The Empire of the "City"
The Secret History of British
Financial Power
by E. C. Knuth
The Book Tree, 2006, paperback
[originally published in 1944]
p4
There must be a very powerful and well-financed secret organization
which plans and directs American foreign affairs, and for lack
of a more specific identification this suspected secret organization
is popularly referred to as the International Financiers.
p5
A sovereign world state [is] located in the financial district
of ... the city of London. The colossal political and financial
organization centered in this area, known as "The City,"
operates as a supergovernment of the world; and no incident occurs
in any part of the world without its participation in some form.
Its pretentions are supported in the United
States by the secret International Pilgrim Society, sponsor of
the Cecil Rhodes "One World" ideology.
p5
American newspaperman William Allen White, 1899, Emporia Gazette
It is the Anglo-Saxon's manifest destiny
to go forth in the world as a world conqueror. He will take possession
of all the islands of the sea. He will exterminate the peoples
he cannot subjugate. That is what fate holds for the chosen people.
It is so written. Those who would protest, will find their objections
overruled. It is to be.
p12
Chauncey M. Depew, New York Senator seconding the nomination of
Theodore Roosevelt for the Vice-Presidency of the United States
at the Republican National Convention of 1900
What is the tendency of the future? Why
this war in South Africa? Why this hammering at the gates of Pekin?
Why this marching of troops from Asia to Africa? Why these parades
of people from other empires to other lands? It is because the
surplus productions of the civilized countries of modern times
are greater than civilization can consume. It is because this
overproduction goes back to stagnation and poverty. The American
people now produce two thousand million dollars worth more than
we can consume ... we have our market in the Philippines, and
we stand in the presence of eight hundred millions of people,
with the Pacific as an American lake.
p14
China, Russia, the United States and Germany are in order the
most populous independent nations in the world, and therefore
represent the most dynamic and most dangerous competition of the
British Empire.
p35
Kent Cooper, General Manager of the Associated Press in the book
"Barriers Down" published in 1942
International bankers under the lead of
House of Rothschild had acquired an interest in the three leading
European [media] agencies (Reuter, Wolff and Havas). Reuters ...
was the chief of the three. It was the staggering presumption
of this firm that the news of the world was its own private property,
to be withheld, to be discolored to its own purposes, or to be
sold to whom and where they directed.
p36
Rothschild controlled Vickers acquired armament and munitions
plants in Japan with that prescient foresight of war profits ahead
which marked the career of this man of whom Lord Beaverbrook said:
"The destinies of nations were his sport; the movement of
armies and the affairs of government his special delight. In the
wake of war this mysterious figure moved over tortured Europe.
p36
Lord Beaverbrook said of the French House of Rothschild: "The
destinies of nations were his sport; the movement of armies and
the affairs of government his special delight. In the wake of
war this mysterious figure moved over tortured Europe.
p57
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli
Gain and hold territories that possess
the largest supplies of the basic raw materials. Establish naval
bases around the world to control the sea and commerce lanes.
Blockade and starve into submission any nation or group of nations
that opposes this empire control program.
p39
The colored people of the British Empire, comprising 87% of the
total population, are the voiceless subjects of the international
financial oligarchy of "The City" [the City of London]
in what is perhaps the most arbitrary and absolute form of government
in the world. This international financial oligarchy uses the
allegoric "Crown" as its symbol of power and has its
headquarters in the ancient City of London, an area of 677 acres;
which strangely in all the vast expanse of the 443,455 acres of
Metropolitan London alone is not under the jurisdiction of the
Metropolitan Police, but has its own private force of about 2,000
men, while its night population is under 9,000.
