League to Enforce Peace. His message, which the organization quickly
disavowed and which ran afoul of Allied sentiments, urged an immediate
end to the war and just treatment of all nations. That, like his participation
in the Neutral Conference Committee, which also stood for immediate
mediation, fed the accusation that he sought a peace that would be in
Germany’s best interest. It made little difference to his critics that before
America entered the war he had contributed generously to relief drives on
behalf of Belgium and the Entente.^22
Just as the Germans inflated their expectations of Schiff, so did the En-
glish exaggerate his importance in their own struggle for American loans
and goodwill. The myth of Jewish control of finance and of the press per-
vaded the British foreign office, and Schiff was regarded as a prime exam-
ple of Jewish power. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, ambassador to Washington,
readily abetted anti-Jewish attacks and fed the myth by ranting against
Jewish bankers in general and against Schiff’s inordinate influence in par-
ticular. Not only were the American Jews “far better organized than the
Irish and far more formidable,” Spring-Rice wrote, but “the German Jew-
ish Bankers are toiling in a solid phalanx to compass our destruction....
The principal Jew is now Schiff.” Although Schiff held no grievance
against England itself, he thought that the recent situation of British Jewry
had worsened. “I am afraid that England,” he said, “has been contaminated
by her alliance with Russia.”^23
London knew that American Jews, even if it had their sympathies, re-
garded Russia’s presence in the Triple Entente as the primary obstacle to
help for England and France. “Russia is of course a bone in the throat of
every Jewish sympathizer with the Allies,” a Jewish writer stated. In a simi-
lar vein, Oscar Straus argued with the Russian ambassador that the Jewish
situation weakened the Allied cause and alienated public opinion. Louis
Marshall too chided American banks for lending money to Russia as long
as Jews there suffered disabilities. He argued that such bankers flouted the
principles that underlay abrogation and thereby made a mockery of Amer-
ican honor and the integrity of American citizenship. Marshall relayed the
American Jewish Committee’s (AJC’s) terms for financial aid to a Russian
agent in 1915. They had not changed since originally spelled out by Schiff:
Were Russian Jews granted civil and religious rights, Marshall said, “the
leading Jews of the United States, including Mr. Schiff, have no hesitation
in giving the assurance that arrangements can be made to secure for Russia
a loan of one, or even two, hundred million dollars.”^24 The Jewish leaders,
however, labored in vain. In response to demands of business, the Wilson
administration in 1915 lifted its ban on loans to the belligerents. The AJC
realized that the ensuing business with Russia militated against their efforts
on behalf of Russian Jewish emancipation.^25
Schiff’s stand became front-page news in 1915 when Lord Reading led
196 Jacob H. Schiff