Rist on Mollien’s Ideas About Bank Notes

Rist on Mollien’s Ideas About Bank Notes

Thomas Allen

    In 1938, Charles Rist  (1874-1955) wrote History of Monetary and Credit Theory from John Law to the Present Day (translated by Jane Degras, New York: Augustus M. Kelly Publishers, 1966) in which he reviews Count Mollien’s ideas about bank notes. Rist was a French economist, who was of the Banking School as opposed to the Currency School. [Under the gold standard, banking philosophies generally fell into either the banking school or the currency school. The banking school “holds that as long as a bank maintains the convertibility of its bank notes into specie (gold), for which it should keep ‘adequate’ reserves, it is impossible for it to over issue its bank notes against sound commercial paper with fixed short term (90 days or less) maturities.”[1] Its position is also called the “Banking Principle” or “Principle of Fullerton.” To the banking school, bank notes are merely circulating credit instruments. Although they can be exchanged for gold, they are not intended to be warehouse receipts for gold. The currency school “maintains that all . . . changes in the nation’s quantity of money should correspond precisely with changes in the nation’s holdings of monetary metal. . . .”[2] Its position is also called the “currency doctrine.” To the currency school, bank notes are merely warehouse receipts and, therefore, should be backed 100 percent by specie. To the banking school, bank notes are claims for new merchandise offered for sale in the markets. Under the currency school, bank notes are claims for gold. Under the currency school philosophy, an elastic currency does not exist; under the banking school, it does.] My comments are in brackets. Referenced page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Rist’s book.
    Nicolas François, Count Mollien (1758-1850) was a French financier. He worked in the Ministry of Finance from 1774 to 1791 and went to England in 1796 and studied the Bank of England. In 1799, he return to France and again entered the Ministry of Finance. Napoleon frequently consulted him and made him a councillor of state in 1804. In 1814, he retired from public service. Later, he was appointed to the Chamber of Peers. His major writing, which contains his views on money and banking, is Mémoires d'un Ministre du Trésor Public, published in four volumes between 1780 and 1815.
    When Mollien returned to France, he was determined to revamp the French credit system using the English system as his model (p. 92). Mollien wanted to protect the Bank of France from the government, which “was always short of money and anxious to subordinate everything to its political ends” (p. 93). Also, he wanted to protect the bank from its managers, “who were too easily tempted to use it in their own interests” (p. 93).
    Mollien argued that “[a] banking issue should only discount good commercial paper” (p. 93). With the strict enforcement of this restriction, the bank would “avoid the requests of a government always in search of treasury advances, and the cash facilities which the bank directors might ask for their personal affairs” (p. 93). Moreover, “the bank should avoid all speculative paper, all ‘friendly accommodation,’ all ‘fraudulent paper’ or ‘collusive securities’ which do not represent real commercial transactions, and the payment of which is not guaranteed by ‘the share in real money with which each consumer should directly or indirectly furnish it’” (p. 93). Furthermore, the bank should fervently avoid treasury advances of the government because they do not arise out of the ordinary requirements of trade and would return to the bank for repayment (p. 93). That is, bank notes issued to the government for treasury bills are in excess of that needed for commerce, and would, thus, return to the bank for gold. [Today’s governments and banks avoid this problem by making bank notes inconvertible.]
    The essence of Mollien’s concept of the bank note was merely substituting one currency instrument for another already in existence. His concept is correct. When a bank note is issued against good short-term, self-liquidating paper, the bank note is merely substituted for another form of currency. Thus, he held that “[i]f notes are issued against sound bills of exchange, they only substitute a more convenient paper, with all the characteristics of money, for maturities created in the course of trade” (p. 94). His “idea that the note is merely a substitute for commercial money spontaneously created in the course of trade is correct” (p. 94). [Commercial money is short-term {less than 91 days} self-liquidating {the consumer pays the bill with his purchase} real bill of exchange {a bill that represents goods in the process of being sold to the final consumer}. Some economists reject the notion that bills of exchange are money; most of these economists accept bank notes as money like gold coin.]
    However, Mollien believed in the quantity theory of money. If too many bank notes are issued, they declined in value (p. 94). [Presumably, he believed that this is true even if all bank notes are issued against real bills of exchange and gold coin.]
    One significant difference between the Bank of England and the Bank of France as envisioned by Mollien was that the Bank of England held its gold reserves primarily for payments abroad. The Bank of France held its gold reserves primarily to redeem its bank notes (p. 95).
    In addition to bills of exchange that the bank had converted to bank notes, the bank also needed to maintain a reserve of gold coins for the redemption of its notes when redemption is demanded. However, its notes need not and should not be 100 percent backed by gold. Mollien writes:

But it would obviously be an exaggeration of caution to the point of absurdity to ask that the reserve of coin should be equal to the sum of the notes that a bank puts into circulation; if, in addition to the security for the bank-notes represented in the bills of exchange which the bank has discounted, it were to keep in its repositories a sum in coin equal to the notes, the bank's existence would be both impossible and useless, for it could only form this reserve by keeping in a state of stagnation at the very least the capital of its shareholders (p. 95).

He maintains, “The reserve of coin which a bank holds should therefore be measured against the number and the nature of the causes which can make repayments more frequent” (p. 95).
    Rist notes, “It did not occur to Mollien that the note is only a means of making the coin deposited beforehand in the bank circulate” (p. 96). Also, Mollien failed to consider the primary purpose of the gold reserve. "Whereas the gold reserve is the foundation on which the entire activity of the bank is created, Mollien considered it as a way of guaranteeing the convertibility of its notes” (p. 96).
    “Mollien considered notes useful because they economised the use of money” (p. 96). However, this idea conflicted with some of his other ideas. “He thought of the note as a substitute for bills held by the bank; but bills are an addition to metallic money; they are a commercial money spontaneously created to supplement the circulation of coin. In acting as a substitute for bills, notes play the same part as bills: they are an addition to, not a substitute for, the coin in circulation” (p. 96).
    Moreover, Mollien had difficulty in distinguishing between credit used as money and money itself. To him, bank notes were money like gold coin or inconvertible government notes. However, their issue was limited by the quantity of bills of exchange that they replaced (p. 96). [When a debt is paid with credit used as money, that credit money discharges the debt by passing it to another, the person or entity responsible or obligated for the credit money. The debt is not extinguished until the credit money is converted to something that is no one else obligation, such as gold or silver. Therefore, a bank note is credit money that discharges debt by passing it to the issuing bank. That debt is not extinguished until the bank retires the note by converting it to a commodity money like gold or silver.]

Endnotes
1. Percy L. Greaves, Jr., Understanding the Dollar Crisis (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1973), p. 8.

