CHAPTER IX — END OF AN ERA (1898-1918)

 

As the century drew to a close even Queen Victoria was astonished by the luxury and extravagance of the upper class. ‘I have come from my house to your palace,’ she remarked to the Duchess of Sutherland. At Chatsworth the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire could put up a hundred guests and three hundred servants for the weekend. Alfred de Rothschild not only had his own orchestra and his own circus but his own private train with carriages upholstered in the blue and yellow family racing colours. Dinners were gargantuan and chefs vied with one another in concocting elaborate dishes: gigot Rothschild, lamb baked for twelve hours and so tender it literally melts in the mouth, made its debut; an invention, the spiteful claimed, to complement the bad teeth of Barons Alphonse and Gustave.

If, as Nathan Rothschild had pointed out, it took sharper wits to keep money than to make it, it required nothing less than genius to spend it to the approval of one’s contemporaries. Yet even here the Rothschilds were more successful than their rivals. No one criticized their vast houses and regiments of gardeners, their orchestras, private trains and greenhouses bursting with out-of-season delicacies, for what other landlord sent wagons around his estate each morning with ‘elevenses’ of coffee and rolls for his employees? Lord Rothschild produced a Beveridge Plan of his own, seventy-five years ahead of the times. He provided not only his own people but all the inhabitants in the town of Tring with free medical treatment, free nursing, free housing and old-age pensions. He obliterated unemployment in the area by the simple expedient of taking the jobless on to his own pay-roll.

Consequently when Leonora Rothschild asked innocently how people got dead leaves in their parks, and Alfred Rothschild inveighed against March because it was ‘the end of the strawberry season’ people smiled at such charming eccentricities. Everyone knew that the Rothschilds supported more charities, championed more causes, and subsidized more art dealers than any family in Europe.

Almost all the Rothschilds had a passion for ‘collecting’, a pastime that stemmed from the Frankfurt ghetto where Mayer Amschel Rothschild had scoured the markets for antique coins. His son Nathan had been too busy building the family fortune to bother with art; and although his brother James had ‘artistic pretentions’ someone compared the tasteless, overcrowded interior of Ferrières to ‘a chest of drawers that had been knocked over’.

Rothschilds of the third generation, however, began to buy with discrimination; and by the second half of the nineteenth century the family name was synonymous with the greatest collections in Europe. Indeed a whole school of dealers sprang into being on Rothschild custom alone: these included Friedrich Spitzer, Arthur Wertheimer, the Goldschmidts, the Davises and the Duveens. Lionel de Rothschild specialized in Dutch and Flemish paintings of the seventeenth century, while his brother Mayer bought Italian Renaissance furniture and Limoges enamels. In Germany Baron Willy bequeathed to the Frankfurt Staatsbibliothek a unique collection of rare books while his brother Mayer Carl gave the city a private library. Mayer’s main interest, however, was silver, and he amassed such a superb collection, catalogued by Luthmer, that it was used by Rosenberg when he compiled the standard work on silversmiths’ marks. Mayer intended to give this priceless collection to Frankfurt, along with his library, but the incipient anti-Semitism of the Germans manifested itself in a device for weighing coal carts which was erected next door to his house with the deliberate aim of spoiling the beauty and cleanliness of his surroundings. As a result the silver went to his seven daughters, one of whom married the English Lord Rothschild.

The French made no such mistake. While Baron Alphonse assembled priceless enamels and goldsmithery of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, his brother Edmond specialized in rare engravings, which went to the Louvre after his death and may be seen today in the Salle Edmond de Rothschild. In Vienna the museums received gifts from Anselm and his son Nathaniel Mayer, while in England, another of Anselm’s sons, Ferdinand, the most discerning collector of all, gave the British Museum the crystals, Limoges enamels and precious wood carvings that are known as the Waddesdon Bequest, one of the most magnificent gifts ever received by the Trustees. 

‘Of all people I give the palm to the cultured Jew, and of all cultured Jews to the Rothschilds,’ wrote an English contemporary. ‘Whether it is enamel or stones, horses or carts, flowers, cigars, pictures, music or anything you like, they know all there is to know, but they are always ready to listen …’ Not only to listen but to buy: as a result the entrance hall of the Bank at New Court was thronged with dealers, ‘a sort of royal levée,’ wrote Philip Roth, ‘with the magnates of the world of art foremost among the courtiers’. The brothers would stop on their way to or from the Partners’ Room. ‘What have you got to show me?’ was the prelude that frequently led to the exchange of thousands of pounds.