This tiny area of a little over one square
mile has in it the giant Bank of England, a privately owned institution;
which is not subject to regulation by the British Parliament,
and is in effect a sovereign world power. Within the City are
located also the Stock Exchange and many institutions of world-wide
scope. The City carries on its business of local government with
a fanciful display of pompous medieval ceremony and with its officers
attired in grotesque ancient costumes. Its voting power is vested
in secret guilds... All this trivial pomp and absurdity and horse-play
seems to serve very well to blind the eyes of the public to the
big things going on behind the scenes.
p60
Andrew _Carnegie, in his book "Triumphant Democracy,"
published in 188
My American readers may not be aware of
the fact that, while in Britain an act of Parliament is necessary
before works for a supply of water or a mile of railway can be
constructed, six or seven men can plunge the nation into war,
or, what is perhaps equally disastrous, commit it to entangling
alliances without consulting Parliament at all. This is the most
pernicious, palpable effect flowing from the monarchial theory,
for these men do this in "the king's Name," who is in
theory still a real monarch, although in reality only a convenient
puppet, to be used by the cabinet at pleasure to suit their own
ends.
p61
The City, exercising its power as the "King-in-Council"
or "Crown" has control over both the legislative and
executive functions of the Empire, and as Britain has no written
Constitution there is no court with any power to temper the actions
of the "Crown.
p61
Edwin J. Clapp, Professor of Economics at New York University,
in his book "Economic Aspects of The War, 1915
The Balance of Power is a creation of
this financial oligarchy and its purposes are as follows:
(1) To divide the nations of Europe into
two antagonistic camps of nearly equal military weight, so as
to retain for Britain itself the power to sway a decision either
way.
(2) To make the leading and potentially
most dangerous military power the particular prey of British suppression
and to have the second strongest power on the other side. To subsidize
the "Most Favored Nations" with financial investments,
and to permit them to acquire political advantages under the beneficent
protection of the Sea-Power, to the disadvantage and at the expense
of the nations being suppressed.
(3) To subject the continent of Europe
to the "Policy of Encirclement" so as to keep the nations
of the continent in poverty and ineffectiveness, and thereby prevent
the growth of sufficient commercial expansion and wealth to create
a rival sea-power.
(4) To retain that complete control and
hegemony over all the seas of the world, which was acquired by
defeating the allied fleets of its only real rivals, France and
Spain, in 1805; and which is artfully and subtly called "The
Freedom of the Seas."
(5) To shift this Balance of Power as
required so as to be able to strike down friend or foe in the
rapidly shifting scene of world power politics, in that inexorable
ideology that demands that everything and anything must be sacrificed
where the future welfare and expansion to the eventual destiny
of the Empire are affected; that eventual destiny outlined by
its proponents as the eventual control of All the lands, and All
the peoples, of All the world.
p61
The representatives of the people in the House of Commons, and
the House of Lords, are utterly lacking any legislative initiative
and that their function in such matters subject to certain concurrent
rights of the Crown is largely one of silent submission, and this
is in accord with the conclusions of Prof. George Burton Adams.
It clearly appears that while the Sovereign and the mythical Crown
are not one, the virtues and authorities ostensibly vested in
the person of the Sovereign pertain with full weight as to the
Crown; and an act of the Crown is not subject to question in the
Parliament, as the "King Can Do No Wrong." This provides
the ideal machinery of government for the absolute rule of the
Crown, and the world dictatorship of International Finance of
The City.
p62
Cecil Rhodes, 1895
Establish a secret society in order to
have the whole continent of South America, the Holy Land, the
Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the
islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain,
the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan and, finally,
the United States. In the end Great Britain is to establish a
power so overwhelming that wars must cease and the Millennium
be realized.
p62
The ideology of the British Empire has been outlined in the past
by various British statesmen and specifically by Mr. Disraeli
(Lord Beaconsfield). The modern version which has been broadened
to include the United States as a principal in the British Empire
was outlined by Cecil Rhodes about 1895 as follows: "Establish
a secret society in order to have the whole continent of South
America, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands
of Cyprus and Candia, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore
possessed by Great Britain, the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard
of China and Japan and, finally, the United States. In the end
Great Britain is to establish a power so overwhelming that wars
must cease and the Millennium be realized.
[Cecil Rhodes] secret societies apparently
came to life immediately the death of Mr. Rhodes in the Pilgrims
of Great Britain, often used by British statesmen in recent years
as a public sounding board; and the Pilgrims of the United States,
the latter founded in New York City on January 13, 1903.