2. Ibid., p. 28.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on the Democracy and Morality

Mencken on the Democracy and Morality

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes democracy and morality, pages 162-176. Below is an overview of his discussion on democracy and morality; my comments are in brackets.
    “Liberty gone, there remains the majestic phenomenon of democratic law.” A glance at the law is sufficient to reveal “the identity of democracy and Puritanism.” [Puritanism extends far beyond vice, which today is a minor part of Puritanism — drug laws, especially anti-tobacco laws, and, to a declining extent, the prohibition of prostitution being about the only aspects of this type of Puritanism remaining. Today, Puritanism appears mostly as political correctness, abortion, civil rights laws, laws controlling businesses, zoning laws, hostility toward Confederate monuments, hostility toward Christianity, and the like.] They are merely “different facets of the same gem. In the psyche they are one.” Both derive “their primal essence out of the inferior man’s fear and hatred of his betters, born of his observation that, for all his fine theories, they are stronger and of more courage then he is, and that as they go through this dreadful world they have a far better time.” [Although Mencken description of the inferior man fits many, if not, most Whites, it fits nearly all Blacks. Yet, the old Black man said that he was glad that he was Black instead of White because Blacks knew how to have a good time and Whites did not.] This fear and hatred lead to envy.
    Envy is not “a speciality of democratic man. It is the common possession of all men of the ignoble and incompetent sort, at all times and everywhere.” Nevertheless, democracy liberates it; “it is only under democracy that it is liberated; it is only under democracy that it becomes the philosophy of the state.” [Therefore, all democratic countries have evolved into a welfare-state, which is based and built on envy.]
    Although humanity owes the old autocracies a great debt, the democrat is not likely to remember that debt. About the old autocracies, Mencken writes, “Their service, perhaps, was a by-product of a purpose far afield, but it was a service none the less: they held the green fury of the mob in check, and so set free the spirit of superior man.” When Flavius Honorius collapsed, Europe fell into chaos for four hundred years. [Flavius Honorius {384 –423} was the Western Roman Emperor from 393 to 423.] Charlemagne revived the autocracy and made possible the Renaissance and the modern age. [Charlemagne {742 –814}, King of the Franks {768–814} and Emperor of the Romans {800-814} united much of Europe during the early Middle Ages.] The autocracies kept the mob “from the throat of civilization.”
    Mencken points to the French and Russian Revolutions to illustrate what happens when the autocracy collapses: “The instant such a catastrophe liberates the mob, it begins a war to the death upon superiority of every kind not only upon the kind that naturally attaches to autocracy, but even upon the kind that stands in opposition to it. The day after a successful revolution is a blue day for the late autocrat, but it is also a blue day for every other superior man.”
    Mencken continues, “Democracy, as a political scheme, may be defined as a device for releasing this hatred born of envy, and for giving it the force and dignity of law.” Moreover, “the democratic state, despite the contrary example of France, almost always shows a strong tendency to be also a Puritan state.” Especially, in the field of public law, Puritan legislation “is a thing of many grandiose pretensions and a few simple and ignoble realities. The Puritan . . . always tries to convince himself (and the rest of us) that it is grounded upon altruistic and evangelical motives — that its aim is to work the other fellow’s benefit against the other fellow’s will.” [This is true even after Puritanism abandoned the Bible, of which Mencken probably approved, and became a secular religion.]
    Mencken notes, “The Puritan’s actual motives are (a) to punish the other fellow for having a better time in the world, and (b) to bring the other fellow down to his own unhappy level. . . . Primarily, he is against every human act that he is incapable of himself.” [Mencken has just described the motives of the Yankee.] However, he notes, “The Puritan is surely no ascetic. Even in the great days of the New England theocracy it was impossible to restrain his libidinousness: his eyes rolled sideways at buxom wenches quite as often as they rolled upward to God. But he is incapable of sexual experience upon what may be called a civilized plane; it is impossible for him to manage the thing as a romantic adventure; in his hands it reduces itself to the terms of the barnyard. Hence the Mann Act.” [The Mann Act makes it a felony to engage in interstate or foreign commerce transport of people for the purpose of prostitution or illegal sexual acts.] Likewise, with an alcoholic beverage, the Puritan “can have experience of it only as a furtive transaction behind the door, with a dreadful headache to follow. Hence Prohibition.” [Every chance that Mencken gets to condemn Prohibition, he does so.] Also, “with the joys that come out of the fine arts. Looking at a picture, he sees only the model’s pudenda. Reading a book, he misses the ordeals and exaltations of the spirit, and remembers only the natural functions. Hence comstockery.” [Today, censorship appears in the form of political correctness and vulgar mobs preventing anyone with whom these low-lives disagree from speaking peacefully on college campuses. Now, books are seldom removed from libraries because of sexual content, most sexual content now being politically correct, but because of political content, i.e., the book is politically incorrect because it disagrees with democracy, liberalism, progressivism, socialism, communism, Marxism, or the ever-growing power of the government or is considered “racist.”]
    The Puritan’s “delight in his own rectitude is grounded upon a facile assumption that it is difficult to maintain that the other fellow, being deficient in God’s grace, is incapable of it. So he venerates himself, in the moral department, as an artist of unusual talents, a virtuoso of virtue.” Mencken continues, “His error consists in mistaking a weakness for a merit, an inferiority for a superiority.” Being moral in the Puritan sense “is not actually a sign of spiritual eminence; . . . it is simply a sign of docility, of lack of enterprise and originality, of cowardice.” Once the Puritan forgets “his mainly imaginary triumphs over the flesh and the devil, . . . [he] always turns out to be a poor stick of a man in brief, a natural democrat.” [Thus, Puritans and democrats are twins, and “Puritan” is merely another name for “Yankee.”]
    Mencken adds, “No Puritan has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a poem worth reading — and I am not forgetting John Milton, who was not a Puritan at all, but a libertarian, which is the exact opposite. The whole Puritan literature is comprised in The Pilgrim’s Progress.” He continues, “Even in the department wherein the Puritan is most proud of himself, i.e., that of moral legislation, he has done only second- and third-rate work.” [Puritanism explains the low quality, meddlesome legislation flowing from Washington and most State capitals.] “His fine schemes for bringing his betters down to his own depressing level always turn out badly.”
    “Since the first uprising of the lower orders, the modern age has seen but one genuinely valuable contribution to moral legislation: . . . the Code Napoleon. It was concocted by a committee of violent anti-Puritans, and in the full tide of a bitter reaction against democracy.”
    Mencken continues, “If democracy had not lain implicit in Puritanism, Puritanism would have had to invent it. Each is necessary to the other. Democracy provides the machinery that Puritanism needs for the quick and ruthless execution of its preposterous inventions.” Puritans face great difficulty in advancing their schemes under autocracies. They can only convince the King if the King is crazy. Even then, the King’s ministers will restrain him. “But the mob is easy to convince, for what Puritanism has to say to it is mainly what it already believes: its politics is based upon the same brutal envies and quaking fears that lie under the Puritan ethic.” Continuing, Mencken notes that “the political machinery through which it [democracy] functions provides a ready means of translating such envies and fears into action. There is need only to sound the alarm and take a vote: the debate is over the moment the majority has spoken.” Thus, in democratic countries, “even the most strange and dubious legislative experiments are” enacted with ferocious haste. [Examples are Bush’s police state laws, which were mostly passed by Congress without anyone in Congress reading them and with little or no debate, and Obamacare, which Congress passed without reading or even knowing what was in it. Unfortunately, once enacted even the most egregious, intrusive, meddlesome, cumbersome, ineffective, inefficient laws are next to impossible to  repeal.]
    Mencken remarks “that this process of law-making by orgy, with fanatics supplying the motive-power and unconscionable knaves steering the machine, is bound to fill the statute-books with enactments that have no rational use or value save that of serving as instruments of psychopathological persecution and private revenge.” [And now you know why we have the laws that we do and so many of them.] Most laws “involve gross invasions of the most elementary rights of the free citizen, but they are popular with the mob because they have a virtuous smack and provide it with an endless succession of barbarous but thrilling shows.” Mostly, the victims of these laws are men whom “the mob naturally envies and hates — men of unusual intelligence and enterprise, men who regard their constitutional liberties seriously and are willing to go to some risk and expense to defend them. Such men are inevitably unpopular under democracy, for their qualities are qualities that the mob wholly lacks, and is uneasily conscious of  lacking: it thus delights in seeing them exposed to slander and oppression, and railroaded to prison.” [Although most members of the mob had never traded a stock, the mob was delighted when Martha Stewart went to prison.] Mencken notes that a district attorney is always ready to prosecute a superior man because “district attorneys are invariably men who aspire to higher office, and no more facile way to it is to be found than by assaulting and destroying a man above the general.” These are the type of district attorneys who become Congressmen. (One “is seldom promoted because he has been jealous of the liberties of the citizen.”) Furthermore, many judges reach “the bench by the same route.” [Most of the laws that Mencken uses as illustrations are petty, irritating laws. He seldom mentions the really despotic laws such as the wartime laws enacted during the Wilson administration that have been used since then to terrorize and imprison people who disagreed with the government. The laws that he mentions are nothing compared to today’s tax laws, which gather the mob’s support because they feed the mob’s envy: The mob is convinced that the tax laws are written to punish the rich and give the inferior man a free ride.]
    Mencken continues, “The whole criminal law in America thus acquires a flavour of fraud. It is constantly embellished and reinforced by fanatics who have discovered how easy it is to hurl missiles at their enemies and opponents from behind ranks of policemen. It is executed by law officers whose private prosperity runs in direct ratio to their reckless ferocity.” [If one listens to talk radio for a few days, especially on the shortwave and the Internet, he would discover the truthfulness of Mencken’s observation. He would discover that America has many political prisoners whose real crime, as opposed to the fraudulent crime of which they have been convicted with the aid of bias, prejudice judges, is that they stood for liberty.] Morons “whose chief delight lies in seeing their betters manhandled and humiliated” applaud this injustice. [Political cartoonists on the left are among the most idiotic of these morons.]
    “In the criminal courts a rich man not only enjoys none of the advantages that Liberals and other defenders of democracy constantly talk of; he is under very real and very heavy burdens.” Railroading a “better,” especially one who stands for liberty, is morally excusable. Sarcastically, Mencken asserts, “The district attorney is an altruist whose one dream is Law Enforcement; he cannot be terrified by the power of money; he is the spokesman of the virtuous masses against the godless and abominable classes.”
    Next, Mencken discusses Prohibition and the evils that it has brought instead of the paradise promised by its proponents. At the time that Mencken wrote, even the mob had turned against Prohibition, but its promoters refused to “repudiate their original nonsense.” [This sounds familiar. How many other laws are still being enforced that the mob has turned against? At least the mob got Prohibition repealed — and that required a constitutional amendment instead of a simple legislative enactment.] Prohibitionists are moved by “the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and, whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate.” [We see this with other laws — probably all mala prohibita laws. {Mala prohibitum is an offense prohibited by statute, but not inherently evil or wrong, such as failure to submit a report or to have a permit or license, failure to pay taxes, and most traffic violations. They are wrong because the government declares to be wrong. Opposite of mala prohibitum is mala in se, which is an offense that is evil or wrong from its own nature, irrespective of a statute, such as murder, rape, or robbery. Basically, the difference between the two is that mala in se is what God prohibits and mala prohibitum is what man prohibits.}] Like Prohibition, such laws become a means to “badger and annoy everyone who” does not comply with the letter of the law or its spirit, whichever is the most oppressive. Such laws “fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences” [as the drug laws do today]. Most of all, such laws satisfy “the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy.” Moreover, the Puritans can do this “with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.” Freedom from personal risk is the secret of the Puritans’ continual frenzy.
    Mencken notes “the American mob, far from being lawless, is actually excessively tolerant of written laws and judicial fiats, however plainly they violate the fundamental rights of free men, and . . . this tolerance is sufficient to protect them [the Prohibitionists, Puritans, and other meddlesome busybodies] from what, in more liberal and enlightened countries, would be the natural consequences of their anti-social activity.  If they had to meet their victims face to face, there would be a different story to tell.” However, “they seldom encounter this embarrassment. Instead, they turn the officers of the law to the uses of their mania.” He continues, “Thus, under democracy, the normal, well-behaved, decent citizen — the Forgotten Man of the late William Graham Sumner — is beset from all sides, and every year sees an augmentation of his woes.” [Sumner {1840–1910} was a classical liberal, a libertarian, and an American social scientist.] “In order to satisfy the envy and hatred of his inferiors and the blood lust of a pack of irresponsible and unconscionable fanatics, few of them of any dignity as citizens or as men and many of them obviously hypocritical and corrupt, this decent citizen [the Forgotten Man] is converted into a criminal for performing acts that are natural to men of his class everywhere, and police and courts are degraded to the abhorrent office of punishing him for them.” [Although Mencken writes this about Prohibition, it is true of most mala prohibita laws.]
    [What Mencken has written about the Puritan could just as well have been written about the Yankee. Substituting “Yankee” for “Puritan” would not change the meaning of what Mencken has written. The two are synonymous.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on the Democratic Man

