White House. Taft thought that he could win the Jews to his side with the
vague promise of continued reminders to Russia, but he misjudged the
temper of his guests. They were in no mood to be cajoled by presidential
affability; and with Schiff and Marshall as their designated spokesmen,
they had resolved to stand as a unit behind abrogation. Much to their dis-
may, Taft began by reading a long explanation of why he had decided
against abrogation. After rehashing the legal and economic arguments as
well as the futility of abrogration as a corrective to Russian policy, he ad-
mitted that if he were a Jew he would feel differently. “But I am the Presi-
dent of the whole country,” he concluded, and obligated to weigh the total
picture. By ignoring the ground rules of a bona fide give-and-take—as
Schiff angrily said the meeting was not a conference but merely a stage for
the president to present his conclusions—and by implying that the Jewish
interest was narrower than the American, Taft and his political ineptitude
sorely offended the conferees. Simon Wolf of the UAHC asked him not to
publish the statement, but Schiff, enraged and agitated, responded differ-
ently: “I want it published. I want the whole world to know the President’s
attitude.”
A brief recess during which the Jews, at the president’s behest, read a
long and what Schiff termed an insulting, pro-Russian memorandum from
Rockhill served to fuel the banker’s anger further. He lashed out at Taft:
Mr. President, you have said that you are not prepared to permit the com-
mercial interests of ninety-eight million of the American people to suffer be-
cause two million feel that their rights are being infringed upon. My own
opinion has always been that it was the privilege of the head of this nation
that, if only a single American citizen was made to suffer injury, the entire
power of this great Government should be exercised to procure redress for
such injury, and now you tell us... you would not do anything to protect two
million American citizens in the rights vouchsafed to them under our Con-
stitution and laws. We feel deeply mortified that in this instance, Mr. Presi-
dent, you have failed us, and there is nothing left to us now but to put our
case before the American people directly, who are certain to do us justice....
In 1861... public opinion insisted that the slave must be freed and the Union
remain supreme at any cost; the war for the right was thereupon fought and
won.... To this same public opinion, Mr. President, we shall now turn, and
we have no fear of the results.The only American Jew on record who so badgered a president, Schiff
alone did not shake the president’s hand when the meeting ended. One
conferee sadly summed up the episode with the words “Wir sind in Golus.”
Schiff, however, in characteristic fashion, told Marshall, “This means war”
and pledged $25,000 toward the cost of a public campaign.^61
148 Jacob H. Schiff