esorted to this trick in order
to weaken the morale of the principal Allied nations.

IV

IS SOCIALISM A JEWISH CONSPIRACY?

Upon the strength of statements made in this collection of documents
of mysterious and suspicious origin, a number of papers, including the
_Dearborn Independent_ and the _London Morning Post_, have attempted
to account for and explain the international Socialist movement as
part of this Jewish imperialistic conspiracy. Neither in the protocols
themselves nor in the newspapers making this particular charge has any
shred of authentic evidence been adduced in its support. True, a great
deal has been made of the undeniable fact that Karl Marx, Ferdinand
Lassalle, Wilhelm Liebnecht, and other noted Socialists belonged to
the Jewish race. Against this fact might very well be set the equally
undeniable fact that the foremost opponents of these men, and of
Socialism, were also of the Jewish race. Apparently, therefore, we are
to believe that the leaders of this Jewish conspiracy set up the
Socialist movement and fostered it, while at the same time they
enlisted their ablest minds to defeat it. Surely for the normal mind
that is not obsessed this is a theory too absurd for belief.

Only those who are entirely ignorant of the history of Socialism and
Socialist theories can possibly hold this view of its Jewish origin.
Long before Karl Marx appeared upon the scene of action Socialism had
already made an impress upon European thought. Marx was a boy of
fifteen when the word Socialism first appeared in print as designating
the doctrines preached by Robert Owen, the Welshman, for almost twenty
years before that time. Was Owen the tool of Jewish conspirators? I
have read most of the literature relating to Owen's life and teaching,
including his own voluminous writings, and the innumerable
controversies in which he was engaged throughout his life. I have not
discovered in all this mass of material a single trace of Jewish
influence. He had no Jewish friends or associates during the formative
years, the period in which the Socialist ideas and ideals shaped
themselves. His Socialism was the direct outcome of his experience as
a successful manufacturer. He was not in any sense a man of books.
From time to time he required large sums of money for his enterprises.
Surely, if those enterprises, and his life's work as a whole, formed
part of a great Jewish conspiracy which had behind it the vast
financial