Mencken on the Democratic Man

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the democratic man, pages 9-15. Below is an overview of his discussion on the democratic man; my comments are in brackets.
    Emerging “as Rousseau’s noble savage in smock and jerkin,” the democratic man came forth “to shame the lords and masters of the civilized lands.” Being at the bottom of the social scale, i.e., being inferior, he acquired “a mystical merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude” that “by some strange magic became sort of superiority — nay, the superiority of superiorities.”
    Thus, enlighten countries have moved evermore “toward the completer and more enamoured enfranchisement of the lower orders.” For, in this democratic man “lies a deep, illimitable reservoir of righteousness and wisdom, unpolluted by the corruption of privilege.” Whatever baffles statesmen, the democratic man can solve “instantly and by a sort of seraphic intuition.”
    Moreover, his “yearnings are pure.” Only he is “capable of a perfect patriotism,” and in him “is the only hope of peace and happiness on this lugubrious ball.” [If true, no hope exists for peace. The democratic man is as much of a warmonger as are the aristocrat and the upper class; only his wars are far more brutal and destructive as World War I and World War II demonstrate.] Thus, “[t]he cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!”
    This notion of the democratic man “originated in the poetic fancy of gentlemen on the upper levels — sentimentalists who, observing to their distress that the ass was over-laden, proposed to reform transport by putting him into the cart.” These gentlemen were “the direct ancestors of the more saccharine Liberals of to-day, who yet mouth their tattered phrases and dream their preposterous dreams.”
    Then Mencken gives a description of the rise of the democratic man during the French Revolution. “Early democratic man seems to have given little thought to the democratic ideal, and less veneration. What he wanted was something concrete and highly materialistic — more to eat, less work, higher wages, lower taxes. He had no apparent belief in the acroamatic virtue of his own class, and certainly none in its capacity to rule.” [Thus, the democratic man seems to have shown more common sense than his aristocratic overlords and other members of the upper class who propelled him into governing.] Extermination of the baron was not his goal; his goal was “to bring the baron back to a proper discharge of baronial business.” In his attempt to force the barons back to baronial business, the baronage ended and others from among the democratic man took the barons’ place. The democratic man quickly showed his “opinion of them by butchering them deliberately and in earnest.” Once the blood began flowing, “it was a great deal more dangerous to be a tribune of the people than to be an ornament of the old order.” “[H]aving been misled into killing its King in 1793,” the democratic man “devoted the next two years to killing those who had misled” him. Then he got another king [Napoleon], “with an attendant herd of barons, counts, marquises and dukes, some of them new but most of them old, to guard, symbolize and execute his sovereignty.” So overjoyed was the democratic man at the return of a king, “that half France leaped to suicide that their glory might blind the world.”
    The blood flow in Europe slowed the rise of the democratic man. However, America had been spared such slaughters; thus, the popularity of the democratic man rose more quickly in the United States.
    Nevertheless, the conditions of the democratic man improved. “Once a slave, he was now only a serf. Once condemned to silence, he was now free to criticize his masters, and even to flout them, and the ordinances of God with them. As he gained skill and fluency at that sombre and fascinating art, he began to heave in wonder at his own merit. He was not only, it appeared, free to praise and damn, challenge and remonstrate; he was also gifted with a peculiar rectitude of thought and will, and a high talent for ideas, particularly on the political plane. So his wishes, in his mind, began to take on the dignity of legal rights, and after a while, of intrinsic and natural rights, and by the same token the wishes of his masters sank to the level of mere ignominious lusts. By 1828 in America and by 1848 in Europe the doctrine had arisen that all moral excellence, and with it all pure and unfettered sagacity, resided in the inferior four-fifths of mankind.” [In 1828, the supporters of Andrew Jackson formed today’s Democratic party got Jackson elected President.]
    Then in 1867, a philosopher [Marx] arose from the gutter and declared “that the superior minority had no virtues at all, and hence no rights at all — that the world belonged exclusively and absolutely to those who hewed its wood and drew its water.” Within a few decades, “he had more followers in the world, open and covert, than any other sophist since the age of the Apostles.” [Today, in the United States, his disciples dominate the Progressives, Liberals, Neo-conservatives, the Democratic party, and even the Republican party.] As the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union showed, this extreme philosophy had some problems. [Unfortunately, for Americans, the followers of the ruling elite have learned little from the experience of the Soviet Union, as the ruling elite is trying to turn the United States into its version of the United Soviet States of America.]
    The failure of the democratic man’s dictatorship of the proletariat did not slow the march of the democratic man. World War I was fought in the name of democracy, and all the defeated countries embraced it “with loud hosannas.” All Christendom now embraced the fundamental axioms of democracy: “(a) that the great masses of men have an inalienable right, born of the very nature of things, to govern themselves, and (b) that they are competent to do it.” [Viewing all the democratic and so-called democratic countries of the world brings into question that the democratic man is competent to govern. They present an argument much greater that he lacks the competence to govern.] When the democratic man is  “detected in gross and lamentable imbecilities,” it is because he is “misinformed by those who would exploit [him]: the remedy is more education.” [Education is the solution to all problems in a democratic society, even when, or especially when, education means indoctrination.] If, at times, he is “a trifle naughty, even swinish, . . . it is only a natural reaction against the oppressions [he] suffer[s]: the remedy is to deliver them.”
    Further, liberation of the democratic man is the “central aim of all the Christian governments of to-day,” which seek to augment his power. Moreover, a good government is one that “responds most quickly and accurately” to the desires and ideas of the democratic man. A bad government is one that “conditions [his] omnipotence and puts a question mark after [his] omniscience.”
    [Mencken’s description of the democratic man is a fairly accurate description of the typical supporters of the Democratic party and the typical supporters of RINOs {Republicans in name only}. Perhaps, this is because, as Mencken notes, the ancestors of Liberals and Progressives are the progenitors of democracy, i.e., ever expanding suffrage.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Allen.

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World War II

World War II
Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

Through their international banks and multinational corporations, the Illuminists had prepared Germany and Hitler for the upcoming war. The Illuminists wanted a world war among the Aryan people, and they wanted it to last long enough to slaughter tens of millions as sacrifices to Lucifer. They wanted war to scare the American people into accepting world government to prevent such a war from occurring in the future. They had brought Hitler to power in Germany so that he would lead Germany to war and bring about another world war that would lead to the establishment of world government. Consequently, British and American bankers, industrials, and politicians supported Hitter up to and, in some cases, through World War II.

To provide Germany with funds necessary for war, the Illuminists had to end the crippling debt that they had forced on Germany. To end the debt payments, they got Hoover elected President. Paul and Felix Warburg financed much of Hoover’s campaign for the presidency. They were acting on behalf of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., J&W Seligman Co., and J. Henry Schroder Banking Co. They put Hoover in office so that he could place a moratorium on German war debts, which he did in 1931. The purpose of the debt moratorium was to intend not to help Germany, but to provide Germany money for rearming.

After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Illuminists in the British government began pushing for war with Germany. Jewish Illuminists also began planning a war against Germany. (Jews saw war as the means to achieve two of their goals, which Emil Ludwig, a German Jewish writer, described as “socialism as the national expedient, and the United States of Europe as the international policy.”[1])

To entice Hitler into war, he was allowed to occupy the Rhineland and Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. (The illuministic Round Table Group prevented the British government from stopping Hitler’s annexation of the Rhineland and Sudetenland.) France had provoked Hitler into occupying the Rhineland. Under the Treaty of Locarno, the Rhineland was to remain free of Germany troops. By remilitarizing the Rhineland in 1936, Hitler violated the treaty. However, France had violated the treaty earlier in 1936 when it ratified a military pact with the Soviet Union. This pact violated the Treaty of Locarno. Czechoslovakia also violated the Treaty of Locarno when it entered into a military pact with the Soviet Union. After this violation, Hitler occupied the Sudetenland while the British Round Table Group supported and encouraged his occupation. His occupation of the Rhineland and Sudetenland were unopposed. Neville Chamberlain went as far as to sign a pact with Hitler in 1938. So, Hitler thought that he would receive no opposition to his invasion of Poland.

Hitler believed that Communism was a conspiracy of the Jewish international bankers to enslave mankind to maintain their credit monopoly. He saw Communism as a great threat to mankind and wanted an alliance with Great Britain to oppose the Soviet Union. Apparently, he failed to realize that Great Britain and the Soviet Union were controlled by the same people—who were the same people that had brought him to power. When Great Britain refused an alliance with Germany against the Soviet Union, Hitler made a pact with Stalin.

Further to entice Germany into war, Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. A week later Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II began. Two days later Stalin also invaded Poland. Yet Great Britain, which had a treaty with Poland to defend it from all European aggressors, only declared war on Germany in the name of defending Poland. (If Great Britain and France went to war to defend the integrity of Poland, would they have not also declared war on the Soviet Union? Since they did not declare war on the Soviet Union, they must have gone to war for some reason other than defending Poland.) Playing on Hitler’s lust for power and territory, Illuminist maneuvered him into war. Provoking Hitler to war was easy, for he glorified war.

A necessary ingredient in the war was to convince France to carry the brunt of the war against Germany. To trick France into war for which it was ill prepared, the Illuminists employed enormous deceit. France was convinced that a highly armed Great Britain and the United States backed it and that Hitler’s regime would collapse within days of a war. All the time, the Illuminists knew that France would suffer great losses in the war and might even be conquered by Germany for a while.