... Cecil Rhodes left a fortune of about
$150,000,000.00 to the Rhodes Foundation, apparently largely directed
towards the eventual intent of his ideology.
p63
The Pilgrims were founded in London July 24, 1902, four months
after the death of Cecil Rhodes who had outlined an ideology of
a secret society to work towards eventual British rule of all
the world, and who had made particular provisions in his will
designed to bring the United States among the countries "possessed
by Great Britain".
p64
Robert M. La Follette, Sr. in a speech in the United States Senate
in March, 1908, asserted that fewer than one hundred men control
the great business interests of the country... Senator La Follette
conclusively demonstrated a few days later ... that through interlocking
directorates actually less than one dozen men controlled the business
of the country, that in the last analysis the houses of Rockefeller
and Morgan were the real business kings of America.
p64
Mr. George M. Reynolds of the Continental and Commercial Bank
of Chicago in 1911 stated to an excusive company of bankers:
I believe the money power now lies in
the hands of a dozen men. I plead guilty to being one, in the
last analysis, of those men.
p65
Vincent Cartwright Vickers
Financiers in reality took upon themselves,
perhaps not the responsibility, but certainly the power, of controlling
the markets of the world and therefore the numerous relationships
between one nation and another, involving international friendships
or mistrusts. Loans to foreign countries are organized and arranged
by the City of London with no thought whatsoever of the nation's
welfare but solely in order to increase indebtedness, upon which
the City thrives and grows rich. This national and mainly international
dictatorship of money, which plays off one country against another
and which, through ownership of a large portion of the Press,
converts the advertisement of its own private opinion into a semblance
of general public opinion cannot for much longer be permitted
to render Democratic Government a mere nickname.
p65
Vincent Cartwright Vickers
Financiers in reality took upon themselves,
perhaps not the responsibility, but certainly the power, of controlling
the markets of the world and therefore the numerous relationships
between one nation and another, involving international friendships
or mistrusts. Loans to foreign countries are organized and arranged
by the City of London with no thought whatsoever of the nation's
welfare but solely in order to increase indebtedness, upon which
the City thrives and grows rich. This national and mainly international
dictatorship of money, which plays off one country against another
and which, through ownership of a large portion of the Press,
converts the advertisement of its own private opinion into a semblance
of general public opinion.
p65
Loans to foreign countries are organized and arranged by the City
of London with no thought whatsoever of the nation's welfare but
solely in order to increase indebtedness, upon which the City
thrives and grows rich.
p65
The bulwark of the British financial oligarchy lies in its ageless
and self-perpetuating nature, its long-range planning and prescience,
its facility to outwait and break the patience of its opponents...
here are few who have opposed them in Britain and America, without
coming to a disgraceful end; but many, who served them well, have
also profited well.
p65
The City, through its ruling power of the "Crown" and
its all-powerful Bank of England, holds the purse-strings of the
British Empire.
p67
J. A. Cramb M. A., Professor of Modern History, Queen's College,
London in his book "Germany and England", 1914
Napoleon in 1809 attempted to wrench a
planet from the hideous tentacles of this octopus, this British
dominion strangling a world [City of London] ... And what was
the stake for which England fought in all her battles against.
Bonaparte? The stake was world-empire; and Napoleon knew it well.
p68
The House of Rothschild ... had through its loans to the numerous
small nations of continental Europe at extremely high interest
rates ... built up what was widely considered the world's greatest
fortune.
p68
When the conflict with France ended [after the defeat of Napoleon
at Waterloo] the House of Rothschild was in control of British
finance and was the official banker of the British Government.
This financial octopus was acknowledged to be in some respects
the greatest power on earth and was designated by some writers
as the "Sixth Great Power of Europe".
p69
Professor Roland Usher in his book "Pan Americanism",
1913
Russia, Turkey, Egypt, India, China, Japan
and South America are probably owned, so far as any nation can
be owned in London or Paris. Payment of interest on these vast
sums is secured by the pledging of the public revenues of these
countries, and, in the case of the weaker nations, by the actual
delivery of the perception into the hands of the agents of the
English and French bankers. In addition, a very large share, if
not the major part, of the stocks and industrial securities of
the world are owned by those two nations and the policies of many
of the world's enterprises dictated by their financial heads.
The world itself, in fact, pays them tribute; it actually rises
in the morning to earn its living by utilizing their capital,
and occupies its days in making the money to pay them interest,
which is to make them still wealthier.