But Lord Rothschild was more than a banker and a collector. He was the leading English Jew; and as England was the leading world power he was looked upon as the lay head of world Jewry. This undefinable position meant that every vexatious problems to do with Jews anywhere was brought to his attention. For thirty-six years he served as President of the United Synagogue, an inter-congregational organization founded by his uncle Anthony. In this capacity he more or less dictated who should be chosen as England’s Chief Rabbi, although the candidate was supposed to be elected. His last appointment involved such a prolonged struggle that, after getting his own way, he remarked wearily: ‘I hope I may not live to see another Rabbinate election/ At Queen Victoria’s Jubilee celebration in 1897 Cardinal Vaughan presented a loyal address on behalf of Her Majesty’s Catholic subjects; and, of course, Lord Rothschild did the same for the Jews.

Meanwhile, so many Jews were pouring into Britain from Russia’s persecution in eastern Europe that the question of restriction was raised in Parliament. While Edmond was giving millions to establish Jewish colonies in Palestine, Lord Rothschild was trying to improve conditions in the East End of London. As early as 1889 he had offered to give £20,000 towards the construction of a communal centre in Whitechapel Road, but the idea had been opposed by Anglo-Jewish leaders jealous of the Rothschilds. The only solution seemed to be to send the thousands of newcomers to America, which was crying out for more labour.

The prime mover of this scheme was Hermann Landau, a Jewish philanthropist of eastern European origin. On one occasion Landau returned home to find his house in Bryanston Square ringed by a mass of humanity — Russian refugees fresh from the docks. Without a moment’s hesitation he drove to New Court where he was shown to the Partners’ Room. Temporary shelter, he said, must be provided for the arrivals until they could be transhipped across the Atlantic. The cost would be £5000 annually for five years. Lord Rothschild nodded. £30,000 would be placed in Landau’s account the next day. ‘But you have made a mistake,’ said the visitor. ‘I need only £25,000.’ ‘Do you hear that, Leo?’, Natty said to his younger brother. ‘Landau’s having rachmonus [pity] on us.’

*

By 1902 the question of restricting immigration had become such a burning topic that a Royal Commission on Alien Immigration was set up, and Lord Rothschild appointed as one of the members. It was at this point that he met the handsome Austrian journalist, Theodor Herzl, who for nearly seven years had been trying to interest the Rothschild family in Zionism — the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish State, protected by law. Indeed Herzl originally had entitled his treatise on the Jewish State Address to the Rothschilds, as he regarded this family as ‘the most effective force that our people have possessed since their dispersion’. ‘We shall probably model the constitution after that of Venice but profit by her mistakes,’ he wrote in his diary on 7 June 1895. ‘If the Rothschilds join with us, the first doge is to be a Rothschild …’ Yet Herzl’s conception of a state, to which all loyal Jews pledged allegiance, was the antithesis of Rothschild thinking. The family had based its existence on adherence to the countries of their adoption, and had no wish to repair en masse to Palestine.

Herzl, however, could not understand any sentiments that differed from his own. In June 1895 he headed a paragraph in his diary ‘To the Rothschild Family Council’:

You older men will stand by with advice as to finances, banking, railroads, and politics, and will enter our diplomatic service. Your sons, and I hope you will have as many of them as possible, will play their part in the army, diplomatic corps etc. according to their capacities — and govern provinces, etc. We will reward your daughters with our best officers, finest artists, and most brilliant officials. Or marry them off in Europe, as the Americans do, and which I believe to be very useful …[123] 

It is not surprising that Herzl’s plans did not appeal to the Rothschilds. Baron Edmond was unresponsive: the Viennese Rothschilds did not reply to his letters: the London Rothschilds made no overtures despite being told by a stream of go-betweens that an interview was his most ardent desire. Not until 1902 did a meeting take place between Lord Rothschild and Herzl. One of the members of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration invited Herzl to appear as a witness in the hope, apparently, that his enthusiasm for Zionism would lead him to testify that a good Jew could never be a good Englishman. Natty sensed this and did his best to ensure that Herzl’s testimony would not prejudice Jewish immigration to Britain.

At a quarter to one [wrote Herzl], I set out for New Court to see Rothschild … Punctually at one o’clock I passed through the gate, had myself announced to the Lord of Banking Hosts, and was shown to a room that had a mercantile air. Boxes of sample merchandise in the comers etc.