Moreover, to encourage Germany to go to war, Polish troops fired on German border guards, and the Polish government claimed that it was marching on Berlin. As a result, Hitler attacked Poland. After invading Poland, Hitler offered peace to Great Britain and France. His only condition was that they not interfere with his expansion to the east. The Illuminists that controlled them wanted war, so they chose war over peace. Mandel, Paul Reynaud, and Maurice de Rothschild led the war faction in France. In Great Britain the principal leaders of the war faction included Winston Churchill and Rothschild.

When war broke out, the Illuminists protected their beloved communist state, the Soviet Union. They made sure that Hitler sent his army west against the Christian countries instead of east against the Soviet Union. (Hitler did not attack the Soviet Union until the war was well under way—and then only after Stalin was massing his troops along his western border in preparation to invade Germany.) They prevented the West from declaring war on the Soviet Union, which was Hitler’s ally at the beginning of the war. The Illuminists also ensured that the Soviet Union was well supplied. Their objective was the advancement of Communism (Illuminism), which was controlled from New York, not Moscow. After World War II broke out in Europe, the next step was to bring the United States into the war against Germany. To accomplish this goal, the British Secret Intelligence Service set up an illegal unit, the British Security Coordination, in the United States to bring Americans into the war against Germany. In charge was Sir William Stephenson. Assisting the British in this project was John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Through front groups, such as Fight for Freedom, and newspapers and radio networks that it subsidized, the British Security Coordination smeared and demonized people who wanted the United States to stay out of the war and praised and supported people who wanted the United States to enter the war. It collaborated with Franklin Roosevelt and the Jewish community to bring the United States into the war. Working with Fight for Freedom and British Security Coordination to push the United States into the war were the New York Post (owned by Dorothy Schiff, a Jew), New York Times (owned by A.H. Sulzberger, a Jew, CFR member), PM (a New York Communist paper), Baltimore Sun, and the Jewish Telegraph Agency. Columnists who support the British Security Coordination by smearing Americans who opposed the United States going to war included Walter Lippman, Drew Pearson, Dorothy Thompson, and Walter Winchell (a Jew).

To ensure that a Republican president would not interfere with the British plans for the United States warring against Germany, British Security Coordination rigged the Republican convention and got Wendell Willkie nominated as the Republican presidential candidate for the 1940 election. As late as 1939, Willkie had been a Democrat. As Willkie was a pro-war candidate, he ensured that many antiwar electors would not vote. Thus, Roosevelt would win his third term. After he lost the election, Willkie became an executive for Fight for Freedom and an unofficial envoy for Roosevelt.

However, Hitler had no intentions of involving the United States in the war, and a vast majority (80 to 88 percent) of Americans opposed the United States entering the war—although most Jews wanted war with Germany. Try as they may, the Illuminists could not provoke Germany into attacking the United States or inflame the American people with the desire to war against Germany. (When in the summer of 1941 President Roosevelt ordered United States destroyers to attack German submarines, Hitler ordered his submarines not to fight back.) The solution was to provoke Japan to attack the United States.

To provoke Japan to attack, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets. He refused a visit from the Japanese Prime Minister, Prince Konoye. (This rebuff led to the fall of Prince Konoye, who wanted peace with the United States, and his cabinet and the rise of General Tojo and his military dictatorship.) He closed the Panama Canal to Japanese ships. An oil embargo was placed on Japan (the United States provided more than 90 percent of Japan’s oil) while United States ships violated Japanese waters transporting oil to the Soviet Union. The government seized major Japanese assets in the United States. He approved the recruitment of American “volunteers” (the “Flying Tigers”) to fight for Chiang Kai-Shek against Japan. To dare Japan to attack, Roosevelt ordered United States warships into Japanese territorial waters. He even threatened military action if Japan did not change its Pacific policy.

To entice Japan to attack, Roosevelt moved the United States fleet from the West Coast to Hawaii. Pearl Harbor was difficult to defend because it could be effectively attacked from any direction. (Several days before the attack, the aircraft carriers and the most modern ships were ordered to leave Pearl Harbor. Thus, most modern ships were saved, and the old World War I vintage ships that remained were left even more vulnerable to attack.) With the fleet in Pearl Harbor and a large number of troops in the Philippines, Roosevelt boxed in Japan. If Japan wanted the oil fields in Indonesia, which it needed to fuel its armed forces and industry, it had no choice but to attack Pearl Harbor.

To reduce the chances of the commanders at Pearl Harbor discovering the Japanese fleet, they were provided only a third of the aircraft needed for adequate reconnaissance.
Furthermore, intelligence directed them to concentrate to the southwest, away from the actual direction of the attack. To ensure further that the planned surprise attack would not be discovered and Pearl Harbor warned, the United States Navy forbade United States and allied shipping in the North Pacific about an hour after the Japanese fleet left port for Hawaii.

President Roosevelt, Bernard Baruch (presidential advisor), Cordell Hull (Secretary of State), Henry Stimson (Secretary of War, a member of Skull and Bones and CFR), General George Marshall (Chief of Staff and a Freemason), and Admiral Harold Stark (Chief of Naval Operations and CFR member) knew of the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor. Yet they did nothing to warn the American commanders at Pearl Harbor. They feared that if they sent a warning, Japan would cancel the attack and war would be averted. War was the goal. So Roosevelt deliberately sacrificed American soldiers, sailors, and marines to force the United States into a war that most Americans did not want. The conspiracy worked. The United States entered World War II. (Roosevelt had worked closely with and had relied heavily on the British Secret Intelligence Service to bring the United States into World War II.)

(In 1940, the United States government had broken the Japanese code. It knew about the intelligence that the Japanese consulate in Honolulu was sending Japan. It also knew about the Japanese fleet movement toward Hawaii. [At a secret press briefing held on November 25, 1941, General Marshall told selected news reporters that “the United States is on the brink of war with the Japanese”[2] He predicted an attack sometime during the first ten days of December.] Furthermore, shortly before Japan hit Pearl Harbor, Churchill informed Roosevelt that the Japanese fleet was heading to Pearl Harbor with the intent of attacking it on December 7. Churchill’s information came from British agents in the Japanese military and foreign services and from Japanese messages that the British had decoded. Later Churchill wrote that Roosevelt and his top advisors “knew the full and immediate purpose of their enemy,”[3] i.e., Japan’s intent to attack Pearl Harbor. Likewise, the Soviet Union had learned of the forth coming attack from its spy in Japan and gave this information to the United States government. The Dutch also warned Marshal a few days before the attack that the Japanese fleet was close to Pearl Harbor. The day before the attack, the United States Naval Intelligence had spotted the Japanese fleet 400 miles northwest of Honolulu; Pearl Harbor was not notified of the sighting.)

Four days after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States. Probably the deciding factor for Hitler’s declaration of war was “Rainbow Five.” Rainbow Five was the United States’ plan for war against Germany, which leaked out just before the Battle of Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt had arranged for this plan to leak out in hope that it would provoke Hitler to declare war against the United States.

Like all major, and most minor, conflicts, the Illuminists supported, and thereby had a great deal of control over, both sides in the conflict. Many major United States corporations, of which nearly all were (and still are) controlled by Illuminists, supplied both sides at the beginning of World War II.

Finally, the Allies invaded Italy. They quickly conquered most of Italy, but Roosevelt stopped the Allied advancement within a few hundred miles of Germany’s southern border. The Allied army in Italy was broken up and redeployed. The official reason was to prepare for the Normandy invasion, which would not happen for another nine months. The actual result was prolonging the war. Prolonging the war cost millions more Aryans their lives, and transferred billions more to the coffers of the international bankers and corporations supplying the war machine. It also gave the Soviet Union time to drive the Germans from Russia, which it needed to do before it could occupy Eastern Europe. (Churchill wanted to continue the southern invasion and move into the Balkans, which would have kept those countries out of Stalin’s hands. Roosevelt wanted to invade Normandy. Stalin also advocated an invasion of northern France.) Once the Allies invaded Normandy, Eisenhower held back the Western front as much as he could to give Stalin time to consolidate his position in the east. More often than not, military decisions were made to give long-range political advantage to the Communists and the Soviet Union instead of making them based on tactical needs or to take advantage of the enemy’s weaknesses.

Contrary to the claims of apologists for Roosevelt, Roosevelt did not go to war to end totalitarianism or to revenge the victims of concentration camps. His support of the Soviet Union proves these were not his reasons. Stalin’s regime was far more brutal than Hitler’s, and Stalin killed far more people. Roosevelt went to war to bring about a world government and the concomitant New World Order.

If Roosevelt, and his advisors, Baruch and Morgenthau, had accepted offers from high ranking German military officers, the war with Germany would have ended in 1943, at least on the western front, and hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. However, at this time Germany had not been completely destroyed, and the Soviet Union had not penetrated Central Europe. Furthermore, the United States government had not acquired enough debt to satisfied the Illuminists. The Illuminists had to prolong the war to kill more Aryans, to advance Communism, and to complete their debt enslavement of Americans.

World War II was another splendid sacrifice on the altar of Lucifer. When it ended, more than 100 million people had perished. Many of these people died of bombings of residential areas that had no real military value. Housing of workers were preferred targets because they were small and compact. Again the British led the way in barbaric warfare as strategic bombing of civilian housing became part of the British war plan months before the Germans adopted this strategy in retaliation. Among the most savoring offerings were the fire bombings of Dresden and Cologne, which sent more than a hundred thousand innocent children and women up in smoke.

The war also served the Illuminists by silencing Americans who wanted to preserve the traditional American foreign policy that began with Washington of not getting involved in foreign disputes. Anyone who spoke in favor of America’s traditional foreign policy was branded a fascist or Nazi during the war and even afterwards. (Anyone who openly supported American traditional foreign policy during the war risk prosecution for sedition.) After the war, these American traditionalists were smeared as “isolationists” and blamed for the war. (The implication being that if the United States had gone to war against Japan and Germany sooner, there would have been no war.) After World War II, the United States abandoned America’s traditional foreign policy and have since being meddling in the affairs of nearly every, if not every, country on the planet. American troops are scattered across the planet as the United States have been involved in most conflicts that have occurred since the end of World War II.