In a carefully developed plan to attain
financial control of all Europe, Maier Amschel Rothschild established
his five sons in the leading five financial centers of Europe
- Nathan in London, Solomon in Vienna, Jacob in Paris, Karl in
Naples, while the eldest Anselm Maier remained in the German headquarters.
Nathan had arrived in England at a very auspicious moment in 1798,
and he soon formed the depository for the vast fortune on the
continent and its refuge from taxation; and the bloody struggle
between France and England for world supremacy in what was actually
modern World War I, which reduced all Europe into a vast sink
of despair and bankruptcy; elevated the House of Rothschild to
financial and political domination of all Europe and much of the
rest of the world.
p70
The Annual Encyclopedia of 1868 records that at the time of his
death in 1868, Jacob Rothschild's fortune was estimated at over
$300,000,000.00, and his yearly income at about $40,000,000.00.
In comparison it may be significant to note that there was at
this time no fortune in all America that equaled only one year's
income of Jacob Rothschild (Baron James de Rothschild). The fortune
of the Rothschild family in 1913 was estimated at over two billion
dollars.
p70
The biographers of the House of Rothschild record that men of
influence and statesmen in almost every country of the world were
in their pay.
p70
A large part of the profligate nobility of all Europe was deeply
indebted to the Rothschilds.
p70
Gradually through the years the House of Rothschild has withdrawn
from the public consciousness ... to the extent that a large part
of the American public knows little of them and that they are
generally considered in a class of myth or legend.
p70
The immensity of the Rothschild fortune ... is merged in the general
conduct of the financial, commercial and political control of
the world by the City of London.
p70
One of the most effective devices employed by the House of Rothschild
through the years to destroy their competitors and to discipline
recalcitrant statesmen has been that of artificially creating
an over-extended inflation by extended speculation, then to cash
in and let others hold the bag.
p71
The Bank of England is in effect a sovereign world power, for
this privately owned institution is not subject to regulation
or control in the slightest degree by the British Parliament...
This privately owned and controlled institution functions as the
great balance wheel of the credit of the world, able to expand
or contract credit at will; and is subject only to the orders
of the City, the City dominated by the fortune of the House of
Rothschild and the policies of the House of Rothschild.
p71
The fact that British capital played an important role in the
great crash of the American market in 1929 seems beyond question.
That the overextended inflation that brought on the crash could
have been controlled and halted dead at any point in its rise
by the great balance wheel of the world's credit [Bank of England]
seems beyond question. That the immense crash and loss in American
securities served not only to damage and cripple Britain's then
greatest competitor, but also to discipline a recalcitrant and
unfriendly administration seems beyond question. That $1,233,844,000.00
of foreign gold was moved out of the country [United States] in
the election year of 1932 to bring further discredit to that unfriendly
administration and to influence the election seems beyond question.
That $1,139,672,000.00 in foreign gold was moved into the country
[United States] in 1935 to influence an election and to recreate
"confidence" and to prepare the American investor for
a further milking in 1937 seems beyond question. The fact that
the House of Rothschild made its money in the great crashes of
history and the great wars of history, the very periods when others
lost their money, is beyond question.
p73
The American kings of finance of the Rockefeller-Morgan machine
entered into a secret agreement with the British-French-Dutch-Oriental
combine in the early part of 1897 by which they regulated and
allocated the business of the world among themselves much like
the racketeers of recent years have split up the illicit liquor
concessions in our big cities.
p76
Over 400 years ago, the Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli
engaged in a profound study of methods used by various rulers
to attain power... The findings of Machiavelli and other students
of power decree that to ' obtain power it is essential to ignore
the moral laws of man and of God; that promises must be made only
with the intention to deceive arid to mislead others to sacrifice
their own interests; that the most brutal atrocity must be committed
as a matter of mere convenience; that friends or allies must be
betrayed as matter of course as soon as they have served their
purpose. But, it is also decreed that these atrocities must be
kept hidden from the common people except only where they are
of use to strike terror to the hearts of opponents; that there
must be kept up a spurious aspect of benevolence and benefit for
the greater number of the people, and even an aspect of humility
to gain as much help as possible.
