politics, he felt forced to seek support from the two major parties.^24 Over
the next few years, however, the Jewish stewards found a way of turning the
insult against American Jews into a campaign to liberate the Jews of Russia
(see below).
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 gave Schiff the opportunity to flex his
financial muscles in a grand manner, and as one American diplomat put it,
he “went out of his way to help Japan.” Years later, Cyrus Adler recalled a
meeting of Jewish communal leaders in February 1904 in Schiff’s home.
There the banker stated: “Within 72 hours war will break out between
Japan and Russia. The question has been presented to me of undertaking a
loan for Japan. I would like to get your views as to what effect my undertak-
ing of this would have upon the Jewish people in Russia.” The consensus
must have been favorable, because Kuhn, Loeb became active early in 1904
on Japan’s behalf. Since TR and American public opinion also sided with
Japan, Schiff had no compunctions about damage that he might cause the
Russian regime. Japan was totally right and Russia totally wrong, the
banker said. His contributions during the war earned him Japan’s lasting
gratitude and Russia’s lasting anger. Interviewed in 1911, the Russian min-
ister of finance said to journalist Herman Bernstein: “Our government will
never forgive or forget what that Jew, Schiff, did to us.... He alone made it
possible for Japan to secure a loan in America. He was one of the most dan-
gerous men we had against us abroad.”^25
As the war progressed, Schiff saw Japanese gains redounding to the ben-
efit of the Jews. Czarist officials would become convinced, he said, that
changes in Jewish policies were necessary in order to strengthen Russia’s
international position. “Plehve [minister of the interior] and his colleagues
are finally beginning to realize that they have made a complete mess of
things... and I believe the Russian Government would now go very far to
gain the good will of international Jewry.” The banker confidently believed
that Jewish action made a telling difference in the Russian situation. The
ever growing influence of American Jews had altered the long-held pro-
Russian sympathies of their compatriots, and his private war was showing
results too. Jewish pressure on the American government and the press
continued unabatedly, and the banker confided to Paul Nathan of the
Hilfsverein that many other things, which he couldn’t put in writing, made
him feel optimistic. The fear of some Russian Jews that too much was
being demanded of their government was of no consequence. “It is simply
one more case of the experience which Moses had in Egypt when he inter-
vened for Israel and tried to stir them up, ‘but they hearkened not unto
him, for anguish of spirit and for bondage.’”^26
More determinedly than before, Schiff renewed efforts to block Russia’s
134 Jacob H. Schiff