus England in theyear 1854, Denmark 1856, Belgium1865, Austria 1868.Thus today's concept of interest asinseparable from the possession ofmoney is not much older than half acentury. But precisely this interestconcepthas for the first time causedmoney to turn into the demonic power ofsuch universal coercion that we havecome to know.The incipient and then ever-increasingindebtedness of states to capitalistslikewise dates only to the middle of the19th century. Only since that time do wesee the state degraded from being thetrustee of the folk-community into beingthe trustee of capitalistic interests. Thisdevelopment has reached its highpoint inwar-bonds, which we encounter in alllands, which exclusively, as we haverecognized, serve only Mammonisticinterests, which should be crowned withthe gigantic credit-edifice of a world-loan.These brief retrospectives should makeit easier for us finally to break awayfrom the supposition that unto loancapitalmust be lent the supramundanepower to grow eternally andinterminably from itself. Gifted with aterrifying potential for sucking dry. Wemust break away from the notion thatloan-capital, unaffected by worldlydeeds and misdeeds, should be able tosit enthroned above the clouds,unaffected by transitoriness, unaffectedby the forces of destruction, unaffectedby the shots of our giant guns. For,should even houses and huts, railroadsand bridges shattered by shells sink intodust and ash, the mortgages will stillexist; the railroad bonds and publiccertificates of indebtedness are notthereby erased. Should villages andcities, entire provinces fall victim to theinsane destruction of war, what is theresult? New certificates of indebtednessare what it means. With eyes flashinggreed the Gold International enthronedabove the clouds watches the mad rushof humanity. And not long distant is thetime when all humanity finally shallserve only as interest-slaves toMammonism.