Something of an enigma is Louis Marshall, whose name heads the list of organized Jewry in America, and who is known as the arch-protester against most things non-Jewish. He is head of nearly every Jewish movement that amounts to anything, and he is chief opponent of practically every non-Jewish movement that promises to amount to something. Yet he is known mostly as a name—and not a very Jewish name at that.
It would be interesting to know how the name of “Marshall” found its way to this Jewish gentleman. It is not a common name, even among Jews who change their names. Louis Marshall is the only “Marshall” listed in the Jewish Encyclopedia, and the only Jewish “Marshall” in the index of the publications of the American Jewish Historical Society. In the list of the annual contributors to the American Jewish Committee are to be found such names as Marshutz, Mayer, Massal, Maremort, Mannheimer, Marx, Morse, Mackler, Marcus, Morris, Moskowitz, Marks, Margolis, Mareck—but only one “Marshall,” and that is Louis. Of any other prominent Jew it may be asked, “Which Straus?” “Which Untermeyer?” “Which Kahn?” “Which Schiff?”—but never, “Which Marshall?” for there is only one.
This in itself would indicate that Marshall is not a Jewish name. It is an American, or an Anglo-Saxon name transplanted into a Jewish family. But how and why are questions to which the public as yet have no answer.
Louis Marshall is head of the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Committee is head of all official Jewish activity in the United States.
As head of the committee, he is also head of the executive committee of the New York Kehillah, an organization which is the active front of organized Jewry in New York, and the center of Jewish propaganda for the United States. The nominal head of the Kehillah is Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, a brother-in-law of Louis Marshall. Not only are the American Jewish Committee and the Kehillah linked officially (see chapter 33, Volume II, reprint of this series), but they are linked domestically as well.
Louis Marshall was president of all the Jewish Committees of the world at the Versailles Peace Conference, and it is charged now, as it has been charged before, that the Jewish Program is the only program that went through the Versailles conference as it was drawn, and the so-called League of Nations is busily carrying out its terms today. A determined effort is being made by Jews to have the Washington Conference take up the same matter. Colonel House was Louis Marshall’s chief aid at Paris in forcing the Jewish Program on an unwilling world.
Louis Marshall has appeared in all the great Jewish cases. The impeachment of Governor Sulzer was a piece of Jewish revenge, but Louis Marshall was Sulzer’s attorney. Sulzer was removed from the office of governor. The case of Leo Frank, a Jew, charged with the peculiarly vicious murder of a Georgia factory girl, was defended by Mr. Marshall. It was one of those cases where the whole world is whipped into excitement because a Jew is in trouble. It is almost an indication of the racial character of a culprit these days to note how much money is spent for him and how much fuss is raised concerning him. It seems to be a part of Jewish loyalty to prevent if possible the Gentile law being enforced against Jews. The Dreyfus case and the Frank case are examples of the endless publicity the Jews secure in behalf of their own people. Frank was reprieved from the death sentence, and sent to prison, after which he was killed. That horrible act can be traced directly to the state of public opinion which was caused by raucous Jewish publicity which stopped at nothing to attain its ends. To this day the state of Georgia is, in the average mind, part of an association of ideas directly traceable to this Jewish propaganda. Jewish publicity did to Georgia what it did to Russia—grossly misrepresented it, and so ceaselessly as to create a false impression generally. It is not without reason that the Ku Klux Klan was revived in Georgia and that Jews were excluded from membership.
Louis Marshall is chairman of the board and of the executive committee of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, whose principal theologian, Mordecai M. Kaplan, is the leading exponent of an educational plan by which Judaism can be made to supercede Christianity in the United States. Under cover of synagogal activities, which he knows that the well known tolerance of the American people will never suspect, Rabbi Kaplan has thought out and systemized and launched a program to that end, certainly not without the approval of Mr. Marshall.