Answers from a hurt and indignant Schiff revealed the personal di-
lemma of a man who desired to blend his Germanism with his American-
ism. World peace was his priority. He opposed German militarism, but
hadn’t he also criticized England’s expansionist aims in the piece for the
New York Times? Furthermore, as he explained to Max Warburg, he was
caught in a clash of beliefs. On the one hand was his “reverence” for Ger-
many and on the other his aversion to German political authoritarianism,
which Americans, steeped in Anglo-Saxon institutions, could never con-
done. He added bitterly to Paul Nathan that the Germans completely for-
got that he, Schiff, was an American citizen even before there was a Ger-
man Reich.^19 Denounced by his former countrymen, Schiff was another on
the long list of American immigrants who sought to square their ties to the
land of their birth with their loyalty to America.
The banker spoke out frequently against Russia, but never did he ac-
tively propagandize for Germany within the Jewish community. Nor was it
necessary; the Jewish rank and file and the Yiddish press took a similar pro-
German stand. There were some whose genunine love of Germany was the
prime consideration and others, like the Socialists, who repudiated war in
principle. To most, however, the Allies meant Russia. The Jews held no
specific brief against England, but they could not imagine any self-
respecting Jew on the side of the detested czarist government. The fact
that the eastern European Jews clung to those views despite Gentile pres-
sures and the strong pro-Ally sentiment of most Americans indicated the
depth of their feelings.^20
In March 1917, Schiff announced that he had reversed his stand. He
told Charles Eliot that his love for Germany had not abated but that there
had been a “thorough change” in his attitude ever since Germany em-
barked on a course of submarine warfare.^21 Written at the same time that
revolutionary events heralded the czar’s imminent abdication, Schiff, now a
a disillusioned German American, could support America’s imminent
entry into the war without reservation.
Loans for the AlliesThe fortunes of Kuhn, Loeb suffered during the war. Not only was its ac-
tivity curtailed, but in the eyes of the Anglophile banking houses domi-
nated by the House of Morgan it became an object of suspicion and anti-
Semitic attacks. While charges against the allegedly disloyal pro-German
Jewish banking firms reverberated, Schiff called at 23 Wall Street after the
sinking of the Lusitania (1915). Tendering his personal apology to Jack
Morgan (J.P.’s son, who now headed the firm), he was rudely rebuffed.
Schiff sullied his own reputation again in 1916 when he addressed the
The World at War 195