Despite what the establishment history books claimed to be the causes and purposes of the two world wars of the twentieth century, their basic goal was to destroy as much of Christendom and the Aryan race as possible. This goal they achieved remarkably well.

When the American army entered Germany after the end of the war, one of its first tasks was to reestablish the Masonic lodges. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) financed the reestablishment of these Masonic lodges.

What saved (postponed) the United States from entering into an illuministic one world government following World War I was knowledge of the objectives and schemes of the Illuminists. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Rockefeller Foundation were determined that this error would not be repeated following World War II. They were determined to prevent close examination of official statements and propaganda. Roosevelt’s war measures and policies were not to be critically analyzed. They were to remain secret. In this endeavor, the Illuminists were, and still are, highly successful.

A result of World War II was the achievement of one of the great goals of the Illuminists —the establishment of the United Nations. The charter of the United Nation embodied the essence of Illuminism. It is, as S. de Madariaga, a Spanish liberal, wrote, “in the main a translation of the Russian system into an international idiom and its adaptation to an international community.”[4] The United Nations has served as the hub around which Illuminists have been building the world government for their New World Order.

During the war, the illuministic Council on Foreign Relations gained control of the United States government. Through the Council on Foreign Relations and its control of the government, the Illuminists could now implement their program to destroy the United States. Smoot summaries this program of destruction:

(1) the redistribution to other nations of the great United States reserve of gold which made our dollar the strongest currency in the world;

(2) the building up of the industrial capacity of other nations, at our expense, thus eliminating our pre-eminent productive superiority;

(3) the taking away of world markets from the United States producers (and even much of their domestic market) until capitalistic America will no longer dominate world trade;

(4) the entwining of American affairs—economic, political, social, educational, and even religious—with those of other nations until the United States will no longer have an independent policy, either domestic or foreign. . . .[5]

These goals have been mostly accomplished.

Endnotes
1. Comte Leon de Poncins, State Secrets: A Documentation of the Secret Revolutionary Mainspring Governing Anglo-American Politics (Translator Timothy Tindal-Robertson. 1975), p. 24.

2. Cuddy, Globalists, Dennis L. Cuddy, The Globalists: The Power Elite Exposed (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2001), p. 73.

3. “Pearl Harbor: Mother of All Conspiracies.”

4. Billy James Hargis, Communist America Must It Be? (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Christian Crusade, 1960), p. 117.

5. Dan Smoot, The Invisible Government (Dallas, Texas: The Dan Smoot Report, Inc., 1962), p. 26.

References
Allen, Gary. None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Seal Beach, California: Concord Press, n.d.

Cuddy, Dennis L. Cover-Up: Government Spin or Truth? Connecting the Dots—September 11 . . . Iraq . . . and Our Vanishing Constitutional Rights. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2003.

Cuddy, Dennis L. The Globalists: The Power Elite Exposed. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2001.

Cuddy, Dennis L. Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Cuddy, Dennis L. Secret Records Revealed: The Men, the Money, & the Methods Behind the New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 1999.

Davidson, Mary M. The Profound Revolution. Omaha, Nebraska: The Greater Nebraskan, n.d.

Hargis, Billy James. Communist America Must It Be? Tulsa, Oklahoma: Christian Crusade, 1960.

Hoar, William P. Architect of Conspiracy: An Intriguing History. Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1984.

Larson, Martin A. The Federal Reserve and Our Manipulated Dollar. Old Greenwich, Connecticut: The Devin-Adair Company, 1975.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Mohr, Gordon. The Hidden Power Behind Freemasonry. Second edition. Burnsville, Minnesota: Weisman Publication, 1993.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Poncins, Leon de, Comte. State Secrets: A Documentation of the Secret Revolutionary Mainspring Governing Anglo-American Politics. Translator Timothy Tindal-Robertson. 1975.

Smoot, Dan. The Invisible Government. Dallas, Texas: The Dan Smoot Report, Inc., 1962.

Still, William T. New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1990.

Stormer, John A. None Dare Call It Treason. Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1964.

Sutton, Antony C. How the Order Creates War and Revolution. Phoenix, Arizona: Research Publications, Inc., 1984.

Sutton, Antony C. National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1973.

Webster, Nesta H. The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy. Second edition. Hawthorne, California: Christian Book Club of America, 1919, reprinted 1969.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

 More articles on history. 

World War I

World War I
Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

The twentieth century was a century in which Illuminists made great progress. It was a century of wars and Communist revolutions. The wars and revolutions of this century were orgies of human sacrifices to Lucifer.

In the twentieth century, the Illuminists brought about two world wars. It divided Christendom into opposing camps and had Aryan Christians killing Aryan Christians in large numbers. Illuminists overthrew the Czar of Russia and made Russia an atheistic-communistic empire at the close of World War I. Then at the close of World War II, it had built Russia into a great military power controlling much of the world.

In 1871, Giuseppe Mazzini and Albert Pike proposed a series of world wars that would be so bloody that every country on Earth would surrender their sovereignty to an international governance like the United Nations. Pike concluded that three world wars would be needed to bring about Lucifer’s New World Order. So, the Illuminists planned three world wars to consolidate their world power. The first world war would overthrow the major monarchies of continental Europe, establish a communist regime, and lay the foundations for world government. The second world war would elevate Communism to a world power, give Communists control of Europe, empower Zionism in Palestine, and consolidate the establishment of world government. With the third world war, Communism (atheism), Christianity, Zionism (Judaism), and Islam would destroy each other, and the New World Order would be established with its one world government and one world religion. The third world war would grow out of the conflict between the Zionists and Moslems over Palestine. When the ashes of the third world war settled, Christianity would be no more. Every country would be ready to surrender all to an all powerful global government for the sake of peace.[1] The Illuminists would undisputedly reign supreme. Nimrod’s dream would be fulfilled. Lucifer’s New World Order would be firmly established, and Lucifer would rule all with the Illuminists as his governors and priests.

During the early years of the twentieth century, Illuminists were putting the final pieces in place to bring about the first of these massive war in Europe. This war became known as World War I.

The immediate cause of World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His assassin, Gavrilo Princep (Gabriel Prinzip), was “a progeny of Freemasonry.” Ferdinand knew that his life was in danger and had commented that the Freemasons had resolved to kill him. The Serbian Lodge Narodna Odbrana, in alliance with the Crna Ruka, organized the assassination.[2] The Jews of Salonika and the Committee for Union and Progress were involved in the assassination. The Serbian cabinet, King Alexander, the Russian Minister Hartwig, and the Russian military attache Artmanov knew about the plot to assassinate Ferdinand.[3]

Until the expulsion of the Turks, the Committee for Union and Progress was centered in the Jewish lodges of Salonika. It grew out of the Masonic lodge Macedonia Risorta. Emannuele Carass, a Salonikan Jew, established this lodge. This was one of the two lodges in Salonika under the Grand Orient of Italy.

The Grand Orient of France controlled the Grand Orient of Italy. Funding for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand came from the Grand Orient of France through the Grand Orient of Italy to the Alliance Israelite Universelle, which was ostensibly a Jewish charitable trust.[4]

Both Austria and Serbia wanted war. While Germany was trying to restrain Austria, Illuminists controlling the governments of Russia, France, and Great Britain were pressing for a large-scale war. Years before it began, they had been planning for war. For years, the countries of Europe had been in an arms race.

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor of Kaiser Wilhelm II, led Germany into war. He was a cousin of the Rothschilds and a member of the Frankfort banking family of Bethmann.

Wolff, the German news agency, filled Germans with a desire for war. The Rothschilds owned Wolff. Max Warburg, Wilhelm’s personal banker, was a leading member of Wolff. (The Rothschilds also had an interest in the British news agency Reuters and the French news agency Havas.)

Even before the opening shots, Rothschild Freres in France and J.P. Morgan and Co. in New York were planning to lend large sums to France to buy munitions and other supplies from the United States. Vanderlip, president of National City Bank, offered to support France. (Vanderlip would later be a major supporter of the Bolsheviks in Russia.) J.P. Morgan and Co. was Great Britain’s financial agent in the United States and lent Great Britain a large sum of money at the beginning of the war. Once in office, President Wilson made loans to Great Britain, France, and their allies.

American bankers also raised money for Germany. Kuhn, Loeb and Co. was the first to raise money for Germany, which was deposited with M.M. Warburg and Co. in Hamburg. Chase National Bank, Guaranty Trust Co., and Mechanics and Metal National Bank raised money that Germany used to fund its espionage activities in Mexico and the United States.[5]

Krupp of Germany provided steel for all the major navies involved in the war. The Rothschilds’ mine in Spain supplied lead to Germany. Du Pont provided 40 percent of the Allies’ powder. While war destroys lives of the common people, it can be extremely profitable to those with the right contacts.

After the war started, the main problem that the Illuminists faced was to keep it going. Germany lacked the food and coal for a long war. Without Germany, the war would soon fissile out. To overcome the food problem, Emile Francqui, director of the Belgian bank Societe Generale, and his close associate and friend, Herbert Hoover, organized the Belgian Relief Commission. (When the United States entered the war, Hoover became the head of the U.S. Food Administration.) J. Henry Schroder Banking Co. was a backer of the Belgian Relief Commission.[6] (J. Henry Schroder Banking Co. later helped finance Hoover’s presidential campaign.)

