World Economic ReviewWe recommend to the student of political science, if there is such a science, a volume which has come to our attention, the autobiography of Sir Roderick Jones, entitled A Life in Reuters, Hodder and Stoughton, 1951. This book gives us much authoritative information on news distribution. Sir Roderick was Chief of Reuters News Agency for many years, assuming command of that agency when it was still at its historic address of 24 Old Jewry, London.
It is difficult to approach journalism without taking into account its companions of a trinity, propaganda and espionage, and we find in this book many instances of their relationship. On page 200, Sir Roderick relates a bit of history which will not be found in the universities. It describes a luncheon given by him for General Smuts, Sir Starr Jameson, and Dr. Walter Hines Page. He says:
"We dined in a private room at the Windham Club, the one in which twenty years later the terms of the abdication of King Edward VIII were settled. We drifted on to the question of the United States entering the war, for which Britain and France so patiently waited. Dr. Page then revealed to us, under seal of secrecy, that he had received from the President that afternoon a personal communication upon the strength of which he could affirm that, at last, the die was cast. Consequently it was not without emotion that he found himself able to assure us that the United States would be at war with the Central Powers inside a week from that date. The Ambassador's assurance was correct to the day. We dined on Friday, March 30. On April 2, President Wilson asked Congress to declare a State of War with Germany. On April 6, the United States was at war."
Sir Roderick tells us that Baron Julius de Reuter was born Israel Ben Josaphat Beer, the son of Rabbi Samuel Beer of Caase, Germany. Like so many of his co-religionists, Beer saw that the British Empire was ripe for plucking. He emigrated, set up a news agency, came to the attention of the House of Rothschild, and the rest is history. In 1859, now Baron de Reuter, Beer signed a Covenant with his two rivals in Europe, Havas of France and Wolff of Germany. Havas was a French Jew, Wolff was a German Jew, and these three divided up the world between them. Havas was to have South America, the three were to share the continent of Europe, and Reuter was to have the rest of the world. The arrangement, providentially concluded just before the outbreak of the Civil War in the United States, endured until the First World War for Zionism.
Sir Roderick Jones began his career as Assistant to the Chief Correspondent in the Transvaal, one Leo Weinthal, before the Boer War. On page 38, we find some interesting background on that conflict, as follows:
"Towards the end of 1895, smoldering and unsubstantial fires of political discontent in Johan nesberg were fanned by the Transvaal National Union and by the gold mine owners into an outwardly presentable flame of revolution. An Uitlanders Reform Committee was established, with an inner executive consisting of John Hays Hammond, Lionel Phillips (one of the heads of the gold and diamond mining firm of Eckstein -- The Corner House), George Farrar, head of East Rand Property Mines, and Colonel Frank Rhodes, brother of Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape. Percy Fitzpatrick, also of the Eckstein firm, was the Secretary. The General Committee consisted of sixty other prominent citizens, including Abe Bailey and Solly Joel."
Sir Roderick, although he freely relates the role of the House of Eckstein in promoting that war, does not reveal the importance of the House of Rothschild. John Hays Hammond was chief mining engineer for the Rothschilds, later being employed by the Guggenheims at a salary of five hundred thousand dollars a year, and finally becoming Washington lobbyist for the Rothschild policy group, the Council on Foreign Relations. Sir Abe Bailey was the principal angel of its sister group in Britain, the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Almost any biography of Cecil Rhodes will inform the reader that he was financed in his African empire by the House of Rothschild.
On April 28, 1915, Baron Herbert de Reuter, Chief of the Agency, shot himself. The cause was the crash of the Reuters Bank, which had been built up by Baron Julius de Reuter to handle foreign remittances without their being subjected to inspection. It was felt by the directors to be unwise to replace the Baron with another German Jew, there being a war going on with Germany, and Sir Roderick Jones who had served Leo Weintal faithfully and well, was chosen as a more respectable front for the international operations of the agency. On page 363, he tells us:
"Shortly after I succeeded Baron Herbert de Reuter in 1915, it so happened that I received an invitation from Mr. Alfred Rothschild, then the head of the British House of Rothschild, to lunch with him in his historic New Court, in the City."
We are not favored with an account of the conversation, Sir Roderick limiting himself to a description of the formalities attending upon a visit to the Rothschild. After this, the Chief of Reuters toured the world, being received everywhere with a display usually reserved for royalty. In India he was entertained by the Viceroy, Lord Reading, whose name had been entered at the synagogue as Rufus Isaacs. Isaacs told him that on his first visit ti India, he had been a lowly ship's boy, and on his second visit he was a Viceroy, whereupon Sir Roderick remarked that only in the British Empire could such a thing have happened. His observation is a slight to America.