I hadn’t waited longer than a minute when his Lordship came in, a good-looking, Anglo-Jewish old gentleman … He has very attractive, large Jewish eyes, and he is very hard of hearing … He did not believe in Zionism. (After a few introductory remarks in English we both spoke in German.) He was no Zionist. We would never obtain Palestine etc. He was an Englishman and proposed to remain one. He ‘desired’ that I should say this and that to the Alien Commission, and not to say this and the other. This was too much for me. I had already broken in several times with remarks. But now I began to shout him down so loudly that he held his tongue, nonplussed and astounded.[124]

However, in the end the two men parted as friends. Herzl gave testimony to the Commission that did not prejudice Jewish immigration; and although Lord Rothschild would not support Herzl’s plans he mollified him by calling him ‘a great man’. Leo de Rothschild invited him to a garden party, and Lady Battersea made a great fuss over him, introducing him to Edward VII’s sister, Princess Louise, which delighted him.

Lord Rothschild’s daily attendance before the Royal Commission, his stubborn and heated championship of the Jewish immigrant as a valuable addition to Britain, made a deep impression. Frequently he himself cross-examined hostile witnesses in order to mitigate the harm they might have done; and occasionally questioned friendly witnesses to emphasize helpful points that they had been too nervous to remember. The report of the Commission, in 1903, admitted that the ‘alien immigrant’ was law-abiding, hard-working, thrifty and industrious. The only charge against him was ‘overcrowding’, which was not his fault. Yet this was the basis on which the Alien Immigration Act of 1905 was passed. Although it broke one of England’s most cherished traditions, an open door for the persecuted, the Bill probably would have been far more stringent if it had not been for Lord Rothschild’s efforts.

The effectiveness of this unsmiling autocrat lay in his total lack of imagination. The Establishment measured dependability by an absence of levity; and during the first decade of the new century Lord Rothschild was looked upon as the financial oracle of the Tory party. Although he had followed the family tradition and sat in Parliament for twenty years as a Liberal M.P. his politics could not be described as anything but reactionary. Indeed the advent of a Liberal Government in 1906 filled no one with more anxiety than Nathaniel Rothschild, an anxiety which seemed to be justified when, in 1908, the Welsh radical, Lloyd George, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.

From the pinnacle of the House of Lords Rothschild inveighed against the irresponsible ideas of Britain’s new reformers. In 1909 Lloyd George was obliged to raise an extra £16,000,000 to pay for the implementation of the Old Age Pensions Act and for the Navy’s eight new Dreadnoughts; and he chose to do it by a ‘Tax-the-Rich’ budget. Landowners felt they were witnessing the beginning of socialism, and that socialism was ‘the end of everything’. Mr Arthur Balfour declared that you cannot ‘abolish property by abolishing riches’ and Lord Roseberry said that the measures were ‘not a Budget but a revolution’. In the City a group headed by Lord Rothschild protested against the valuation of property by ‘irresponsible tribunals’ such as those which had ‘cost one Stuart his head and another his throne’. Lloyd George counter-attacked fiercely.

In all these things I think we are having too much Lord Rothschild. We are not to have temperance reform in this country. Why not? Because Lord Rothschild has sent a circular to the peers to say so. We must have more dreadnoughts. Why? Because Lord Rothschild said so at a meeting in the City. We must not pay for them when we have them. Why? Because Lord Rothschild said so at another meeting. You must not have estate duties and a super-tax. Why? Because Lord Rothschild signed a protest on behalf of the bankers to say he would not stand it. You must not have a tax on reversions. Why? Because Lord Rothschild, as Chairman of an Insurance Company, has said that it would not do. You must not have a tax on undeveloped land. Why? Because Lord Rothschild is Chairman of an Industrial Dwellings Company. You ought not to have old age pensions. Why? Because Lord Rothschild was a member of a committee that said it could not be done. Now, really, I should like to know, is Lord Rothschild the dictator of this country? Are we really to have all the ways of reform, financial and social, blocked simply by a notice-board, ‘No thoroughfare. By order of Nathaniel Rothschild?’[125]

Despite the fact that Lord Rothschild was singled out for attack, many members of the new Liberal Government were every bit as conservative as the great banker. The Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, was deeply opposed to granting women the vote, and the more militant the suffragettes became the more stubborn grew the opposition. Mr Asquith did not think ‘our legislation’ would be more ‘respected’ or ‘our social and domestic life’ more ‘enriched’ if women had the vote, while Lord Curzon pronounced bluntly: ‘It would make Britain a laughing stock among nations.’ Lord Rothschild, of course, felt he must pronounce on this matter as well as the budget, and put forward a view that was original if nothing more. ‘If by any chance,’ he told a City Conservative meeting, ‘this ill-fated measure should become law, the electors of the City of London would be mainly charwomen, who would probably send to Parliament members who were not qualified to represent the interests of the finance and commerce of this great empire.’