Once the war began the next great task was to bring the United States into the war, preferably on the side of Great Britain and France. This was not an easy task. Most Americans wanted to remain neutral. Almost half the American people had German ancestors. (The United States had the largest German population of any country outside Germany.) If forced into the war, most preferred to side with Germany. (The English were seizing and searching American officials and ships. They were intercepting mail to and from the United States. They were even using the United States flag. These actions had caused the War of 1812 between the United States and the English.[7]) Much deception would be needed, and was used, to get the United States to enter as an ally of the British.

The British Secret Intelligence Service flooded the United States with anti-German propaganda. British agents deceived gullible, credulous American journalists with doctored photographs and false documents. The British painted Germany as a militaristic monster that wanted to rule the world. (Meanwhile, Great Britain was maintaining the greatest, most extensive empire that the world had ever know and wanted to add Germany’s colonies to that empire. British soldiers were in more countries around the world than all other countries put together.) Sir Gilbert Parker was the British agent in charge of pro-British, anti-German propaganda in the United States. Another British intelligence agent sent to the United States to bring then into the war was Sir William Wiseman. As a reward for his excellent work, he was made a partner in Kuhn, Loeb and Co.

In 1916 Congress established the Council on National Defense. Although set up to develop plans to mobilize the United States if they were attacked, its real objective was to push the United States into the war. Daniel Willard (president of the B&O Railroad) was chairman. Other members included Bernard Baruch (Wilson’s campaign fund raiser and later head of the War Industries Board), Howard Coffin (president of Hudson Motor Car Co.), Walter S. Gifford (president of AT&T and a director of the Commission on Industrial Preparedness), Hollis Godfrey (president of Drexel Institute), Samuel Gompers (labor leader and a Jew), and Julius Rosenwald (merchant and philanthropist). Howard Coffin and Elihu Root are credited with creating the Council.

Also, pushing the United States to enter the war was the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which was created in 1910.

Another organization established to bring the United States into the war was the Navy League. Henry Payne Whitney, a partner of J.P. Morgan and owner of Metropolitan magazine and a member of Skull and Bones, founded the Navy League. Other major actors in the Navy League were J.P. Morgan, Jr. (U.S. Steel), Charles Schwab (Bethlehem Steel), R. M. Thompson (International Nickel), and B. F. Tracy (attorney for Carnegie Steel Co.).

J.P. Morgan, Jr. had his agents to purchase the national and international policy of the 25 most influential newspapers in the United States. He and John D. Rockefeller used the newspapers under their control to propagandize for war against Germany and to promote financial, military, and other matters of interest to Morgan, Rockefeller, and their fellow Illuminists. With advertising money, Morgan and Rockefeller bullied most of the newspapers that they did not control directly into following their pro-war, anti-German line. Where this tactic failed, bribery often work.

During his first term, Wilson presented himself as “the great apostle of peace and neutrality.”[8] When he ran for reelection in 1916, he claimed that he would keep the United States out of the war. However, once he was reelected, he used an event that occurred in 1915, the sinking of the Lusitania to bring the United States into World War I. Using the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman telegram, Wilson was able to keep his promise to higher degree Illuminists and deliver the United States to the Illuminists. In 1917, the United States entered the war against Germany. (The international financiers needed the United States to protect the value of the French and British bonds that they had bought. France and Great Britain were broke, and Germany was beginning to win. If it won the war, the French and British bonds could have become worthless.)

Upon entering the war, Wilson turned the United States into a fascist state. He appointed Bernard Baruch, son of an immigrant from Poland, head of the War Industries Board, which had absolute control of every factory in the United States. He appointed Eugene Meyer, son of an immigrant from France, head of the War Finance Corp., which controlled the loan program that financed the war. Paul Warburg wrote the plan for organizing the War Finance Corp. Wilson had earlier appointed Paul Warburg, an immigrant from Germany, to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, which controlled the banking system, and, consequently, controlled credit and money in the United States.

Wilson filled his administration with agents and members of J.P. Morgan and Co. and Kuhn, Loeb and Co. His Secretary of the Treasury, William G. McAdoo, was an agent of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. Jerome Hanauer, a partner of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., became the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Liberty Loans. Several other high-ranking officials in the Wilson administration represented these two companies.

Wilson also arrested and convicted persons speaking and writing against the war. Perhaps the most notable victim was Eugene Debs, head of the Socialist Party.

This war was supposedly fought “to make the world safe for democracy” and “to end all wars.” In reality, it was fought to establish a world government, an essential element of the New World Order. What seemingly was a nationalist war, Freemasons had converted into a socialist and holy war. They used it to bring about the Luciferian illuministic New World Order.

By the end of the war some 18 million people, mostly Aryans, had been sacrificed on Lucifer’s altar. Some $400 billion ($6100 billion in 2000 dollars) had been destroyed. The empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey were no more. Enormous wealth and power had been transferred to international financiers and other Illuminists.

The war also drove three great European monarchs from their thrones: Hohenzollern of Germany, Hapsburg of Austria-Hungary, and Romanov of Russia. By the end of the war, the governments of these countries were no longer monarchial in form. (Actually, Austria-Hungary ceased to exist as it was divided into Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia and parts of it were given to Rumania, Serbia, Italy, and Poland.) The destruction of these monarchies was an illuministic goal.

Another important out come of World War I was the laying of the foundations to turn Palestine into a Jewish state. At the beginning of the war, Baron Edmund de Rothschild informed Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a leading Jewish Zionist, who became the first president of Israel, that the war would advance Zionism.[9] Following the war, Palestine became a British protectorate. At this time many Jews in Great Britain opposed Zionism and did not favor a Jewish state in Palestine. Most of the major opposition to Zionism came from Jews. They saw it as divisive. (Non-Jewish Zionists retaliated by ostracizing non-Zionist Jews.) Zionism’s greatest support came from such British leaders as Lloyd George (prime minister), Lord Arthur Balfour (foreign secretary), Lord Milner, Sir Mark Sykes (chief secretary to the war cabinet), Leopold Amery (colonial secretary), Lord Robert Cecil (assistant secretary for foreign affairs), General Jan Smuts (South African field marshal and later prime minister). With the Balfour Declaration, Great Britain promised to establish Palestine as a national homeland for Jews. The Zionist Jews promised to bring the United States into the war against Germany.[10] However, the Jews did not want the United States to enter the war until Czar Nicholas II had been overthrown. So, Wilson waited until he was overthrown before asking Congress for a declaration of war. Near the end of the war, the British conquered Palestine not for military purposes but for establishing a future Jewish state. In 1917, Jewish immigration to Palestine began in earnest. The Zionist dream of turning Palestine into a Jewish state came to fulfillment in 1917.

Moreover, the war caused the eventual abandonment of the gold standard. Because banks and governments had issued so much fiat money to finance the war, a return to the gold standard was not possible without greatly devaluing the currency in terms of gold or greatly reducing the currency and causing a depression to bring the currency back to its prewar value. Without a gold standard, bankers could issue money without restraint.

Furthermore, many Illuminists made a fortune out of the war. J.P. Morgan, Jr., Baruch, the Du Ponts, and other Illuminists made fortunes. Much money was made selling governments supplies that they did not need.

Another outcome of the war was the impoverishment of Great Britain. As a result, the leadership of Illuminism passed from Great Britain to the United States. Thus, Americans assumed the leadership role at the Versailles Peace Conference.

At a secret meeting of the Grand Orient of France and the International Masonic Conference in Paris in 1917, the agenda for Versailles Peace Conference was drawn up. Attending this Masonic Conference were representatives of Freemasons from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, and the United States. (The chief beneficiary politically of World War I was Freemasonry. Between 1918 and 1930, Freemasons controlled European politics.) Part of this agenda was the Fourteen Points and the plan for the League of Nations, which Freemasons provided President Wilson.[11] (Establishing the League of Nation and the concomitant world government was a major reason for the war.) The agenda also included the abdication of the Hohenzollerns from the German throne and starvation of the Germans (the Allies blockaded the shipment of food into Germany following the war). The goal of the starvation was to bring about a Communist revolution in Germany. The plan also sought a federation of European states and a world court.

Freemasons and other Illuminists now began working for the next world war. The world’s most sinister Illuminists assembled at the Versailles Peace Conference to draw up a treaty to ensure that another world war would soon follow.

As a result of the treaty, Germany’s army and navy were greatly reduced and Rhineland was demilitarized. France obtained Alsace and Lorraine and the coal of the Saar valley. Germany lost her overseas colonies to France and Great Britain. A large portion of east Germany was surrendered to the newly formed country of Poland. Germany was saddled with reparations that she could never repay.

The Versailles Peace Conference consisted of three tiers or circles. The outer tier was the public conference. This tier was highly visible and attended by reporters from around the world. The next tier was the secret conference of the Big Five. Here the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan met privately and discussed instructions from their hidden masters. The inner most tier was the nightly Masonic conferences. Only a select few attended these meetings. Here all the important decisions were made.[12]

To persuade and encourage Wilson to push the United States to join the League of Nations, Illuminists provided him private gifts of a million dollars in gold and precious gems.[13] Wilson also saw himself as the president of the new world government.

In 1915 the League to Enforce Peace was founded in the United States to promote world government following the war. Former President Taft headed it. Carnegie financed it. Theodore Marburg masterminded and ran it. Its principals were Perry Belmont (representing the Rothschilds), Lincoln Filene, John Hays Hammond (a South African revolutionist), Elihu Root (J.P. Morgan’s attorney), Jacob Schiff (Kuhn, Loeb and Co.), Isaac Seligman, and Oscar Straus. Through its British branch, Marburg worked with Lord James Bryce, Sir Edward Grey, and Sir Gilbert Parker to establish a League of Nations. President Wilson, Robert Cecil, and General Smuts introduced a draft of the scheme of the League of Nations at the Peace Conference.

