for example, considered the idea of distributing democratic propaganda
among German prisoners, just as Schiff and Kennan had done with Rus-
sian prisoners in the Russo-Japanese War. Still another letter suggested
that Schiff, as the “foremost” American Jew, had a chance to end the war
when he met in 1915 with Britain’s outstanding Jew, Lord Reading, who
was then in America to negotiate a loan for the Allies.^9 Clearly, respect for
the banker on the part of Jews and non-Jews held firm in the early days of
American neutrality.
German Americans divided sharply on their sympathy with the fatherland,
and in Schiff’s case pro-German sentiments appeared uppermost. Concern
for German welfare, he said, is in “everyone in whose veins there flows
German blood.” Unlike Louis Marshall and Oscar Straus, who sympa-
thized with the Allies, neither he nor his family had emigrated from Ger-
many as a result of anti-Jewish experiences. He had memories of a com-
fortable childhood and a secure Jewish community. To be sure, he admitted
that Jews had fared better in England, and he had for years been a member
of the Pilgrims’ Club, a London-based society that sought to promote
Anglo-American friendship. But strong family ties and frequent visits to
his homeland, climaxed by an audience with the kaiser in 1911, strength-
ened his pro-German sentiments. The banker had long supported numer-
ous communal institutions in his beloved Frankfurt, and out of a desire to
disseminate the culture of which he was so proud, he had funded projects
of German studies at Cornell and Harvard. After all, he told Andrew D.
White, his preoccupation with Jewish affairs did not preclude his interest
in German culture.^10
At the beginning of the war, Schiff’s sentiments jibed with his belief in a
German victory. “I have no fear that German civilization, German culture
and German manhood can be downed,” he wrote. Even then, however, he
was a critic of German “militarismus” and an opponent of the country’s ex-
pansionist designs. His sympathy with Germany, albeit thus modified, was
compounded by a hatred of Russia. On balance, a German victory that
would simultaneously end “wretched” czarism appeared by far the more
desirable end.^11
The Central Powers worked tirelessly to get Schiff and other sympa-
thetic Jewish leaders to support their cause in the United States. While
Germany concentrated on fund-raising and on swaying public opinion,
particularly in the wake of atrocity stories and the German invasion of Bel-
gium, it developed a cadre of American sympathizers abetted by special
emissaries from Germany. One agent and propagandist, Dr. Isaac Straus,
worked on the anti-Russian Jewish immigrant masses through a new peri-
odical, the American Jewish Chronicle. Kuhn, Loeb, with its connections to
192 Jacob H. Schiff