Frequently Lord Rothschild’s scepticism stood him in good stead. When the world’s greatest passenger ship, the Titanic, was launched in 1911, the giant Rothschild firm, the Alliance Assurance Company, refused to insure it. People whispered that Lord Rothschild was losing his flair, for the premium was enormous and the risk negligible. However, when the ship went down on her maiden voyage in April 1912, with a loss of fifteen hundred lives, the same people marvelled at Rothschild’s sagacity. Had he had a premonition? Nothing so fancy. Lord Rothschild explained, quite simply, that it had seemed ‘too big to float’.

*

The genes are famous for playing tricks, and Lord Rothschild’s heir, Lionel Walter, followed the family pattern only in one respect: he had a passion for collecting. But even here he deviated, for his interest centred not on works of art but on insects. As a child he collected butterflies, as a boy fleas, and as a youth a startling variety of animals from giant tortoises to cassowaries. On one occasion he eclipsed the splendour of Mr Alfred’s goat by driving a team of zebras down Piccadilly; and when he went up to Cambridge as an undergraduate he took a flock of kiwis with him. Professor Albert Newton, the foremost authority on natural history, directed his taste for research, and when he left the university in 1889 he had a collection of 300,000 types of beetles.

Collecting is an expensive hobby; and Lord Rothschild was appalled by the amount of money which his son managed to spend. Nevertheless he provided two cottages at the edge of the park for the specimens, unknowingly laying the foundation of the Tring Zoological Museum which one day would consist of a building and annexe spread over three acres of ground.

Young Walter was a bitter disappointment to his father. Adored by his mother, a Rothschild from Frankfurt, he was looked upon as a delicate child and not allowed to go to school. Under a regime of ‘unrestricted coddling’ he grew into a handsome man of six foot three with a constitution of iron; yet at the same time he developed a pathological shyness. He conversed with his eyes on the floor, sometimes talking in a choking whisper, sometimes in a bellow.

Lord Rothschild, however, was accustomed to having his own way; and as a result ignored his son’s handicaps and persisted in trying to mould him into his own image. Walter was made to serve as an officer in the Royal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry, later sat as a Justice of the Peace, entered the firm of N. M. Rothschild & Sons, and became a Member of Parliament.

Yet the museum remained uppermost in his mind. Although only twenty-four years old, he selected two men as his curators, Ernst Hartert and Karl Jordan, who proved to be exceptionally brilliant scientists. He continued to add to his collection and whenever he could escape from the bank hurried to Tring and spent the evening in the laboratory. It was quite apparent, wrote his niece Miriam Rothschild, that his talent for finance ‘lay in one direction only — that of spending and this he achieved at a speed and on a scale that left his entourage breathless’. Nevertheless, his father refused to face facts and continued to demand his presence at New Court. Gradually Walter developed the cunning of a truant schoolboy, often pretending that his attendance was required by the House of Commons but sneaking off to the Natural History Museum, or escaping with his butterfly net and pill-boxes into the fields.

He was always in trouble; sometimes over income tax demands, sometimes over chorus girls, more often simply because of his father’s annoyance. Once Lord Rothschild found the door to the bank blocked by a pair of bear cubs attended by an inarticulate keeper who appeared to be asking for ‘Mr Walter’.

The biggest scrape, which finally resulted in the severance of Walter’s ties with the hated bank, occurred in 1908. Walter was desperately short of money for his museum and finally hit upon the happy idea of raising £200,000 on his father’s life. He did not realize, however, that insurance companies like to spread their risks; and one of the firms invited to participate was none other than the Allied Insurance Company, of which Lord Rothschild was chairman. When the latter asked, as was his wont, to see a resume of new business for the week, he was stunned to find his own name at the top of the list. His son Walter, after fifteen uneasy years at New Court, at last found himself free to spend all his time at his beloved museum. There were other repercussions. Although Lord Natty settled a very large sum of money on Walter, he disinherited him in favour of his second son Charles, a clever, moody man, also a scientist by inclination but who worked full time in the bank to please his father.

Meanwhile in France another Rothschild had embraced another branch of science. Baron Henri, a grandson of Lord Rothschild’s uncle Nathaniel, who had moved to France in the 1850s after a hunting accident, was four years younger than Walter. He attended medical school and became a general practitioner in the 1890s; like all Rothschilds he took a short cut by building himself a hospital, and like all Rothschilds had a number of diversions, one of which was motor racing.

Indeed, Baron Henri had much more in common with Lord Rothschild’s nephew Lionel (one of Leo’s sons) than with scientist Walter, for Lionel had inherited a passion for motor cars from his father and frequently toured the Continent. In the 1900s rich young men like Lionel and Henri never travelled without their mechanics, as all journeys were highly precarious. Windscreens and starters were inventions of the future: and although engines were capable of doing eighty, even ninety, miles an hour, neither roads nor chassis were built for such speed. Springing was non-existent and tyres were pumped rock hard to enable them to hold the course.