Several Wall Street bankers accompanied Wilson’s delegation to Paris as part of the American delegation to the peace conference. They include Bernard Baruch (banker, Wall Street manipulator, Jew, and Freemason), Thomas Lamont of J. P. Morgan Co., L. L. Strauss of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., and Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. and a former member of the Federal Reserve System. (Paul Warburg's brother Max Warburg, who was head of German secret service and head of M.M. Warburg Co., was the head of the German delegation. He accepted the reparations terms on behalf of Germany.) Paul Warburg represented American banking interests, and Max Warburg represented Germany banking interest. Other members of his entourage included Secretary of State Robert Lansing and his nephews, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, Walter Lippman, Felix Frankfurter, and Supreme Court Justice Brandies. Baron Edmond de Rothschilds hosted the leading members of the American delegation.

Preceding Wilson to Europe was Colonel Edward House, Wilson’s alter ego and chief advisor. House was in charge of the American War Mission. Accompanying House was his son-in-law, Gordon Auchincloss, a Wall Street lawyer, a director of Chase National Bank, and second in charge of the American War Mission. Paul Cravath, a lawyer for Kuhn, Loeb and Co. was also part of the American War Mission and was third in charge.

Alfred Milner was the principal representative of Great Britain.

France’s chief representatives at the Versailles Peace Conference was Klotz, a Jew, France’s Finance Minister, and an agent of the Rothschilds (he is reported to have bribed the press for the Rothschilds). Baron Edmund de Rothschild of France was the dominating force of the Peace Conference. Klotz along with Baruch and Lord Cunliffe (Governor of the Bank of England) formed the Reparations Commission.

As economic advisor to the Versailles Peace Conference, Baruch imposed a horrendous reparation burden on Germany. (According to Lloyd George, “The protocol which was signed between the Allies and Associated Powers and Germany is the triumph of the international financiers. Agreement would never have been reached without the brusque and brutal intervention of the international bankers.”[14]) The reparation was made impossible for Germany to pay. Thus, Germany would be forced to seek political relief. The results were a ruinous inflation that destroyed the German middle class, and set the stage for Hitler’s revolutionary program The Peace Conference achieved its two primary purposes: the League of Nations and another world war.

Churchill later condemned the Unites States’ entry into World War I. If the United States had stayed out of Europe’s war, he remarked, “peace would have been made with Germany, and there would have been no collapse in Russia leading to Communism; no breakdown of government in Italy followed by Fascism; and Nazism would never have gained ascendancy in Germany.”[15] As a high degree Illuminist, he should have known one of the primary goals of the war was to turn Russia into a communist country. Another primary objective was to bring about World War II, which had not started when Churchill made this comment.

Endnotes
1. William T. Still, New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1990), p. 127.

2. Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy (Two Volumes, Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), p. 602.

3. Eustace Mullins, The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), pp. 198-200.

4. Ibid., p. 200.

5. Antony C. Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (Morley, Western Australia: Veritas Publishing Company Pty., Ltd., 1981), pp. 64-67.

6. Eustace Mullins, Secrets of the Federal Reserve (1991), pp. 69ff.

7. William P. Hoar, Architect of Conspiracy: An Intriguing History (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1984), p. 101.

8. Martin A. Larson, The Federal Reserve and Our Manipulated Dollar (Old Greenwich, Connecticut: The Devin-Adair Company, 1975), p. 81.

9. Douglas Reed, Far and Wide. (1951), p. 285.

10. Comte Leon de Poncins, State Secrets: A Documentation of the Secret Revolutionary Mainspring Governing Anglo-American Politics (Translator Timothy Tindal-Robertson. 1975), p. 16.

11. Mullins, Curse of Cain, p. 204.

12. Ibid., pp. 204-205.

13. Mullins, Curse of Cain, p. 205. Eustace Mullins, The World Order: Our Secret Rulers (Second edition, Staunton, Virginia: Ezra Pound Institute of Civilization, 1992), p. 48.

14. Mullins, World Order, p. 49.

15. Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Seal Beach, California: Concord Press, n.d., p. 66.


[Editor’s notes: List of references in the original are omitted.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Religious Development in the Sixteenth Century

Religious Development in the Sixteenth Century
Thomas Allen

AlombradosThe Alombrados, the Illuminati of Spain, was an illuministic sect founded about 1520 in Salamanca, Spain. By a supernatural or “illuminated” union of minds, initiates concentrated on the will of the master. They taught a form of Gnosticism. Man’s spirit could attain direct knowledge of God—thus, rendering trappings of formal religion unnecessary for those who found the light. In 1623 the Grand Inquisition condemned and suppressed the Alombrados. Out of the Alombrados came Ignatius Loyola.

Jesuits
Loyola, a Spanish nobleman and soldier and a member of the Alombrados, founded the Order of the Jesuits (Society of Jesus) in 1541. It was ostensibly founded to defend the Catholic faith and the pope. The doctrines of the Society of Jesus are similar to those of the Jewish Mishnah.[1] Like the Assassins, Jesuits had unquestionable, unhesitating obedience to the Order’s cause and its leaders. It was divided into six grades. Its initiate rituals and ceremonies resembled those used by the Assassins and Freemasons.

According to Chaitkin, “The Venetian house of Contarini detained Ignatius Loyola, and obliged him to head up a new worldwide secret intelligence service to serve the Venetian interests, the Jesuits.”[2] The Jesuits became the pope’s intelligence agencies, the Vatican’s CIA. The Order’s primary goal was to destroy Protestantism. In carrying out its objective, it used indoctrination, blackmail, and coercion. The Jesuits are credited with, among other great historical events, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, fomentation of the Thirty Years War, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685.

Knights of Malta
When Rhodes failed to the Turks in 1522, the Hospitalers who were on the island fled to Malta. Here they reorganized as the Sovereign and Military Order of Malta or the Knights of Malta. Some recent members of the Knights of Malta are William F. Buckley (“conservative” writer), William Casey (CIA director), J. Peter Grace (chairman of W. R. Grace Co.), Alexander Haig (Reagan’s Secretary of State), Joseph P. Kennedy, Lee Iacocca (chairman of Chrysler), Clare Boothe Luce (American dramatist and diplomat), John McCone (CIA director), William Simon (Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury), and William Wilson (ambassador to the Vatican). Today, the Knights of Malta serves as the principal channel of communication between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Vatican.[3]

Peasant’s War
In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, and the Reformation was underway. The disturbance caused by the Reformation gave Illuminists many opportunities to work their mischief. They began by stirring up the peasants in Germany. They moved on to remove the Church condemnation of usury, a la Calvin, and to attack the divine nature of a resurrected Jesus, a la Socinus.

The year 1520 is often cited as the starting point of the leftist revolutionary movement:[4] unrestrained sensual pleasure; destruction of the family; collective ownership of property; subversion of science, literature, and arts; democratic despotic government; mass slaughter; and animosity toward God, i.e., the God of the Christians, and Christianity. The leader of this revolution was Thomas Munzer, a disciple of Nicholas Storck. Munzer claimed that inspiration came not from the Bible but from divine illumination or inner light. He devised a communistic doctrine of unrestricted equality. He advocated abolishing all temporal authority. His goal was to establish a theocratic communistic state. His preaching led to the Peasants’ War in 1524.

The Peasants’ War was an uprising of German peasants and of poor classes of the towns. Once the revolt broke out, Munzer took control when he came to the aid of Heinrich Pfeiffer. The revolt was crushed in 1525, and Munzer was beheaded.

A similar revolt occurred in Munster between 1533 and 1535. Like the Peasants’ War, this revolt sought equality and communion of goods. Lasciviousness was popular among the rebels.

Calvinism
According to Mullins, Calvinism was one of those movements organized by Illuminists that sweep across Europe periodically creating revolutions or turmoil.[5] Unlike previous Christian sects, Calvinism was compatible with the money interest. Instead of emphasizing austerity and vows of poverty, it approved of charging interest and acquiring wealth.

John Calvin of Noyons, France was the founder of Calvinism. His “religious movement was based on a literal Jewish interpretation of the Ten Commandments, Old Testament philosophy, and the prohibition of graven images.”[6] With the rise of Calvinism came the expansion of Jews into commercial activities besides banking, which they had historically dominated.

Calvinism revealed its kinship with Oriental despotism of Nimrod by its coercive nature. With his Ecclesiastical Ordinance, Calvin imposed absolute discipline on the inhabitants of Geneva. The penalty for objecting to Calvinism was death.

SocinusIn 1547, Laelius Socinus met with like-minded people in Vicenza. They laid plans to overturn orthodox Christianity and to replace it with their doctrines. They proposed executing their plans through a secret society. Upon learning of this conspiracy, the Republic of Venice captured and executed two members, Julian Trevisano and Francis de Rugo. The others fled and became involved in forming or capturing other secret societies across Europe. The secret society of Vicenza is among the ancestors of modern-day Freemasonry.[7]

Faustus Socinus, a Rosicrucian and nephew of Laelius Socinus, got his uncle’s papers after his uncle’s death. Using the doctrines in his uncle’s papers, he founded Socinianism from which came Unitarianism.

Socinianism rejected the teachings that Jesus had a divine nature. He was merely the human instrument of divine mercy. The Holy Spirit was nothing more than the activity of God. Although the Scriptures were considered authoritative, they were interpreted from the perspective of rationalism.

HuguenotsAnother reformation movement was the Huguenots. Huguenots were the Calvinist Protestants (Presbyterians) of France. They founded their church in 1559. The Huguenot massacres began in France soon after Catherine de Medici became Regent on the accession of her son, Charles IX. In 1568, she issued an edict that outlawed the Huguenots. As Huguenots had acquired great wealth, placing them outside the law invited their plunder. Hoping to prevent the impending slaughter of a tenth of his population, Charles began negotiating with the Huguenot leaders. While Charles negotiated, Catherine plotted their extermination. When Huguenot leaders assembled in negotiation, Catherine’s forces attacked and killed them. She had killed all the important Huguenot leaders. This massacre occurred on August 24, 1572, and became known as St. Bartholomew’s Massacre. This massacre lead to others until most Huguenots had been killed or driven from France. King Charles died soon after his mother betrayed his trust. His son Henry II died at the hands of an assassin because he seemed unwilling to slaughter the Huguenots.

