FREEMASONS AND JEWS.*
A QUEER Austrian book on Freemasonry has come into our hands. It is a typical example of the heavy German method of propa- ganda, in which a thesis that seems grotesque is supported by a most elaborate array of citations, some of which are accurate while others are clearly wrong. The author, Dr. Wichtl, has Freemasonry on the brain. He sees its " Hidden Hand " in all the leading events of European history from the French Revolution to the Great War. He regards it as a secret inter- national force headed by England and directed from Paris for the undoing of poor innocent Germany and Austria. He is, we presume, a Roman Catholic and a devoted admirer of the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, for he denounces Freemasonry as being at once anti-Christian and anti-monarchical. He attri- butes to the Freemasons the same striving for world-power that the Russian Mitts attributed to the Jews. President Wilson's " Fourteen Points " embody, for Dr. Wichtl, the principles long advocated by Freemasons. He takes, for example, the Italian and Turkish clauses and observes that Mazzini enunciated similar proposals. Now Mazzini was a Freemason, according to Dr. Wichtl. Therefore Freemasonry must be held guilty of desiring Italian unity and the liberation of the Chris- tians in Turkey. An author who is so ready to attribute to Free- masons as a body the opinions held by one man who may or may not have been a Freemason will of course arrive at strange results, and there is much unconscious humour in this book. He is far too deeply read in masonic literature not to know and to state that British Freemasonry does not recognize in any way the Grand Orient masonry of the Continent. Yet for the purposes of his theory he disregards this elementary and important fact when he pictures all Freemasons as working together, under British and French guidance, for the establish- ment of an infidel world-republic.
Nevertheless, Dr. Wichtl's book is of value in so far as it illus- trates the state of mind of a good many Europeans. They see the Grand Orient lodges increasing and multiplying in open defiance of the Roman Catholic Church. They know that the Grand Orient has numerous Jewish members and that its attitude is definitely non-Christian and Voltairean. They are told that many politicians of a Radical, Republican or Socialist typo in all European countries are Freemasons. They put two and two together, in the manner of Dr. Wichtl, and conclude that the Grand Orient is a revolutionary conspiracy, carrying on the work of the German Illuminati of the eighteenth century. As the Roman Church forbids the faithful to become Freemasons, the clergy may be trusted to keep such suspicions alive and to attribute any misfortune to masonic intrigues. In such a heated atmosphere the wildest fables are credited, with or without the " evidence " that Dr. Wichtl and others accumulate from dusty pamphlets and forgotten journals. Englishmen who have acquired the habit of toleration during the past century or two usually fail to realize the intensity of Continental intoler- ance or the complex evils that arise from it. Anti-Semitism is one of them, but the counter-movement of the Jews in self- defence has also its unfortunate sides. Dr. Wichtl declares that the Jewish Freemasons are extremely numerous and influential and that the Grand Master of the German " Eclectic " Masons in 1914 was a -Jew. We are bound to say that his statements do not inspire much confidence. He declares, for instance, that out of 225,000 Freemasons in Great Britain, 43,000 are Jews. As the total Jewish population is perhaps 300,000, this estimate of the number of Jewish Masons must be greatly exaggerated. And when he goes on to assert that the Drury Lane Lodge devotes itself to advertising the merits of Jewish actors and the
• Wellfreimaureroi, Weltrerolution, Wellrepuhlik. Von Dr. Friedrich Wichtl. Munich : Lehmann; Vienna : R. Lechner. [10 krone.]
Savage Club Lodge to supporting the " Yellow Press," and that the British Government assigns five millions a year for mur- derous revolutionary propaganda, directed from an office in Southend, it is clear that he is drawing on his own or somebody else's fervent imagination. Yet he may be, and probably is, better informed about Continental Freemasonry. He quotes masonic handbooks for details of the predominance of Jews in the German " Eclectic " lodges, from which the old Prussian Freemasons hold aloof. It is the same, he declares, in Hungary and in Austria, where Freemasonry was long prohibited, as well as in Italy, France and Turkey. " Everywhere the Jews are the most vigorous and active Freemasons." Their influence, he thinks, has helped to promote friendly relations between the Freemasons of Central and Eastern Europe and the Grand Orient in Paris. All the rest is mere surmise. One may attribute as much or as little political influence as one pleases to this Continental Freemasonry, always opposed to the Roman Church, always supported by Liberal or Radical politicians, always reinforced by many Jewish members. We are quite sure that there is no more connection between these foreign masons and British masons than there is between, say, the Royal Society and the Fabian Society. But the perennial feud between the Roman Church and the secret masonic societies may have given a new vogue to the ancient charges against the Jews of con- spiring for world-dominion. We should have thought, on the whole, that it was better for the Jews to mingle with Christians, and others who are not Jews, in such societies than to keep them- selves apart, in or out of the Ghetto. Their enforced isolation during the Middle Ages was bad for them and bad for the peoples among whom they lived, and, except in Great Britain and America, its ill-effects are still patent.
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