In 1907 Baron Henri boasted that he could travel the six hundred miles from Paris to Monte-Carlo in faster time than his cousin Lionel. The latter accepted the challenge and, accompanied by his mechanic, Harper, and a friend named Montgomery, turned the bonnet of his Mercedes ‘60’ south. The hazards of motoring became only too apparent as the journey progressed.

As we thumped and thundered along [wrote Harper], edging towards the ninety mark, I became aware that Mr. Montgomery’s knees, which were just touching my back, were twitching and shaking out of tune with the car. Leaning towards the right, and putting my shoulder under the dash to keep out of the wind, I glanced over my left shoulder at our passenger. I was amazed to see that his mouth was wide open, and all that could be seen of his face — because of goggles, helmet and scarf — had a bluish tinge to it. I swung my left arm over, touched the owner, Mr. Lionel, on the knee and pointed to his companion, at the same time giving the slow down sign. We came to a halt very quickly, and for some seconds our passenger gulped and gasped for breath. At some moment he had opened his mouth as we were speeding, the wind had caught him in the throat, and he had been unable to close his mouth again. An unpleasant experience, but one from which he soon recovered. I remember Mr. Lionel calmly recommending that he really should keep his mouth closed, as if being half choked was an everyday matter of little importance …[126]

The five Rothschild banks had become four with the demise of the Naples branch in 1861; and now, in 1901, the year that Edward VII came to the throne, the four became three with the closing of the patriarchal company, the forerunner of all other Rothschild enterprises, the Frankfurt bank. In this city the Rothschild role had been steadily diminishing for half a century: a lack of incentive, people said, for the River Main seemed to place a curse on the family, denying them the most important of all incentives — sons. Old Amschel had died childless in 1855. He had been succeeded by two nephews from the Naples branch: Mayer Carl, who had presided over the bank for thirty-one years and sired seven daughters, and then his brother, Baron Willy, father of three daughters, who took over the firm in 1886 and ran it until his death in 1901.

Three months later the following notice was circulated:

It is our sad duty to inform you that in consequence of the decease of Baron Wilhem Karl von Rothschild, the Banking House of M. A. von Rothschild und Söhne will go into liquidation. The liquidators are:

1 The Right Hon. Nathaniel Mayer, Lord Rothschild, London.

2 Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Paris.

Before deciding to shut the bank the family had held hurried councils, but no one in London, Paris or Vienna wanted to move to Frankfurt which, by the turn of the century, had become a Prussian backwater. Soon stories were circulating that Kaiser William II was determined to persuade the family to open a bank in Berlin, but by 1901 tension between Germany and the two Western powers, Britain and France, was mounting, and nothing was done.

This was particularly disappointing to Alfred of London, who took a passionate interest in foreign affairs and for years had been trying to bring about an accord between England and Germany. Some people said that his allegiance had been captured by his honorary post as Austrian consul-general, a sinecure which had passed from Nathan to Lionel and from Lionel to himself. There may have been a modicum of truth in this as Alfred was more aware than most people of the sharp rivalry between Austria and Russia in the Balkans. He was well briefed on the Pan-Slav movement which animated Russian imperialism, and he often argued that Russia’s predatory nature was more likely to spark off a world war than German militarism.

At the end of the 1890s, when the European powers were busy wringing concessions from China, Russia moved into Manchuria and refused to move out. Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, regarded Russian expansion as a serious threat to the British Empire. ‘Both in China and elsewhere,’ he wrote in 1889, ‘it is to our interest that Germany should throw herself across the path of Russia. An alliance between Germany and Russia … is the one thing we have to dread …’

Joseph Chamberlain and Alfred de Rothschild saw eye to eye. England no longer could continue her role of Splendid Isolation. She must find allies on the Continent. If she could not work out an agreement with Germany, a member of the Triple Alliance, she must turn to France, a member of the Dual Alliance. Mr Alfred arranged cosy dinners at his house in Seamore Place to which he invited Chamberlain and Baron von Eckardstein, a secretary to the German Embassy, who was acting for Count Hadzfeldt, the ailing German ambassador. Eckardstein had married a daughter of Sir Blundell Maple, the department store magnate, and was more English than the English. He was fervently in favour of an Anglo-German agreement and throughout 1900 did everything in his power to promote it. Meanwhile, Alfred, who loathed Russia, partly because of her foreign policy and partly because of her persecution of the Jews, used his influence in the City to refuse the Tsarist regime the loans it was always seeking.