p76
Over 400 years ago, the Florentine statesman Niccolo Machiavelli
engaged in a profound study of methods used by various rulers
to attain power... The findings of Machiavelli and other students
of power decree that to ' obtain power it is essential to ignore
the moral laws of man and of God; that promises must be made only
with the intention to deceive arid to mislead others to sacrifice
their own interests; that the most brutal atrocity must be committed
as a matter of mere convenience; that friends or allies must be
betrayed as matter of course as soon as they have served their
purpose.
p76
It is held that the vast mass of the people are oblivious and
gullible, and therefore will believe a lie which is repeated again
and again, regardless of how obvious may be the fundamental facts
to the contrary.
p76
Chapter VI of "The Prince" by Machiavelli
Matters should be so ordered that when
men no longer believe of their own accord, they may be compelled
to and therefore by force.
As application of the doctrine of power
holds that highminded words can be used by the powerful, the demagogue
and the hypocrite, or the merely self-deluded, to arouse passion
and prejudice and sentimentality for the wrong reasons in favor
of disguised real aims; thus to deceive the people and to lead
them by easy stages to sacrifice their own interests in the service
of power.
p71
For over a century the House of Rothschild has controlled both
Britain and France.
p71
In "Inside Europe," published in 1936, John Gunther
develops that any French prime minister, at the end of 1935, was
a creature of the financial oligarchy. That this financial oligarchy
was dominated by twelve regents, of whom six were bankers, who
were "hereditary regents" in the absolute sense of the
term, and were headed by Baron Edouard de Rothschild.
p71
According to Machiavelli, war must be applied at almost regular
intervals to maintain power. It is held that it is not an unforeseeable
accident and that it is not a passing madness, but that it is
a normal and indispensable tool of power. It must be applied promptly
and ruthlessly to be effective in its function of maintaining
and extending power.
p72
Rear Admiral Charles Hussey in his book "The United States
and Great Britain"
The British have no written policy, nor
even a written constitution... To undertake to outline British
policy, an American must be both capable and daring. It seems
the part of wisdom to turn to the British themselves for this.
p72
the editor of a British colonial weekly - from the book "The
United States and Great Britain" by Rear Admiral Charles
Hussey
Britain lives by foreign trade, therefore,
to secure and hold markets it must invest money abroad, acquire
colonies and control the seas... The world must be made safe,
not for democracy, but for trade and commerce... That is the national
policy of the British people, of both Liberals and Conservatives.
It forms the background of all British thinking.
p85
from the Illustrated Universal History of 1878
Great Britain emerged from the long contest
with France with increased power and national glory. Her Empire
was greatly extended in all parts of the world; her supremacy
on the sea was undisputed; her wealth and commerce were increased...
But with all this national prosperity, the lower classes of the
English people were sunk in extreme wretchedness and poverty.
p86
The secret ideology of international finance ... is aimed at eventual
rule over all the world by the British Government.
p88
William Allen White, newspaper publisher
It is the destiny of the pure Aryan Anglo-Saxon
race dominate the world and kill off or else reduce to a servile
status all other inferior races.
p93
British engineer, scientist and inventor Arthur Kitson
Democracy in this country [Britain] has
become a farce! The real governing power is not at Westminster
nor at Downing Street, but rests partly in Threadneedle Street
and partly in Wall Street, New York!
p94
English Professor Cramb
Scarcely a sun will set in the years to
come, which will not look upon some American's face dead in battle
- dead not for America - dead to satisfy the ambitions of power-crazed
men.
p96
The power of International Finance rests upon the doctrine of
government advanced by Niccolo Machiavelli, which holds that any
means, however unscrupulous, may be justifiably employed in order
to maintain a strong central government; and this doctrine has
always been used as a vindication and the mandate of imperialists
and dictators, and it cannot gain a foothold unless the forces
of freedom have become undermined and are no longer able to offer
open opposition.
p99
The modern dictators were the deliberate creations of international
finance to plunge the world into that chaos out of which alone
it would be g possible to fashion "One World". The method
by which this could be achieved was indicated by a leading financial
organ in 1920:
When through process of law, the common
people lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more
easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of Government,
applied by the general power of wealth under control of leading
financiers.
p99
a leading financial organ in 1920 said:
When through process of law, the common
people lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more
easily governed through the influence of the strong arm of Government,
applied by the general power of wealth under control of leading
financiers.
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