The Huguenots received an uneasy peace between the issuance of the Edit of Nantes by Henry IV in 1598 and it revocation in 1685 by Louis XIV. Its revocation resulted in most of the remaining Huguenots fleeing France for the American colonies. (France’s unnecessary loss became America’s fortunate gain. France’s decline can be dated from the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.)


Endnotes
1. Eustace Mullins, The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), p. 91.

2. Anton Chaitkin, Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman (New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984), p. 141.

3. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), pp. 312-313.

4. Clarence Kelly, Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974), p. 29.

5. Mullins, pp. 81-83.

6. Ibid., p. 81.

7. Denis Fahey, Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884 (New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950), pp. 12-13.

ReferenceChaitkin, Anton. Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman. New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Fahey, Denis. Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884. New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Kelly, Clarence. Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy. Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Preuss, Arthur. A Dictionary of Secret and Other Societies. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Co., 1924.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Templars

TemplarsThomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

One little known, but immensely important, secret society was founded in the eleventh century. It was the Priory (Order) of Sion. Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and leader of the First Crusade, founded this Order in 1090. It was connected with the Rosicrucians. Between 1118 and 1188, the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion was also grandmaster of the Templars; in 1188 the two orders separated. Then the Priory of Sion became mostly concerned with the Merovingians, who had laid the foundations of the Priory of Sion. Its declared objective was to restore the Merovingian dynasty to the thrones of Europe; however, World War I seemed to have thwarted this scheme.

Grand masters of the Priority of Sion have included Leonardo da Vinci (1510-1519), Robert Fludd (1595-1637), Robert Boyle (1654-1691), Sir Isaac Newton (1691-1727), Charles Radcliffe, Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy, and Jean Cocteau.[1] Today its members are among the inner circles of Freemasonry, the Round Tables, and other secret illuministic societies.

Out of the Priority of Sion came the Templars. Hugues de Payens, a Burgundian knight, Godfrey of St. Omer, Andre de Montbard, and six other knights founded the Order of the Temple in 1118. Bernard of Clairvaux was the author of the Templars’ constitution, which he modeled after the Cistercian Order. The Templars were divided into degrees. The Order had a pyramidal chain of command where subordinates were expected to obey commands of superiors without question or hesitation. Furthermore, like all other secret societies, those who controlled it possessed secrets about which ordinary members were ignorant. In 1128, the Council of Troyes approved the Templars as an official military and religious order.

Like the Assassins, the Templars were established to serve their religious faith as an independent power. Moreover, some of the Templars’ esoteric dogmas and ceremonies seemed to have come from the Assassins. The Templars and Assassins were allies in several battles—and at times to the detriment of the Christians.

Hugues de Payens, a member of the Priority of Sion, and his knights established the Templars ostensibly to protect pilgrims as they journeyed to the Holy Land. However, for some years they provided little protection to travelers; they left this task to the Hospitalers, an order established earlier for the protection of pilgrims. The Templars’ primary objective was to search for treasurer among the ruins of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. They apparently found ancient scrolls that contained hidden knowledge and other holy artifacts. They also found much gold. The manuscripts that they found conflicted with much of the teachings of the Catholic Church. With this new knowledge, they intimidated church officials. These discoveries brought them immense power and wealth. Later the Crusaders of Jerusalem saw the Templars as a military resource to be used to defend against Moslem incursions. Although they only owed allegiance to the pope, they offered their services to defend the Crusaders.

Because of the services provided by the Templars, Crusaders begin bequeathing their estates to the Templars. Soon the Templars had amassed enormous wealth although they had taken a vow of poverty. This wealth enabled them to become bankers. They lent money to the kings of Europe and even to Moslems. With their enormous wealth scattered throughout Europe, the Templars had become the international financiers or bankers of their era. They performed the same functions as international financiers and banks perform today.

The Templars also became analogous to a modern multinational corporation. They imported into Europe new knowledge of architecture, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and metallurgy that they had acquired in the Middle East.

Not only had they been given castles and other buildings across Europe, they were also avid builders. The Templars were the prime movers behind building the great medieval cathedrals and were probably responsible for introducing Gothic architecture in Europe. (Missing from the cathedrals built by the Templars were depictions of the Crucifixion.) Templars were behind the formation of the medieval stonemason and other building guilds, whose members became members of the Templar Order.

The Templars began deteriorating with its fourth Grand Master. As the wealth and fame of the Templars grew, fewer desirable men began to join and rise to control the Order. Gnostic dogma eventually replaced Christian doctrine. (Some Templar authorities contend that the Templars were Gnostics from the beginning.) The Templars, especially those in the inner most circle, believed that “the true church, one that taught mysticism, reincarnation, and good works, was being suppressed by a dark power that called itself the one true faith.”[2]

The Templars answered to no one but the pope. In Europe their holdings were independent of secular authority. With the passage of time, the Templars became more independent and more isolated as the popes granted them more privileges. The Templars were exempted from tithes and church taxes. They were exempted from feudal oaths and services. Of these privileges, the most irritating one to bishops and archbishops was the authority of Templars to suspend interdicts wherever they traveled. In short, Templars owed allegiance only to the pope. They were rich and powerful, and their persons were sacred.

In Palestine, negotiations with the Saracens fell to the Templars. Thus, the Templars and Saracens became well acquainted. At times the Templars even allied with the Moslems against the Christians.

After the fall of Jerusalem to the Moslems, which was due in large part to the incompetence of Gerald de Ridfort, Grand Master of the Templars, the Templars lost what remained of their religious virtue. They eventually became politicians. As their power grew, their own independent power became more important than Christian unity.

By 1303, the Moslems had driven the Templars and the Christian Crusaders from the Holy Land. After being driven from the Holy Land, the Templars no longer functioned as guardians of the Crusaders. However, the Order still had 20,000 members and enormous wealth scattered throughout Europe.

After the Templars left the Holy Land, the pope saw them as a force to be used to keep recalcitrant princes in line. He would use them to expand and maintain his secular sovereignty. They would be soldiers of the Church at home.

In France the Templars served as the king’s banker in exchange for his protection from the envious. To escape from civil disorder, the bankrupt King Philip IV (Philip the Fair) fled to their temple in Paris. Here he witnessed their enormous wealth. Finally, King Philip’s lust for their wealth (he needed money for his wars), and perhaps his fear of their independence, came so great that in 1307 he proceeded to expropriate their wealth in France. The Templars had defied his orders and refused to pay taxes. Moreover, the Templars had denied him membership in the Order. He charged them with heresy and turned them over to the Inquisition. (The evidence seems to have supported Philip’s claim of heresy. The highest degree Templars were probably Gnostics, and many lived licentious lives.) Other kings followed Philip when in 1312 at the Synod of Vienna, the pope abolished the Order of the Templars and ordered the kings of Europe to arrest the Templars in their domains. Much of the Templar’s wealth fell to the kings of Europe although most of it was supposed to go to the Hospitalers. Poor Philip seems to have confiscated little of their vast wealth in France. Most of their wealth, which included not only money, but also artifacts and ancient writings, vanished.

Some of the surviving Templars joined the Hospitalers, the Knights of Christ, and the Teutonics Knights. Some joined other secret societies that Freemasonry or other illuministic societies later absorbed. Some Templars fled to Scotland; from them the York Rite and Scottish Rite of Freemasonry probably came. Today the Order of the Knight Templar survives in the highest degree of the York Rite Freemasonry.

Appendix. Cathari
An important religious movement associated with the Templars was the Cathari (Pure Ones), whom the Catholic Church condemned as heretics. The Cathari, who were also known as the Albigenses, arose to prominence during the twelfth century in Languedoc in southern France.

They lived a simple, religious life. Instead of meeting in elaborate buildings, they meet in the open. Their beliefs were similar to Buddhism and closely related to the Mithras and Manichaeans. Among their beliefs was reincarnation, abstention from meat except fish, and nonresistance. Jesus was the spiritual Son of God; he existed in a spiritual body and not a human body. They also taught that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. Mary and her children migrated to Languedoc after Jesus’ execution. Their theology was a dualistic theology. An evil god created the material world and man; a good god created and ruled the heavens. Thus, the God of the Old Testament was Satan. They were also followers of the Cabala. To the Cathari, all baptized members were spiritually equal and were priests. As itinerant preachers, they traveled in pairs. In the utmost poverty and simplicity, they lived. They refused to acknowledge the authority of the pope. The Templars have been accused of having the same religious beliefs as the Cathari. St. Bernard may have been a secret adherent of the Cathari’s beliefs.

The pope had Philip II, King of France, to declare the Cathari heretics and to exterminate them. The war against the Cathari began in 1209 and became known as the Albigensian Crusade. The crusade ended in 1229, and the Cathar heresy was finally eradicated in 1244 with the fall of Montsegur. More than 100,000 Cathari were killed during the crusade.

Endnotes
1. Boyd Rice, "The Prophet," http://www.dagobertsrevenge.com/prophet.html, Jan. 31, 2001.

2. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 291.

References
The Cause of World Unrest. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920.

Dennis L. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Frost, Thomas. The Secret Societies of the European Revolutions, 1776–1876. Two volumes. London, England: Tinsley Brothers, 1876.

Froude, James Anthony. The Spanish Story of the Armada and Other Essays. New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

MacKenzie, Norman, ed. Secret Societies. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Allen.

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