I remember once, in the spring of 1900, I was lunching with Alfred Rothschild, in New Court, his City office, when the Russian agent, Rothstein, was suddenly announced [wrote Eckardstein]. The servant had hardly said the name Rothstein when Alfred Rothschild cried out excitedly ‘I won’t see this chuzpe ponem.’ [Yiddish for ‘impudent fellow’]

The servant was sent to say that he couldn’t see Herr Rothstein, but brought back a message that Mr. Rothstein had come to London on behalf of Count Witte about a most important business matter with the Rothschild firm, and that he had to deliver a personal letter from the Russian Minister of Finance. Whereupon my mild and amiable friend, Alfred, flew into a regular passion. He sent for his secretary, and told him to say to Mr. Rothstein in so many words that he wouldn’t see him even if he brought twenty personal letters from the Tsar of Russia.[127]

Apparently even this was not enough to discourage Mr Rothstein who, of course, had tried both Lord Rothschild and Mr Leo but had been told that they were at Epsom Downs. He therefore borrowed a newspaper and said he would wait until he could catch Mr Alfred on the way out. But Mr Alfred was equal to such emergencies. He gave orders to his coachman to pick him up in Cannon Street, and led Eckardstein down the back stairs, through the basement and out the service entrance. The next day Lord Rothschild received Mr Rothstein; but Alfred scored a moral victory, for it transpired that Rothstein had no letter from Count Witte, and only wanted to discuss the possibility of a new loan which he did not get.

Talks between Chamberlain and Eckardstein were proceeding satisfactorily when, in 1901, Queen Victoria died and Kaiser William n appeared at Windsor to sit at his grandmother’s death bed. He kept himself well briefed on the current political situation and when he learned from Baron von Eckardstein of Chamberlain’s proposal for an Anglo-German agreement, he wired ecstatically to his Chancellor; ‘So “they come” it seems. This is what we have waited for.’

But the Kaiser’s enthusiasm was premature. Count von Bülow, influenced by the sinister Foreign Office éminence grise, Baron Holstein, managed to drown the offer in cold water. Although Eckardstein warned the German Embassy that if England did not reach an understanding with Germany she was bound to turn to France, the officials refused to believe it. ‘The threatened understanding with Russia and France is a patent fraud,’ Holstein wrote to the senior diplomat in the Kaiser’s suite. ‘Time is on our side … a rational agreement with England … will only come within reach when England feels the pinch more acutely than she does to-day …’

Meanwhile the German press was encouraged to inveigh against the British Expeditionary Force in South Africa and to ridicule the Royal family. In 1902, Alfred de Rothschild wrote a letter to his friend, Eckardstein, which he hoped would be passed on to Chancellor von Bülow.

People here would have been glad to hear that the caricatures of our Royal Family, which were sold in the streets of Germany, had been confiscated by the police. In a word, of recent years Germany’s policy toward England has been a kind of ‘pinprick’ policy, and, although a pin is not a very impressive instrument, repeated pricks may cause a wound, and, since I hope and pray with my whole heart that no serious wound may result, I am venturing to address these lines to you in the hope that you will clearly explain to Count Bülow how difficult my position in this matter has become with regard to the British Government since I have done everything possible over such a long period of years, and that I feel now that you do not fully appreciate the great advantage of a genuine understanding with England …[128]

Alfred’s efforts came to naught; and three years later Britain signed her famous entente with France.

*

No one lamented more acutely the system of alliances that threw Austria into the opposite camp from Britain and France than Baron Albert von Rothschild of Vienna. A brother of Ferdinand and Alice of Waddesdon, and a son-in-law of Baron Alphonse of Paris, he deplored the widening breach, so inimical to family traditions. Yet Albert refused to allow anything to interfere with his role as the perfect Rothschild; he ran the bank, entered his horses in the Derby, bought the first automobile seen on the streets of the capital, held musical soirées, collected works of art, entertained the nobility at huge shooting weekends; and even found time to climb the Matterhorn, a distinctly un-Rothschild pastime. Two of his five sons were imbalanced; George was sent to a lunatic asylum, Oskar committed suicide. Of the three remaining, only one was interested in finance. When Albert died, three years before the outbreak of the World War, he left the direction of the bank to Baron Louis, his third son.

In France as well as Austria the family was giving way to a new generation. Baron Alphonse had gone to his grave in 1905 when his heir, Édouard, was thirty-seven years of age, while his brother Gustave died the same year as Viennese Albert, in 1911, and was succeeded by his thirty-one-year-old son, Robert. In England, Ferdinand had died in 1898 and although his successor at Waddesdon, his sister Alice, scarcely represented a new generation she installed a very new regime. Whereas Ferdy had adored his weekend parties with their flow of guests and entertainments, Miss Alice, the ‘All Powerful’, drew the curtains to protect the brocade, forbade smoking except in the smoking-room and reverted to the forbiddingly formal luncheons and dinners so dear to the Victorian heart.

Of course in London the three magnificent brothers continued to entertain on the same luxurious scale throughout the Edwardian era although, like the new King himself, they were now elderly men with the ailing indigestions of the very rich.

Yet of all the Rothschilds of this period Baron Edmond of Paris remains the most fascinating. ‘It is doubtful,’ wrote the great Jewish statesman, Ben Gurion, in 1951, ‘whether throughout the entire period of close on two thousand years which the Jews have spent in exile, any person is to be found who equals or who can compare with the remarkable figure of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, builder of the Jewish Settlement in the Homeland …’[129]

Edmond continued to pour money into Palestine — more than all the rest of the Jews in all the rest of the world put together — in an effort to make his colonies self-sufficient. There were many people who jeered at him for ‘building on sand’ and who prophesied that the rocky, waterless soil could never be reclaimed. Baron Maurice de Hirsch, for instance, bought huge tracts of land in the Argentine, lush and fertile, where he settled hundreds of refugees. He urged Edmond to follow suit, but the latter clung to his dream of restoring Israel; the same dream that dazzled Herzl, but to be accomplished quietly, stealthily, not by shouting from the roof-tops.

Yet the Baron was a dictator who expected the colonists to obey him unquestioningly. When he paid his third visit to Palestine in 1899 he was deeply depressed by the endless quarrels and complaints. Two years later the Jewish Community sent a delegation to Paris to talk frankly to the ‘renowned benefactor’. ‘ … If you wish to save the Yishuv [the Jewish settlement] first take your hands from it,’ said the spokesman, ‘and … for once permit the colonists to have the possibility of correcting for themselves whatever needs correcting …’ But Baron Edmond snapped back furiously: ‘I created the Yishuv, I alone. Therefore no men, neither colonists nor organizations, have the right to interfere in my plans …’[130]

Edmond not only continued to exercise dictatorial control throughout his administration but bought land and set up colonies at strategic points in Judea, Samaria and Galilee; strongholds, he explained, if in the future the country should be threatened: strongholds that proved their worth half a century later.

However as far as Zionism was concerned a new figure was arising. Herzl died in 1904 and gradually his place was taken by the Russian Jew, Chaim Weizmann, destined to be the first President of the State of Israel, who settled in Manchester and exerted his almost magical influence on the leaders of Anglo-Jewry. A consummately skilful diplomat, Weizmann was more tactful than Herzl and soon established links with the ‘Father of the Yishuv’. 

When I first met the Baron Edmond [he wrote, referring to their encounter in 1913], he was a man in his sixties, very much alert, something of a dandy, but full of experience and sagesse. Everything about him was in exquisite taste, his clothes, his home — or rather his homes — his furniture and his paintings, and there still clung to him the aura of the bon vivant which he had once been. In manner he could be both gracious and brutal; and this was the reflex of his split personality; for on the one hand he was conscious of his power and arrogant in the possession of it; on the other hand he was rather frightened by it, and this gave him a touch of furtiveness.[131]

The Baron told Mr Weizmann that he would contribute money for a Hebrew University in Palestine. ‘The news was unexpected, for we still thought of the Baron as the rich autocrat interested exclusively in the philanthropic aspects of the Jewish problems, and disdainful of political Zionism. We were quite mistaken, but through no fault of ours, for the Baron was not a man to explain himself. In part he would not, for that went against his dictatorial temperament, in part he could not, for I doubt whether he really understood himself.’[132]

As the years passed Edmond moved closer to the Zionist organizers: and in 1914 Weizmann was delighted to learn that he had decided to visit Palestine once again to note the progress that had been made. He had not seen his colonies for nearly fifteen years. Once more he and his wife embarked on the huge steam yacht and dropped anchor at Jaffa.

Edmond could scarcely believe his eyes. Tel Aviv had become a city and his miserable windswept colonies had been transformed into lush gardens — miles of orange groves and vineyards; forests of young trees; olives and apples and cherries; artesian wells gushing water.

This time Edmond’s journey was likened to ‘a prince returning to his people’. He travelled through Lower Galilee, and visited Petach Tikvah, Mikveh Israel, Rishon-le-Zion, Rehoboth, Ekron, Nachlath Yehuda, Ness Ziona. Everywhere he received such a stupendous welcome that he often was close to tears. Worn out by emotion, when colonists from Rosh Pinah begged him to honour their colony with his presence, he shook his head. ‘I am old and weak,’ he said. ‘Soon my son James will come to you and he will speak to you in Hebrew.’ Baron Edmond could not know that, however old he felt, he was to live another twenty years; and that James was destined to serve in the British Army that would conquer and occupy Palestine. However, James did as his father promised; he visited Rosh Pinah and spoke to the inhabitants in Hebrew. And Edmond finally embraced the cause of Zionism. When he returned to Paris he told Weizmann: ‘Without me Zionism would not have succeeded, but without Zionism my work would have been struck to death.’[133]

*

Whatever historians write now about the inevitability of the First World War, the outbreak came as a shock to the mass of people everywhere. In 1914 relations between Britain and Germany were better than they had been for two decades. Indeed, at the beginning of the year Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had observed jauntily ‘never has the sky been more perfectly blue’. Then came the Sarajevo murder and the flame that set Europe alight. Like royalty, the Rothschilds were forced to abjure family solidarity and to give their loyalty to the countries of their adoption.

In England, Lloyd George, not long before had alluded indirectly to Lord Rothschild as ‘a Philistine’, adding rather indecently, ‘not all of whom are uncircumcised’. But now the Chancellor was eager to make peace with his political enemy. He sent for the banker to discuss what measures should be adopted to keep the currency steady. He tells us that he awaited his visitor with some trepidation, as he was keenly aware that he had made more than one reference ‘not of the kind to which the great House of Rothschild had hitherto been subjected’. ‘Lord Rothschild,’ said Lloyd George as he shook hands, ‘we have had some political unpleasantness …’ Natty brushed the attempted apology aside with his famous curtness. ‘No time to bring up such things. What can I do to help?’ ‘I told him’, wrote Lloyd George. ‘He undertook to do it at once. It was done.’

All Rothschilds, in all three countries, served in whatever way they could. James de Rothschild, one of Baron Edmond’s sons, managed to enlist successively in three armies: the French, the Canadian and finally the British. In Austria Baron Albert’s son, Eugene, had a leg shattered on the Russian front, while in England Leo learned that his son, Evelyn, had been killed fighting the Turks in Palestine. In Paris the doctor of medicine, forty-two-year-old Baron Henri designed and built ambulances and took them to the front; and in London seventy-two-year-old Alfred learned that the allies were short of pit props for the trenches, and offered the glorious trees at Halton. ‘I am not an expert,’ he wrote to the Prime Minister on 28 February 1917, ‘as regards what sort of timber would be suitable for pit props, but I cannot help thinking that, as there are so many pine trees in my woods at Halton, some of them at least would be suitable for the purpose. May I ask you very kindly to send down your expert who would very easily be able to report fully on the subject, and I should indeed be proud if my offer should lead to any practical result.’[134] It did and many trees were carried away.

All three of the magnificent English brothers died during the four years of war. The eccentric Lionel Walter became the second Lord Rothschild in the spring of 1915. He came under Weizmann’s spell and embraced the Zionist cause with fervour, to the anger of most of his relations, who were bitterly opposed to the concept. One Rothschild, no one knows which, defined a Zionist as ‘an American Jew who gives an English Jew money to get a Polish Jew to Palestine’. Perhaps Walter’s most implacable antagonist was Leo’s widow, his Aunt Maria. Indeed when Mrs Leo’s son, Evelyn, was killed in Palestine, she wrote to the Zionist Organization forbidding anyone ‘to make a case of it’; in other words, to dramatize her son as giving his life for the liberation of Palestine. The recipients were amazed as the idea had not occurred to them.

When the allies drove the Turks onto the defensive throughout the Middle East and established themselves in Palestine, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Mr Arthur Balfour, responded to the pressure of the Zionists and issued a statement of intent: and he chose to address his famous Declaration not to the Chief Rabbi, nor to Weizmann, but to the second Lord Rothschild. The name still carried a magic of its own.

Foreign Office

November 2, 1917.

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of his Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet: ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and existing religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur Balfour

Shortly after the letter was published Walter Rothschild decided that he had endured the public gaze long enough. He was a scientist, not a politician; he refused to sit on any more committees, to attend any more meetings, and returned to Tring Park where once again he immersed himself in his birds and beetles and fleas. It was ironic that the first Lord Rothschild’s heir — a man so determinedly unpolitical — should stumble into the history books because of his brief incursion into the Zionist struggle. However, one of Dr Weizmann’s colleagues, Nahum Sokolow, explained that the Balfour Declaration had been ‘sent to the Lord and not the Jewish people because they had no address, whereas the Lord had a very fine one’.